- This topic has 29 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I’m very impressed with the dynamics in this preset. It’s quite hard to tell the difference from the original tracks. Thumbs up JesseG!
Does anyone know what the name of the song is between 27:18 and 30:29?
It’s beautiful! 😀[quote author=”Guillou”]Just a "out of topic" question… What’s the sax title at about 3:01"00 ?[/quote]
I’m totally not sure, because I’m pretty sure that I deleted that sometime after making the mix. Sorry. Maybe try one of those websites where you can hum part of the melody to find what song it is? 🙂[quote author=”Martin S”]Does anyone know what the name of the song is between 27:18 and 30:29? It’s beautiful! 😀[/quote]
I’m not sure what this track is. I *think* it’s The Flashbulb…I used to have the Winamp playlist of this while I was picking the tracks & order, also sadly gone.
This is good stuff, Jesse.
Very consistent spectrally source-to-source. Very easy to listen to long-term without fatigue. Love the way it handles longer-term AGC tasks – 2:48:56 comes to mind (the "break" in Nights in White Satin). Good to hear a preset that lets the music breathe a little.
I’m just listening on small speakers right now, but look forward to hearing it on something more revealing over the weekend.
I’m playing it out of Audition to put an eye on the waveform, and it’s interesting to note that it looks "tighter" than it sounds, which is one of the hallmarks of good processing.
I would have sworn that there’s some spatial enhancement had you not already told us there isn’t any. To me, getting that effect with just dynamics processing is an accomplishment in and of itself.
Can’t wait to see it released! Hope it’s coming to Live and BAE, too…. 🙂
Jim
[quote author=”jameskuzman”]Very consistent spectrally source-to-source.[/quote]Ok, it is better than with other presets.
But honestly, especially listen to this Moody Blues track it is obvious that there is still room for further development.
The grade of spectral intelligence is limited to the structure of the Breakaway core.
So, IMO Passive Aggressor is not the ticket to audio processing’s nirvana.For my ears it (NIWS) still sounds as if it is a song of Muddy Blues.
I am sure it is better than the source version (Jesse had used here), but still far away from the quality when you use your imagination.
Yes, I know it is a very old (low quality) recording, but more spectral enhancement is not (should not be) a mission impossible today (even with plug and play processing).
The same is true for Pink Floyd’s "Lucifer Sam" (interesting Jesse took this and not "Interstellar Overdrive" or "Astronomy Domine").
Maybe we do not need 32 bands, but 5 PA uses (or 7 as possible maximum of the BA core) IMO is not enough to reach a higher grade of spectral consistency (without annoying artifects ➡ de-essing for bad masters ?).
And in the end spectral and dynamic consistency are two sides of the same medal.
To date Passive Aggressor is only the best compromise in comparison to all the other BA presets.
[quote author=”JesseG”]There will never be a "winner" in audio processing. And for that, we should all be very thankful.[/quote]
So, ASAP is close enough.
Leif is cooking other things now.
And we all will be surprised what tomorrow brings. 🙂In reference to Moody Blues… I’m not sure if some things can or should be corrected.
A little back story on that song, they booked Abbey Road for a whole year to record just that song, making it the most expensive song to record of all time. They also spent about 4 months only on the lead vocals, running *the* master tapes so many times across the heads that they almost lost the whole song and had to do some serious magic work (for back then) in order to save the fidelity you even hear now. Notice the huge fidelity jump after the main vocals end? 8) There simply isn’t fidelity to restore in the master recording of this. Anything added would have to be faked. :/
Lucifer Sam was taken from the new stereo mixes and restorative remaster in 2007. Unsurprisingly this was also basically intended to be a demo at the time, and was only recorded on 4 tracks. Total. 8) So again it’s a case of there not being any fidelity to restore & also the original noise reduced etc, so… for such an early recording, it’s doing decently. Even Woodstock was recorded in 16 tracks 😆 so Lucifer Sam is technologically a long way from those Woodstock multitracks which took a TON of work to sound like they do on the 40th anniversary box set – both Woodstock and the Floyd.
That being said…
We’re still not very far from the stone age, technologically speaking. I have no doubt that someone will figure out new awesome ways of processing audio that don’t sound worse than doing nothing.
As far as with analog style band-based processing, sometimes less (bands) is more. Research that basically everyone that has done a processor has done, has found out and will agree with. Why do you think FFT based processors like IDT’s DVP 7+4 are using virtual bands to simulate this even though they have the capability to be way more specifically detailed?
Well, I don’t know, Jesse. We’ve been going up and down in band counts since the Langevin Pro-Gar (was there something earlier?).
But… now that we have a processor with a 31 band limiter, not to mention multiple AGC, final and clipper sections, it’s only logical that a 64 bander should be right around the corner, eh? That’ll probably be introduced "at a classical station near you"!
