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Hello Leif,
First and foremost, I’ve been evaluating BBP demo (downloaded last week), and I can only say you’ve done an incredible job. Well done. I knew Orban 8500/8600 / Omnia 6 class processors could be done on a pc, but it’s been a revelation to find the first one who has really nailed that, and at a viable price point for independent broadcasters like ourselves.
We have two 8400’s, each feeding our main two stations. We use Sonos/MBL as backups. But we also have a few second tier regional FM transmitters (primarily only serving a few thousand people each) that have, until now, been running Sonos/MBL. I’d like to look at BBP for a few of those sites, as well as our main site.
I have a few questions if I may;
1/ I’ll get the stupid question out the way first! I’ve seen in the forum screen shots of the Challanger stereo enhancer, but how do I load it and bring up the interface?
2/ I see forum references to future planned versions of BBP with greater processing control options. When do you plan to release that, will it be a downloadable upgrade (paid or complimentary?) to BBP, and what extent of controls do you intend to offer? How will this likely differ from any hardware BBP processors planned?
I have two reasons for asking this;
A) Our two 8400’s have customised settings. A tweaked BBP Rock preset is kind of similar to what one of our 8400’s is running. However, I can’t find a BBP preset that comes that close to our second 8400. BBP Reference Heavy is about as close as I have found so far in a couple of days of playing with it. I’d ideally like a way to better customise BBP, 8400 Intermediate/Advanced options style.
B) It seems the BBP range control effects both AGC and multiband. I’d ideally like to control the AGC drive separately, as in one chain for our main tx site we will have a linear 24 bit IP STL, which I intend to run (unprocessed, unprotected) at a nominal level of -30dbfs at the studio’s, to allow plenty of headroom for the crazy things some announcers do! At the transmitter site, I need the BBP AGC range to be able to deal with that.
In another chain to our smaller regional sites, we have STL’s using 64kbps AAC+ coding based on Orban 1100/1010PE encoders. In a split architecture with lossy low bit rate codecs, Orban suggest its desirable to have the pre link processing operate only with AGC and peak protection limiting (which rarely comes into play). In this case, I would need to disable (or mainly disable) the AGC in BBP at the transmitter site.
3/ I saw reference in the forums to BBP stopping every ~48 days. If verified, has this been fixed? We have had Sonos/MBL operating at some tx sites with more than 18 months between pc reboots and assume BBP can run unattended for similar periods.
4/ I’m looking at running two instances of BBP or BBP ASIO on a pc. Preferably BBP as I’d still prefer dealing with longer latency and have better quality processing. What I’d like to do is allow one sound card to provide the MPX output for both instances. For example, a pc with a single Juli@ card installed, BBP instance one feeding the Julia left analog ouput, BBP instance two feeding the Julia right analog output. Is this possible in either BBP/BBP ASIO?
5/I saw your forum post re your new method to obtain >140% L/R audio levels within the FM transmission mask. I’m curious about that. Is that likely to be a BBP software upgrade option in the future or planned for hardware only?
Thanks
Aaron
I can help with some of this…
quote :1/ I’ll get the stupid question out the way first! I’ve seen in the forum screen shots of the Challanger stereo enhancer, but how do I load it and bring up the interface?To enable the Challenger, Stereo Enhancer, go to the I/O settings menu, enable effects. Then go back to the signal settings menu and you will now see that the effect plugins section is enabled. click edit, you will find that the enhancer is already loaded here, you simply need to tick enable to bring into life.
quote :2/ I see forum references to future planned versions of BBP with greater processing control options. When do you plan to release that, will it be a downloadable upgrade (paid or complimentary?) to BBP, and what extent of controls do you intend to offer? How will this likely differ from any hardware BBP processors planned?When updates/fixes/enhancements are released they are released here in Beta form in the sticky at the top of this forum. For example, the release you download from the website is 0.90.77 whereas on the forum you can get 0.90.93 but this AFAIK is still Beta.
