News/Talk Preset

[Anonymous]

Leif,

My station plays polka music, and we play recordings anywhere from the 1940’s through 2009. I’ve noticed that the News/Talk preset actually gives me the best consistency and loudness I’m looking for.

However, obviously by design, that preset lacks just a bit of treble. Are there any tricks you might suggest for me to be able to sneak a little more treble out of that one? (Just a bit more, I do like warmth!)

Or, perhaps there’s another preset you can suggest that accomplishes the consistency of News/Talk with a bit more crispness.

Thanks bunches!

Aaron

###

[JesseG]

Did you try the "New York" preset yet?

Some sounds you might try:

and if you’re in BBP please do adjust the Final Drive (and bass) to taste. Like with Rustonium, for instance, can go even 2-3db louder without problems in BBP because it’s more of a Reference level output in BBP.

[Anonymous]

[quote author=”ASchuelke”]Leif,
My station plays polka music, and we play recordings anywhere from the 1940’s through 2009.
###[/quote]Totally off-topic, but: Which station is this? Do you have a stream available? I know for sure that there are many more polka fans on this forum 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Jesse.
The main thing I’m looking for is consistency between a mono track from 1950, a wide stereo track from 1965 and a more balanced stereo track from 2009. News/Talk seemed to accomplish this, but will definitely try the others!

Usually, my frustration seems to stem from listening to the station for a couple songs, loving what I hear, then an oddball track will be too soft or too loud.

As a last resort, I can run the station in mono (which sounds fantastic, by the way, every cut is very consistent in spectral balance, energy and volume) but I’d prefer to run it in stereo, obviously.

Would "Challenger" be able to take care of some of these issues? If so, what settings could I try? Maybe something with the percentages and the attenuation?

sfinx,
My station is at http://www.wrjqradio.com and we stream from Appleton, Wisconsin, USA, 24 hours-a-day!

I’m 28 years old, too. Not too many of us youngsters around who enjoy polkas. 😀

[Anonymous]

I’m currently trying "New York" with final drive at -1.0, power at 60 and bass at -10. (Bass shape is 0)
It’s my understanding that by turning bass down to -10, I’m actually lowering the threshold, correct? Does this mean that the bass is controlled a little better?

Challenger is at 50% on all bands and is pretty close to what I’m looking to achieve. What am I accomplishing exactly, in simple terms, by having all the bands at 50%?

[Conor Hyland]

Hi ASchuelke,

[quote author=”ASchuelke”]It’s my understanding that by turning bass down to -10, I’m actually lowering the threshold, correct? Does this mean that the bass is controlled a little better?[/quote]

Here is some interesting stuff that Leif posted some time ago about what happens in the algorithm when we adjust Bass Cut / Boost and / or Bass Shape:

[quote author=”Leif”]When cutting bass, EQ isn’t affected. Instead, the B1 and B2 multiband agc thresholds are lowered (compared to where they are by default in the selected preset).

Bass Cut -50, Shape +50: B1 -12, B2 -12
Bass Cut -50, Shape 0: B1 -12, B2 -6
Bass Cut -50, Shape -50: B1 -12, B2 0

Bass Cut -25 gives you half the cut (i.e. -6, -3 for shape 0).

Bass Cut is a great way to clean up the sound, because it still retains the bass boost inherent to many presets, while lowering the thresholds for essentially "more bass compression".

If you BOOST, on the other hand, several things happen — more and more depending on how far you turn it up. Be careful, there’s a lot of available power here .

Assuming Bass Boost +50 (bassclippingorama):

Shape 0: B1 out mix +12, B2 out mix +3, B1/B2 agc thresh: +7.25, and PEQ +14.5dB, 23 Hz, 3.0 Octaves
Yes, that’s insane. I never intended for people to actually use Bass Boost +50, I just had to make sure the maximum setting was sufficiently over the top, to be able to tell anyone deaf enough to want more to go away, or buy a subwoofer.

Looking at a more sane bass boost setting of +15:

Shape 0: B1 out mix +4.75, B2 out mix +1.25, B1/B2 agc thresh 0 (the thresholds don’t start rising until bass boost is ABOVE +20), and PEQ +4.75dB, 23 Hz, 3.0 octaves

Let’s stick to bass boost +15 and explore other Bass Shape options (agc threshold omitted since they’re not affected at this setting):

Shape -50: B1 out mix +4.75, B2 out mix +0.00, PEQ +4.75dB, 40 Hz, 1.0 octaves
Shape -33: B1 out mix +4.75, B2 out mix +0.00, PEQ +4.75dB, 35 Hz, 1.6 octaves
Shape -16: B1 out mix +4.75, B2 out mix +0.25, PEQ +4.75dB, 28 Hz, 2.3 octaves
Shape 0: B1 out mix +4.75, B2 out mix +1.25, PEQ +4.75dB, 23 Hz, 3.0 octaves
Shape 16: B1 out mix +4.75, B2 out mix +2.0, PEQ +4.75dB, 33 Hz, 3.0 octaves
Shape 33: B1 out mix +3.0, B2 out mix +3.0, PEQ +4.75dB, 50 Hz, 3.0 octaves
Shape 50: B1 out mix +0.0, B2 out mix +4.75, PEQ +4.75dB, 71 Hz, 3.0 octaves[/quote]