[quote author=”JesseG”]As far as with analog style band-based processing, sometimes less (bands) is more[/quote]Yes.
[quote author=”RodeoJack”]it’s only logical that a 64 bander should be right around the corner, eh?[/quote]More bands mean a higher complexity of the whole system.
The question is how good you can control a very complex system ?
And to emulate virtual the principle of analog band processing is of course not a way to reach what I have described as spectral intelligence.
We need better digital realtime analysis and systems with a wider range of adaptive reaction.
[quote author=”JesseG”]We’re still not very far from the stone age, technologically speaking. I have no doubt that someone will figure out new awesome ways of processing audio that don’t sound worse than doing nothing.[/quote]So, do you think that the sources pre Breakaway (of this old tracks) sound better than what we hear processed with Passive Aggressor ?
The question is:
Does Passive Aggressor enhance the music besides levelling ?
Yes or no ?
I think it does enhance it (the spectral balance).
But I believe that in the future (in a few years or a few days !) it will be possible to reach a higher quality (and noise will be more or less irrelevant).
We will come to the point when it will be impossible for someone without the historic (musical) and technical background knowledge to hear if it is a recording from 1967 or from 2003.
You may call this a fake (processing), but as long as it sounds clean and natural (in contrary to the fact that you hear today very often the processing itself) I don’t care.And in this definition Passive Aggressor is also a fake processing, because while listening you forget that it is processed (many good mastered tracks very close to the source). 🙂
I agree with you that the future will bring us people that will create processing that does much finer detail, in a way that isn’t musically worse… which is what I meant by that, not in relation to P.A.
That’s the main question to ask; does a particular effect increase the enjoyment of the music, or not. 🙂 When you add the requirement to it that it needs to process all audio in realtime live and basically never make it sound worse… that’s a huge task to do.
Part of what will advance is the way that processors are controlled by the intelligence within the software, and the other part is how we humans tell it what we want. I think that will become more & more unconventional as the processing starts to have abilities to recognize properties/aspects of the audio & music, and give us knobs to adjust the ranges of operation. In order to succeed, the processing will also have to know when NOT to do things, and be the best at deciding such things. That will allow the controls to become simpler regardless of band count, if it’s even using bands.
Currently Breakaway core alone has a bit over 150 controls. With the internals plus all the controls everyone has in the GUI for the back-end, challenger, etc… it’s more toward 250 controls. Not including the speaker controller, etc. Tons of control, sure. Could be more easily controlled with some kind of audio AI over the top that you "guide" to do what you want to hear from the music? Heck yeah.
[quote author=”RodeoJack”]We’ve been going up and down in band counts since the Langevin Pro-Gar (was there something earlier?).[/quote]
The time of basically completely analog styled processing (with a few clipper tricks) is basically getting near to perfection. The next generation of those processors, which is starting to manifest in the clippers for Breakaway and Omnia.11 to start with, might not be band-based at all. The next generation of processors with an analog styled band-based core will probably be very close to as good as it’ll get. I give it about 10 years max for whoever is going to be the company to release it…As far as the Pro-Gar invention in the early 1930s, that is still upheld as the first audio compressor/limiter and I’ve never seen any evidence that would trump it. There was signal limiters before, sure… but nothing tuned to make speech & music sound good through it.
That’s what is more important than anything. Would an artificially restored Nights In White Satin actually sound better? I don’t know. 🙂 Sometimes what’s "wrong" with something is what makes it awesome, and sometimes "perfecting" that ruins it. See also: auto-tune.
Hi Jesse,
Would you know when we can expect your new preset: Passive Agressor? We have been looking for a rock preset recently and are hoping P.A. might be it. How would you say it compares or differs from Rustonium?
We have tried Plutonium, Eruption, Rock, Celeste, New York, Twente and Rustonium they each have their pros and cons. We are looking for a open yet processed sound. Intelligible voices are important too. Would you have any suggestions for a rock web-radio?
Cheers!
Audio
[quote author=”Audio”]We are looking for a open yet processed sound. Intelligible voices are important too. Would you have any suggestions for a rock web-radio?[/quote]
Motor City 8)You won’t hear this at FreakDay, and not in all of its "HD" glory, so here it is now.
PFD MIX Final (wave) – Passive Aggressor DAB.flac
I’m still blown away by the consistency of loudness and solidness of spectrum this preset has, despite wide open dynamics. Again, this clip’s processing is ONLY the dynamics core of Breakaway, and also does not have any of the developments since the last public versions.
my test of the processingmix 2011
http://www.mijnbestand.nl/Bestand-HDHBQF7PS3IW.wav
set up audio track: Wave > D&R clubmate > processor > FM transmitter R&S NE002e > Revox b260 > pc
mvg
- The forum ‘Breakaway Professional Products – [discontinued]’ is closed to new topics and replies.