quote :B) It seems the BBP range control effects both AGC and multiband. I’d ideally like to control the AGC drive separately, as in one chain for our main tx site we will have a linear 24 bit IP STL, which I intend to run (unprocessed, unprotected) at a nominal level of -30dbfs at the studio’s, to allow plenty of headroom for the crazy things some announcers do! At the transmitter site, I need the BBP AGC range to be able to deal with that.The range control does also affect the MBL as well as the AGC, This will allow the AGC to cope with the range you desire but may well overcook the MBL. I have long been asking for seperate AGC/MBL sliders too but this may come in time and it may not.
quote :In another chain to our smaller regional sites, we have STL’s using 64kbps AAC+ coding based on Orban 1100/1010PE encoders. In a split architecture with lossy low bit rate codecs, Orban suggest its desirable to have the pre link processing operate only with AGC and peak protection limiting (which rarely comes into play). In this case, I would need to disable (or mainly disable) the AGC in BBP at the transmitter site.For this useage, I would personally use no ACG pre- link just some light peak protection then allow BBP to do all the hard work at the transmitter site. If not possible, then if your original signal has an agc already applied, the AGC on BBP will have little or no work to do so won’t maffect your audio negatively as it will just pretty much sit at it’s arbitrary level, satisfied that the audio gain is ok.
quote :4/ I’m looking at running two instances of BBP or BBP ASIO on a pc. Preferably BBP as I’d still prefer dealing with longer latency and have better quality processing. What I’d like to do is allow one sound card to provide the MPX output for both instances. For example, a pc with a single Juli@ card installed, BBP instance one feeding the Julia left analog ouput, BBP instance two feeding the Julia right analog output. Is this possible in either BBP/BBP ASIO?This useage is possible due to an upgrade I requested a little while back. In the I/O menu set the output to your Juli@ card but in the channel selection, select 2(L) and in the other instance, do the same but select channel 2(R). Each instance will now use just one channel of the soundcard and each physical channel of the soundcard will now carry the two different processings or stations.
This feature is only available on the alpha versions on this forum and not currently in the production version.Hope this helps, the other questions Leif may have to answer himself.
Yorkie98
On the rebooting issue, I can add a bit.
We’ve had BBP running for nearly 3 months on a Pentium dual-core computer. At this point it shows no signs of stopping.
On the other hand, I put BBP Live on a streaming computer… a Pentium 4 (dual proc) which had been running MBL4 for months. This computer did not like BBP, and would shut down at random times. We went back to MBL4 on that unit & it returned to reliable operation.
The point being that computer selection is something you’ll need to look into, depending on what you have operating now. Get the right hardware & BBP should run very reliably.
Recommended computers, cards and configurations are all over these forums.
Good luck!
[quote author=”rebel”]We have had Sonos/MBL operating at some tx sites with more than 18 months between pc reboots and assume BBP can run unattended for similar periods.[/quote]
Using what version of Windows?[quote author=”rebel”]5/I saw your forum post re your new method to obtain >140% L/R audio levels within the FM transmission mask. I’m curious about that. Is that likely to be a BBP software upgrade option in the future or planned for hardware only?[/quote]
The MPX clipper backend, vs the regular L/R clipper backend, will only be in the full control hardware.DISCLAIMER: The following are my views, and I don’t directly represent the views of Leif or CE Audio. (even if they are the same views, hehe)
As for an intermediate control version, the cracking of Breakaway that has been ongoing by a certain individual has virtually guaranteed that there will NOT be a version of Breakaway any more advanced than what you currently have available… with the exception of maybe 2-3 more controls over time as people are able to convince Leif that -A- they are needed to make the product usable and -B- that he feels it’s not going to compromise his business model.
