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Nice, Adam! 🙂
Listening now.
Man, those are pretty agressive settings you’re using though. Watch out for that IM distortion — Breakaway Live does not degrade as gracefully as BBP does when pushed this hard. Might I humbly recommend taking Final Drive down 2dB? 😉
///Leif
You got it man. I’m working at my FM gig right now, but I’ll be home in 20 min or so. If you can tune back in after I make the change (maybe an hour or so from now) and post your comments, I would appreciate it.
Thanks!
Adam
[quote author=”lpy”]It’s listed on Shoutcast…only a quarter of the listeners for now though until my bandwidth issue is fixed.[/quote]
Possibly, but if someone can’t find it by typing in your name, it’s as good (or rather bad) as not being listed.[quote author=”lpy”]Tuner2 found us a couple of years ago, so that’s cool. Xiph I’ve never heard of, might have to look into that one.
Cheers[/quote]
Yep they run a YP. Steamcast also runs one.quote :[quote author=”JesseG”][quote author=”lpy”]It’s listed on Shoutcast…only a quarter of the listeners for now though until my bandwidth issue is fixed.[/quote]
Possibly, but if someone can’t find it by typing in your name, it’s as good (or rather bad) as not being listed.[/quote]It’s actually spelt as one word, I just felt like using two then 😛
And nice playlist Adam, good tunes, got it bookmarked now. As Leif said, just a bit of distortion going on, otherwise it’s sounding very solid.
Hi Adam!
I just tuned in now, but it sounds the same.. No transients left, and just too pushed for my taste. 🙁
The simple answer is, if you want to push for loudness (and I can tell, you like it loud!), Breakaway Live is just not the right product. Breakaway Broadcast is the one to use. It will give you this loudness and still retain punch and dynamics. With the latest cpu-efficiency update, it might be feasible — it would be fine to run CPU optimized mode if necessary.
When not pushing for absolute loudness, Breakaway Live will equal or even surpass Breakaway Broadcast, using a fraction of the CPU power. But, when maximum raw loudness is important, there’s only one product that will do the job well.
///Leif
Yeah, I like the New York preset but I noticed it can get into "listener fatigue" territory real fast! (I think Adam uses New York too — assuming he’s still using that in Breakaway Live)
I started using New York mostly because I couldn’t get the other presets to maintain consistent dynamics (between songs of different genres). But "New York" brought in a few other issues: squashing, pumping, etc. So I had to twiddle around and turn down a few things there too.
Maybe a new preset could fill this gap. If you find a preset that does a better job holding the spectral balance than "CHR", but isn’t quite as squashed as "New York" or "Amsterdam", that would be sweet.
An audio file says more than a thousand words.. Or was that a picture? 🙂
Adam, I ripped part of two songs from your stream. I used the wget utility (simply http get utility) so I got the MP3 data bit-for-bit accurate with your stream — no re-encoding.
Then I processed the same two song clips (from an unprocessed MP3 source) with BBP, and encoded to the same bitrate.
Finally, I uploaded the files and made a playlist so you can compare A/B/C.
BBP settings used:
15us pre-emphasis + de-emphasisNYC preset: Final Drive -1.0
Rock preset: Final Drive +0.5http://claessonedwards.com/bbpclips/x10 … amples.pls
http://claessonedwards.com/bbpclips/x10 … amples.m3uCheck it out 🙂.
The clips illustrate the difference quite clearly. To my ears, Breakaway Live strains badly at this loudness level (a simple back-end simply cannot be pushed this hard transparently), whereas BBP does not sound like it’s even breaking a sweat, while keeping the loudness level AND increasing transients (drums in particular).
Listen carefully to the break in the Papa Roach clip too, when he sings on top of the bass. The difference in the IM distortion is astounding.
Disclaimer: I’m not trying to rain on my own parade here 🙂. Breakaway Live is a low cpu, low latency audio processor, and it has its uses, and excels in the things it’s meant to do. Loudness Wars, however, is not something it was meant to do. Breakaway Broadcast, on the other hand, is 😉.
Best regards,
///LeifLeif,
Thanks for posting those clips! I can hear a definitive difference between the first and the last two. I had not realized that Live wasn’t designed to be pushed as hard, and knowing what I know now, I think it may be best to just throttle down the processor.
