Passive Aggressor: The Final Tease

I’m not sure how many were ripped from vinyl, and the vinyl noise on that one track is on the track and pretty loud on the track – that’s from a CD. 🙂 No stereo/width processing was done. Any perceived stereo enhancement is strictly a byproduct of the dynamics processing.

My needles are mostly Ortofon, my favorite being a new old-stock Ortofon X3-MC that was hand picked for me by them. FANTASTIC balanced and neutral needle, without sounding stale or boring. It’s tipped with one of the best diamonds they’ve ever had, so it’s no slouch on details, while also having very low surface noise. Basically a reference dream cartridge, on the "cheap".

[quote author=”ASchuelke”]So am I correct in stating that this preset will process "unsmashed" audio more than "smashed" audio?[/quote]
Not exactly. It’s more like… it’s trying not to over process ALL audio, but it’s setup so that when smashed audio is encountered, you’ll see stuff happen like the peak output level hitting -3dB, with no limiting occurring at all obviously. Cut to cut consistency? Have a listen for yourself, and feel free to skip playback position around a bit.

[quote author=”ASchuelke”]How does Breakaway know that a song is already smashed? Is this accomplished with some sort of RMS detection?[/quote]
It’s based heavily (almost completely) on the existing density of the original song, especially in the multiband AGC. The more dense it gets within a band, the more "strong" the processing gets there (as simple as I can put what’s really happening). The broadband AGC is actually ~twice as responsive to peakiness than the multiband, if you can imagine that.

Leif just heard it for the first time today as well, despite having the preset for a long time, he’s been too busy to load it up, compared to the convenience of an mp3. He REALLY likes it.

All opinions are welcomed.

This is only the Breakaway Core… Strictly dynamics processing, nothing else. Consult the block diagrams topic to see what it doesn’t have that you’re used to.

The final drive in the Breakaway GUI "skews" where the actual final drive within the Core is at. So basically this sound is with everything default/centered.

The FM version should end up being about as loud as Reference at default GUI settings, but I don’t want to promise anything there yet. The way it sounds at default is the only thing that matters to me, not loudness. With +6dB final drive available to ~DOUBLE the average loudness, it shouldn’t be a problem for anyone if it’s not as loud as Reference. 😉

[quote author=”michi95″]How many bands in AGC ?
And how many bands in MB ?[/quote]The Core I used is the same version that is already in the current versions of Breakaway!!!

The first AGC is broadband, that one is always broadband.

The multiband AGC/limiter is 5 bands, the number of bands is controllable by the presets (from 4 to 7 actual bands). Breakaway has 2 bass bands where most other processors have 1 band, so a 5 band Breakaway preset is comparable to most 4 band processors. (with the possibility of better controlled bass within the multiband)

The preset has very little limiting at all, and it wouldn’t cover up for problems like sudden increases in loudness, or any "jumpiness". The sound is completely legit, with no fancy safety nets afterward.

[quote author=”Leif”]listening to passive aggressor demo btw
that IS nice
this is a really nice preset
can’t wait to hear what that will sound like with fm processing
man you’ve got EXTREMELY solid sound in that preset, nice
nice work man
that’s really cool, you’ve spent much more time than i have on tweaking presets[/quote]
Daddy is proud. 🙂