I’m not saying that can never change, I’m not Leif, but… I can tell you that the cracking has put a BIG damper on the stuff you guys have even now. And you can thank quosego of SnD for that…
That’s what happens when you get a $15,000 processor almost GIVEN to you guys by someone as generous as Leif, and certain people still refuse to pay for it. The generosity fades. So keep it up CrackDJ, GRB (who is on this forum too btw), and others… You are stealing from a ONE MAN operation which is practically giving away the software as is. Good going guys. quosego doesn’t do what he does to allow you guys to use the product for free, he- like any moral cracker – is doing it for learning and education. He is against what you guys are doing. Non-crackers that are using cracked software ARE stealing. Period. You are already reaping the "benefits" of your efforts, and punishing everyone else in the process as well.
quosego, who states the reasoning of his morals as Breakaway being "a tad bit expensive for the hobby audio person" is really showing how detached he is from the broadcast scene… and also imo shows his inability to understand the insane value that Breakaway represents even within the WHOLE audio scene, not just Broadcasting.
Leif’s processing (running in specialized hardware) is already used on everything from the SuperBowl to the Grammys, from the Academy Awards to the Olympics, and some 75%+ of all digital TV content. He doesn’t need to provide ANY software for any hobby broadcasters, nor even huge ones (of which Breakaway is running on a bunch of now).
The irony of supposedly moral crackers, is they KNOW that the general public will use their efforts to steal from the company, but still release their efforts very publicly (while also saying they don’t support the use outside of the cracking scene, YEAH RIGHT). But… the irony is in that it does nothing but cause a system that promotes the punishment of legitimate customers… which itself is the reasoning behind what the crackers do.
There are some companies that don’t have any copy protection AT ALL, like Cockos Reaper. It has a no time limits trial with no feature limitations, but it still gets "cracked" just to make it LOOK like it’s been purchased in the about box… and released on the scene with the sole purpose of allowing end users to steal from Cockos. And it’s getting released from groups that have never provided any educational materials within the scene about it.
Breakaway’s trials are almost the same, except they have actually very good protection on them. Protection which is currently working against at least partially hypocritical crackers like quosego, who does release some educational material within the scene, but also releases his efforts to the general end-users.
The use of these cracks are effecting the Breakaway product majorly. Somewhat through effecting CE Audio as a company (details of how this is known are omitted for obvious reasons), but mostly through personal effects of this on Leif himself. CE Audio is a company, but also mainly it’s a one man operation. Leif *does* have massive respect for quosego’s efforts, but massive disgust that quosego is releasing them to end users instead of keeping them iNTERAL where they belong.
Hopefully that’s sinking into some brain cells for 2-3 people that read this.
It’s way off topic, but perhaps some insight is good from time to time. Even if they are mostly my views, I have reflected a few times how Leif feels about this…. as would any of you AT LEAST. Leif is a very humble easy going guy, and he has been very generous in nearly giving away all of this to everyone here… so don’t except that generosity to be extended forever in the face of personal attacks and blatant theft by proxy that probably 2-3 of you reading this have capitalized on in the past, and might be doing right now.
Nuff said.
I can say without qualification that I agree with JesseG’s observations 1,000%. Having been in & around broadcast engineering since the early ’70s, I’ve never run across a processing scheme that sounds like Leif’s. That it’s available in software for the price he charges is astounding. In my shop, business and travels I have owned and worked with processors by Omnia, Orban, Vorsis, Broadcast Warehouse, CRL, Gregg Labs, the Sonos/MBL software and a few that go back before FM processing was much more complex than a wideband AM box. If I had run into Leif’s processing a few years ago I could have saved myself a LOT of money, looking for something that didn’t tear off my ears.
That said, I hope we don’t all find out that the gravy train is over, once Leif releases his concepts in the hardware configuration he’s been talking about. Something like that could easily command prices that I couldn’t possibly justify, given what I use processing for.