When I get home this morning, I’ll fire up the new version of BBP and take it for a ride around the block. I used the previous beta for a month or so, but was pretty much forced to switch to Live because it drove my CPU so hard that my studio sounded like mission control in Houston.
Also, was it me or did the audio coming from BBP sound fatter and more bass-y?
Adam
Hi Adam!
No problem 😉.
The old one was pretty heavy indeed.. Do try the new one! In CPU optimized mode, it’s really not bad.
BBP fatter? It shouldn’t be, but it may have been a little louder, and definitely punchier / cleaner.
///Leif
[quote author=”celar”]Yeah, I like the New York preset but I noticed it can get into "listener fatigue" territory real fast! (I think Adam uses New York too — assuming he’s still using that in Breakaway Live)
I started using New York mostly because I couldn’t get the other presets to maintain consistent dynamics (between songs of different genres). But "New York" brought in a few other issues: squashing, pumping, etc. So I had to twiddle around and turn down a few things there too.
Maybe a new preset could fill this gap. If you find a preset that does a better job holding the spectral balance than "CHR", but isn’t quite as squashed as "New York" or "Amsterdam", that would be sweet.[/quote]
The amsterdam preset could but excellent if the algorithims in bands 1 and 2 were modified! it simply doesn’t have any bass! and if you try to increase the bass slider the bass sound gets smacked, squashing the wave! This preset with deep punchy bass would sound better than ALL the others!
Modman, the question is "Where would you like to put it"? 🙂
If you look at the output waveform on the built-in oscilloscope, you’ll see that there is just nowhere for more bass to go. Something else will have to give. What will it be? Loudness? High-end? Midrange? 🙂
///Leif
Leif and friends,
Maybe you could tune back in and give me your thoughts again (http://www.x100radio.com).
I am back on BBP, running the NYC preset and have throttled down the final drive to 0.0db. Power is at 20 and speed is at 65. Leif, you were right (big surprise there) in saying that the BBP backend is much more suited to handling high-powered compression driven right to 0.0db. Seems to be much, much more transparent than the Live backend.
Don’t get me wrong though. Live is awesome for most formats that don’t require a high loudness factor. For instance, I have it running on a smooth jazz format right now and it sounds golden.
Thanks to all for your input!
Adam
Hey Adam,
The overshoots are going over 0dB, you might wanna knock back the peak level to -2 dbFS.
How’s my one Leif, anything bad you can detect in the audio?
Cheers.
MUCH better, Adam!
It’s still an absolutely crazy preset (NYC was made to be as loud as stations there, not to actually sound good), but X100’s sound is night and day compared to before. There are transients, no directly audible IM, and it’s listenable! I’ve actually listened for 2 whole songs now, with no urge to turn it off, whereas I barely lasted 30 seconds before.. and it’s still BLISTERINGLY loud, in fact even more so than before, since it’s more effortless sounding now!
It’s nearly impossible to be use the space in the waveform more efficiently than this 😉.
Nice one.
By the way, I wouldn’t worry about decoder overshoots for MP3. They’re miniscule (a sample or three) and basically inaudible. This is the whole purpose of the 15us pre + de-emphasis process — to make the overshoots more benign.
aacPlus, however, is a different story! Those overshoots are much bigger, and they get dealt with by a limiter inside the decoder, not a clipper.. thus, overshoots cause IM distortion. I would absolutely attenuate 2dB before the aacPlus encoder. I’ve attached a few attenuator DSP plug-ins i wrote recently — they may come in handy.
BTW, I love your faq! Especially the "must be in the form of a question" part 😉.
///Leif
Leif, can you tell me how much is a license for a second instance?
We run BA Live very successful here in a bar/pub. We use MAYA 44 USB in ASIO mode now – just fantastic!
The first licensed instance works on the music automation system line. In addition i use a second demo instance for streaming the DJ mixer output back for checking purposes. I tried this now some days… but now instance 2 stopped playing. Is this because of the demo license? My second stream is just for testing some things – so I can’t overspend on it 🙁
Cheers,
Reto
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