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Since peak control isn’t an issue for an internet stream, since he’s already mentioned he’s not clipping into the encoder…
I’ll comment on the sound. It’s not too bad, it’s a very heavy "V" sound, or what you might call a smiley face. And with Plutonium, it was already made to have its loudness consistency with a somewhat smiley sound.
However, the BBE was not made to have such consistency… it’s a studio device. It’s made to be adjusted for every track it’s used on, and it’s supposed to be a highly non-linear device. So you definitely notice more variance when its placed after broadcast audio processing.
Something like an Aphex 204 or 250 would be less so like this, since it does have a bit of program dependency, but it still doesn’t compare to a well setup broadcast audio processor when it comes to consistency of the spectral balance & loudness when input spectrum changes.
Also, the settings of 3 are pretty drastic. The "process" will (supposedly among other things) increase the gain on a high-frequency shelving EQ and introduce phase distortion. Especially the phase distortion could cause the encoder to have more difficulty encoding (but I think that’s only part of why your 128kbps mp3 stream is full of encoding artifacts)
The Lo-Contour will add a bass clipping, and also some processing that reduces certain aspects of the midrange when there’s heavy bass. It also does introduce phase distortion in the midrange.
What I would do, if you like the texture of the BBE, is to put it before Breakaway… then use a reputably good EQ after Breakaway, if it’s still not quite the texture you want. That way you at least have something with a linear response after Breakaway, and your texture should end up being way more consistent… if you’re only down about 1-2dB anywhere in the spectrum.
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Other things to consider of course are… monitoring for extended periods on some reputably accurate/transparent systems & rooms… your decisions are only as good as your monitoring is honest.
And to consider what your listeners want. Get their feedback, and consider what may be effecting their experience & needs, and try to work around that to still make the mass average listener happy.
It’s not easy, because you’re "playing" to something that doesn’t really exist, but that’s the whole idea of broadcast processing, and broadcasting in general… to appear to be/sound/come-across/whatever as good as possible to the average, without playing to the lowest common denominator (who won’t care), and without turning away your more educated listeners with most likely much better gear than the average listener for a station that has a format like yours. (for instance… a classical station, the average would usually be way more educated in sound, especially if it wasn’t playing the same 100 "standards" over & over)
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And even before any of that, I would get rid of whatever horrible mp3 encoder you’re using now, and switch to something that sounds good. That’s detracting a lot from evaluating your stream because the BBE is making those artifacts worse.
Hot 10 420 2010 – Passive Aggressor FM 75uS.flac
file name says all. i’ll do another one tomorrow or some such… for a more adult/lighter style. 😉
[quote author=”George”]In case that you need something special to try please let me know.[/quote]
Dancing girls in the background.Although there are some cases with multiple mics where you can at least benefit from some basic compression on each mic, to keep everyone around the same loudness on-air. And I’ll never argue with a well adjusted gate (preferably a smooth downward expander) on each mic, to reduce studio noise.
[quote author=”tcooper”]Running the signal in mono has caused of the the locals to complain that its illegal.[/quote]
Their explanation being…. ?? Jealousy? 😆[quote author=”Gerrie”]he jesseG i’ve listened this preset with cool edit and it’s sounds very good perhaps a little more bass!!!![/quote]
Part of the challenge is keeping the bass consistent without losing the perception of punch (can’t have too much density or too little clipping)… and keeping it from peaking too loud so the adaptive bass clipping (Breakaway Broadcast only) doesn’t modulate the bass loudness (density is one way to compensate for this).So (oversimplifying things) there’s those two conflicting things going on with the bass.
But either way, I’m still 99% fixated on keeping it much the way it is right now. If you want more bass after the fact (possibly at the expense of consistency of spectrum and loudness, depending how much you push the bass & final gain) you can always use the bass controls in Breakaway. 8) Increasing the bass level control increases both density and peak (before final clipping).
science – my edit – Passive Aggressive.wav
I was listening to this earlier, in comparison with a certain video of a completely restored 8100/XT, and I have to say this comparison makes me happy.
I’m going to keep this clear & impacting as I port it to the FM version, and will possibly do a 75uS sample of this later today, or maybe tomorrow. It might end up sounding a tad closer to that sound. This wasn’t on purpose.
Let’s make beautiful audio.
[quote author=”tcooper”]I’d like to see some Frank and Corny presets just for giggles.[/quote]
Well there’s CGSmooth of course. 🙂 I too would love to hear Frank and CG both do 1+ more presets for Breakaway. We need some more celebrity presets. 8)[quote author=”yorkie98″]Hi JesseG, loving this, its nice and open but also crisp and punchy. I would love to hear how it copes with sudden dynamic changes such as those in Bjork’s "It’s Oh So Quiet" or Michael Buble’s "All of Me".
Yorkie.[/quote]
Maybe this answers your question better than I can 🙂
so quiet – Passive Aggressor.mp3I was going over some stuff mentally and on paper, and figured out the math behind a change I wanted to make (smoothing out soft to loud input density better), and pulled it off pretty well. So I re-uploaded those two WAVs.
I’ll upload a bit more later.
she wants – passive aggressor.wav
The original isn’t as punchy as I thought it might be, but still great. Not slammed to all h-double-hockey-sticks like stuff after pretty much this year, 1993. This is of course taken from the original 1993 release, lossless. S’ how we do. 8)
About the "Above Threshold" thing, here’s ~ where the gain reduction is ~ during the "impacts" on the 1s on this song:
The gain reductions that are "above" 0… or in other word "more than" and/or "below" the 0dB point on there, are kicking into a more aggressive mode. Hence the name "Passive Aggressor". It gets more aggressive if it has to do a lot of gain reduction. This actually does make things sound more open in the end though, because it means there’s less limiting to do too.I actually named this preset that before I decided to do that and base the whole sound of the preset around it, so… sometimes I just get lucky.
OK, I lied. 😉 (i planned on it too, lol)
all coming back – passive aggressor.wav
This is an early version remember. I’m only about 25 revisions in on this, but it conveys the idea that I’m working on. The main thing that will improve a bit is the loud parts not being quite as low in level. They are slightly too low right now, but it’s already close… and this preset easily makes the most extensive use of the "Inf:1 Above Threshold" feature of the core so it’s a new fun thing to tweak that effects the loud/quiet stuff more than anything else in this preset.
Anyways, enjoy.
[quote author=”Otto”]I’ve downloaded the latest live version and used Motor City, but with several tracks the bass sounds fluffy (like a poor woofer).
For example the track Inna Ft. Bob Taylor – Deja Vu, when played in Plutonium or New York it sounds good…
Anyone else who noticed this ?[/quote]I’m listening to this song right now from FLAC, and I don’t notice anything myself. Personally to me, it sounds like New York and Plutonium are a bit more dense, where Motor City has a lot more punch on the lows, and doesn’t ride them anywhere near as hard as New York especially.
Do you have default settings for Motor City in the main window? Do you have enough EQ headroom so the EQ & Loudness doesn’t show any limiting in the settings window? Are you doing any bass clipping in the speaker controller? Are you running in phase-linear mode, or something else?
With default settings, none of those three sound like anything is broken to me, so if all of your settings are ok then maybe it’s your audio system & monitoring? To me – the bass on Motor City sounds the most clear of the three because it has the most impact, especially on band 1.