So, in the hope that he doesn’t just get tired of us all, I’ll say that Leif has a teriffic product. It’s WELL worth the price. I’d pay more, but
I hope he sees fit to leave it as it is.Those of you who crack & steal this stuff… would you please leave your doors open so I can stop by & raid your refrigerator? While you’re at it, please leave the keys in your car. I’d like to borrow it, and I’d much prefer to just use the gas you’ve left in the tank. Thanks! 🙄
Thanks everyone for your replies so far. In my original post I meant to refer to Orban 8400/8500, not Orban 8500/8600 (not sure many have heard the 8600 yet!).
Re enabling the stereo enhancer, that didn’t work for me – on two pc’s I tried (0.90.77). But I’ve got it running fine now after installing 0.90.93. Thanks for the suggestion and info on the separate MPX on L/R output configuration in this version. Yorkie , I also hope that separate AGC drive is on the way!
re split processing on the AAC+ link, after looking at the issue further, I understand it may also be desirable to set the processing at the studio to include the AGC & MBL compression stages only (and perhaps light peak protection limiting, but no clipping), while the tx end will have the limiting & clipping sections. The theory is that if tonal rebalancing of the MBL section occurs only at the transmitter end, that it may uncover some of link noise previously masked by the link codec. In this case, it may only be possible to use BBP (at both ends of the link) if we have more advanced control, or at least the ability to disable some processing modules.
Re the pc, I’d certainly be looking at a new Intel based pc with SS-HD. Jesse, we are using WinXP Pro stripped back to a bare minimum for Sonos/MBL, running on entry level Dell pc’s, not internet connected, on UPS’s, and rarely touched. Never had a problem at multiple sites for years. (the general office XP pc’s here are a different story…).
re stealing software – I couldn’t agree more with you. This is brilliant, great value software. Even putting morals aside, it doesn’t make any sense to try and undermine Leif’s outstanding effort to provide BBP at this price point. It would be a great pity if just a couple of people ruined it for the majority who are quite willing, and would prefer, to do the right thing.
I respect Leif’s aim to get hardware boxes on the market and I know nothing of how important that may be to his business model, but it is a pity that pc’s can’t still be the order of the day. While I don’t know the cost of manufacturing, supporting and internationally shipping dedicated hardware, I can only guess it will be higher than locally buying a pc with a SS-HD and sticking a Juli@ card in it. Is it not possible to perhaps have a USB dongle based security system to prevent this problem? It seems to work for the guys who make our Music Schedular (Aware Music master). They just send us a dongle from the US in the mail. If it could be done that way for BBP, then we get the advantage of low cost hardware, leaving more money spare to provide Leif for the software with those pioneering MPX’s clippers! It also allows USB keys to be moved to another pc quickly in the event of an emergency – something you can’t do with dedicated hardware boxes! It’s also likely you will shift more product that way, if the hardware costs can be contained to a pc & USB security dongle. Just a thought!