Hope this helps,
Conor

[JesseG]

[quote author=”ASchuelke”]I’m currently trying "New York" with final drive at -1.0, power at 60 and bass at -10. (Bass shape is 0)[/quote]
turning the power above 50 on this preset does nothing since it’s starting at Infinite:1 ratio for the AGC and multiband compressors. 😉

[quote author=”ASchuelke”]It’s my understanding that by turning bass down to -10, I’m actually lowering the threshold, correct? Does this mean that the bass is controlled a little better?[/quote]
In a normal compressor it could improve consistency in two cases… if the ratio was less than Inf:1, or if the compressor was not "working" to reduce the levels "enough". But Breakaway has a few other things that are effecting it that may or may not improve consistency. It really depends on the program material. Some material is just too far outside of what makes sense to try to correct for, because of how bad it could potentially make much more other stuff sound. Audio processing is the art of compromise.

[quote author=”ASchuelke”]Challenger is at 50% on all bands and is pretty close to what I’m looking to achieve. What am I accomplishing exactly, in simple terms, by having all the bands at 50%?[/quote]
Challenger will try to have the L-R signal be 50% the power of the L+R signal, per band.

You will probably want a good 6db of "Max Atten" in each band so that it can also reduce overly wide material. Without a Max Atten good enough to do this, you will lose consistency in the width. 6db is enough to reduce material that has a "perfect" 50/50 balance between L+R and L-R (in a given band) to your 50% "Target" width (in a given band).

[Leif]

Hi Aaron! I love that your station plays polka music, please provide a link once you get the audio where you want it 🙂. Hm, you wouldn’t happen to live somewhere near Twente would you? 🙂

Having challenger target at 50% is a great idea, and like Jesse said you should also set Max Atten to 6dB — this way, Challenger can actually REDUCE the stereo width if the input is hard-panned, which polka from the 60s likely is!

Although my taste in music is very wide, Polka isn’t really part of my library (yet anyway), but if you could make a nice mix of several different and difficult polka songs, I’d love to take a listen and see what I can do — perhaps there’s News/Talk could be tweaked to sound better on polka while still sounding good on actual talk.

Best,
///Leif

[Anonymous]

Awesome, Leif… I’ll send you a couple I’m having trouble with.
Do you prefer FLAC?

[Leif]

No need to do flac for this, MP3 V0 or 320 will do just fine.

///Leif

[Lee XS]

Damn! someone’s actually using the News/Talk preset!! 😯

I was hoping Leif would drop this to make way for some better ones. 😕

Still has no votes! 😯 🙄

[Anonymous]

Actually, I’m diggin’ the Cleveland preset right now, with Jesse’s suggestion of +13 on the bass boost and +13 on the bass shape. Rolling off with transition width at 0.38 and slope of .02. The reason I did this is that I found it to have a bit too much high end… a little harsh. But with the rolloff I think it sounds almost perfect… Gonna do some more testing yet tonight.

Based on the settings I’m currently using, are there any other suggestions anybody wants to throw out there while I’m tweaking tonight?

[Anonymous]

We’re using "Reference Jazz" now because of the lower bass and treble thresholds, and I think I have finally found the settings I’m looking for.

A processed sound, and seems to be pretty consistent on everything we play (vinyl, reel tape, CD, mono, stereo)

Have a listen and let me know what you think, or if you have any further suggestions.
http://mega5.radioserver.co.uk:8248/listen.pls

Leif, to answer you question (sorry, I missed it) we’re actually in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA. Lots of polka fans in Twente, I take it?
We do have many listeners in that area, actually.

[JesseG]

I like.

[Leif]

I finally had a chance to tune in, this is awesome dude!

I love it. I had no idea there were stations with this format in the states. (Hell, a year ago I had no idea there were stations with this format even in Holland 😀. It’s grown on me.

Aaron, you might want to check the stream on a scope though. Breakaway Personal or Breakaway RTA would work fine.

It’s clipped at -6 with nothing going over. This means you could do 6dB less clipping (which would add an incredible amount of detail and punch to the audio) or you could turn it up 6dB (which would add an incredible amount of loudness to the stream).

Or, you could split the difference. That’d be the best actually.. If you turn down final drive down 1.5dB down, and then turn the stream level up 4.0dB, that’d still leave 0.5dB of headroom for encoder overshoots, AND drastically increase the loudness AND punchiness AND clarity. There’s lots of headroom which isn’t being used at all.

Still, it does sound nice. I can only imagine what the varied program material (especially older songs with lacking high-end) sounded like through your old processor with a traditional clipper? What did you run before if I may ask?

Best,
///Leif

[Author]

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