Aaron
[quote author=”rebel”]Jesse, we are using WinXP Pro stripped back to a bare minimum for Sonos/MBL, running on entry level Dell pc’s, not internet connected, on UPS’s, and rarely touched. Never had a problem at multiple sites for years. (the general office XP pc’s here are a different story…).[/quote]
Hmm interesting. I mainly ask because of the up time. You’re using "SP0" then? or what? Cos I managed about 200 machines at my last (and hopefully final) day job, running XP SP1 and SP2 and they *ALL* had a problem where after exactly 365 days the audio subsystems would refuse to pass audio. So we were forced to reboot them about once a year. 😛 And you mentioned 18 months.[quote author=”rebel”]I respect Leif’s aim to get hardware boxes on the market and I know nothing of how important that may be to his business model, but it is a pity that pc’s can’t still be the order of the day.[/quote]
Actually… the hardware IS a PC. 😉 With no moving parts other than the fans, running XP Embeded, it’s stable enough where the boxes Leif already has out on the market are basically pwning everyone else.[quote author=”rebel”]While I don’t know the cost of manufacturing, supporting and internationally shipping dedicated hardware, I can only guess it will be higher than locally buying a pc with a SS-HD and sticking a Juli@ card in it.[/quote]
True. Although most of the cost is to back up R&D and of course support. Most places that sell hardware have 24/7 support.[quote author=”rebel”]Is it not possible to perhaps have a USB dongle based security system to prevent this problem? It seems to work for the guys who make our Music Schedular (Aware Music master). They just send us a dongle from the US in the mail.[/quote]
Yes, it’s possible, with something like e-Licence which is about the only dongle that has barely been cracked, and literally many thousands of man hours have been spent just to crack one piece of software using it.[quote author=”rebel”]If it could be done that way for BBP, then we get the advantage of low cost hardware, leaving more money spare to provide Leif for the software with those pioneering MPX’s clippers![/quote]
While it could make the change, the scheme Leif has for the hardware box is much improved and would be almost impossible to emulate the required hardware. While a USB dongle is only required for the copy protection, the Breakaway hardware has a unique component that is required for the operation of the processing itself – its custom soundcard.As far as the MPX clipper backend… Leif’s hardware will almost for sure be the only way to get that. When his box comes out, it’s going to be wild fire, you watch. And the cash he makes off that is something he probably won’t ever be able to offset with the Breakaway professional products.
Breakaway Audio Enhancer on the other hand… really has the potential to make Leif a F*load of cash if he can get it into stores like Best Buy.
[quote author=”rebel”]It’s also likely you will shift more product that way, if the hardware costs can be contained to a pc & USB security dongle. Just a thought![/quote]
It’s a good thought and any good thoughtfulness these days is never a bad thing. The thing is… it’s hard to really prove if the cracking is hurting or helping the bottom line of CE Audio. I’m sure there’s lost sales, there will always be someone who could have paid for it, but just flat out enjoys stealing as much as they enjoy the product. Those people need psychological help… but that’s a whole other story. (see also: Winona Ryder)The goal is hopefully to get people into the product more like people get into good music. Studies really do show that people who "file trade" on websites and p2p networks actually do spend more money on music than any other demographic. So hopefully people see that we’re all honestly crazy about what we do, and love every second of it, and that what Leif is doing could even be considered art.
-J
Jesse – WinXPPro SP2 uptime, I believe it was around 18 months at one site, and if I recall correctly we were using ASIO drivers. It is possible the pc was rebboted withough my knowledge, but I didn’t think so. I guess this is something to watch out for with BBP then. Do you know if Win7 has this issue? Is Wine on Linux a more stable long term option?
Re MPX clipping hardware. I realise I’m commenting here on an unknown business model, so please just take this as airing ideas. From what you describe about the need for a custom audio card to support the new MPX clipping, then perhaps an alternative idea is to forget the dongle and just release a custom PCI BBP-PRO sound card! If the BBP-PRO audio card/s are not in the pc then installed BBP software won’t run in full BBP-PRO mode. That should fully get around the piracy problem!
Orban do exactly that for the 1010PE streaming encoding software which won’t run unless you also have an Orban 1100 PCI audio processing card (which has its own unique hardware ID) in the same pc.
I can think of a couple of our sites where we could consider a custom card, but never have been able to justify buying and importing any turnkey dedicated processing box, even low end ones. This suggests with other "middle ground" users in the same situation, it would open up the market and increase unit sales, perhaps allowing Leif to lower the price for a similar profit margin per card compared to a dedicated box solution that moves less units. As the end user, we would benefit from both lower hardware costs and lower software compared to a dedicated box. I’d really like to get this to as many listeners/sites as I can justify.
Leif could perhaps still offer a turnkey box option with 24/7 support for those larger broadcasters who want a "plug & play" solution with solid support.
So three tiers, something like;
– BBP sofware only,forum support. (entry level)
– BBP MPX clipping sound card, intermediate software control, forum & email support (mid level)
– BBP dedicated MPX clipping hardware plug & play box, advanced software control, 24/7 support (high level)I realise you may not be able to comment on this Leif, but food for thought. And Jesse, your right, it is definitely an art! Aaron – Australia.
[quote author=”rebel”]re split processing on the AAC+ link, after looking at the issue further, I understand it may also be desirable to set the processing at the studio to include the AGC & MBL compression stages only (and perhaps light peak protection limiting, but no clipping), while the tx end will have the limiting & clipping sections. The theory is that if tonal rebalancing of the MBL section occurs only at the transmitter end, that it may uncover some of link noise previously masked by the link codec. In this case, it may only be possible to use BBP (at both ends of the link) if we have more advanced control, or at least the ability to disable some processing modules.[/quote]
@Rebel/Aaron… I in fact use BBP in a similar way, I have a main site, close to the studio which is fed by a 320Kbps unprocessed IP STL (running about -20dB below threshold to give ample headroom), this is then fed into BBP and into the transmitter. The L/R feed (via dsp) is fed into Edcast (a 3dB attenuator is applied in dsp before edcast as a public AAC+ stream is also created by edcast) and a private 160Kbps MP3 stream is sent to a streaming host. This stream contains the processing of the AGC and the MBL but the effect of the final clippers is somewhat lost due to encoding/decoding artifacts, meaning the potential for overshoots is re-introduced. This stream is then cascaded to remote transmitter sites where the stream audio is fed into BBP but the preset selected is "6dB protection clip". This effectively does not utilise the AGC or MBL but just feeds straight into the final clippers. The resulting MPX signal is then fed to the transmitters.If you are using AAC+ for your link and this is ONLY for your link, not used as a webstream too, then I would tend to try to run this with no processing at all, you will get a better end result as a heavily processed signal is harder to encode into a limited kbps stream than unprocessed music as there is simply less detail and information there to squeeze in. Then let BBP do ALL the work at the TX end which is what it does best.
To my ears, all the transmitters sound tonally identical, there are no overshoots on any site and +/-75khz nailed up all the time. The only way anyone would notice these are IP fed is that the main site is approx 20 secs ahead of all the remote sites, but I’m hoping to address that sometime by introducing a delay to the mpx output to the main transmitter to bring them to within 1 sec of each other.
[quote author=”rebel”]From what you describe about the need for a custom audio card to support the new MPX clipping, then perhaps an alternative idea is to forget the dongle and just release a custom PCI BBP-PRO sound card! If the BBP-PRO audio card/s are not in the pc then installed BBP software won’t run in full BBP-PRO mode. That should fully get around the piracy problem!
Orban do exactly that for the 1010PE streaming encoding software which won’t run unless you also have an Orban 1100 PCI audio processing card (which has its own unique hardware ID) in the same pc.[/quote]
The custom audio card was to support the copy protection scheme by making it impossible to run on a regular computer. In the case of the Optimod 1100 card, that’s different because those have actual DSP chips on them too and the processing is done on the card itself.
The rest of the ideas you have I think are great suggestions, and I know Leif likes a thoughtful suggestion, no matter what ends up happening with it in the end. He has indeed talked about doing a "more pro than pro" version, with the custom soundcard as licensing protection (you can really OWN it, in your hands, forever, and transfer license just by selling/giving the hardware to other people) but…. (there’s always a butt) at least earlier, if that ever ended up happening, it still wouldn’t be a full control version. Just a few extra controls to allow a bit more customization, in addition to making "quasi-presets" from those, day-parting, and all that jazz.
If I had to guess the future (like that’s ever a good idea), it would be that the card won’t be available by itself, for reasons I can’t explain without saying too much. Don’t hold your breath, but don’t bet that it’ll never happen either. The first thing is the release of the hardware though. That’s for sure in stone last I heard, so… Wait till that comes out, and then I’m sure Leif will have much more beans that can be spilled to everyone’s plates. 🙂
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