8600 clips

xD

Distortion is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. Honestly, they all sounded distorted to me, but the 8600 clips were overall much less of the 2nd or 3rd level of distortion happening there, which is a great improvement for them of course. I’m hearing some grittiness to the sound of those recordings at the core of what I would also consider to be distortion, and it’s unfortunate because I’m not so sure it’s only the sample rates within the machines causing it. 64kHz isn’t a horrible sample rate, and internally it goes quite a bit higher I’m sure.

more pre-emphasis is more difficult to get loud and unmuffled and clean… at the same time.

[quote author=”michi95″]Do they apply pre-emphasis (and de-emphasis) for this demo files ?[/quote]
and de-emphasis. correct.

[quote author=”michi95″]I guess you have used ["15µs pre-emphasis/de-emphasis encoded MP3 files"] for your final Passive Aggressor teasing ?[/quote]
No actually, that’s only the "Core" processing. Nothing but the core’s usual limiter, and not much of that at all.

[quote author=”feeling”]Maybe Jesse can upload some samples with same clips just to compare.[/quote]
Most of those audio clips they used are from Leif’s own torture test. 😉 See also: MPX Tool

As far as why Orban would upload them, to show off how much improvement they have done. Those are very hard to process for various somewhat-conventional clipper designs and completely unconventional clipping designs both.

According to what I understood from the 8600 marketing when it came out, the change as far as clipper distortion was optimizing the high-frequency protection limiter that’s before the clipper.

– – –

There’s a few songs that don’t sound undistorted in Breakaway’s clipper at certain settings from a clean Breakaway Core output, and I even found a song that has a soloed filtered voice on a breakdown that’s SO tweaky sounding, that it actually creates distortion within the Breakaway Core itself. We found it to be caused by the final limiters actually.

But you don’t change the sound of a processor based on how 1 song sounds, or how 10 songs sound even. You can certainly use material like this to work out bugs. The trick is to balance the ideals of what you think your processing should be doing or capable of doing on any given random track, without letting any bug fixes on an extremely small minority of songs screw up what your goals are… in a way that works best for your customers.

Although hopefully the audio processing scene continues the "quality wars" right along with the rest of the broadcasting industry. At least that shift in the balance between goals and transparency. Each processor & company varies its outlook on what is an acceptable balance of goals and transparency on many different levels of sound quality, not just what someone might call audibly bad distortion in whatever the case may be – broadcast processors aren’t just used for FM more & more every day.

Every customer can hear the boxes and weight people’s opinions and try to get an idea of what they think the balances are that each company tried to have for each processor… and then hopefully enjoy using whichever one they think best matches what they are trying to do.

There will never be a "winner" in audio processing. And for that, we should all be very thankful.

This is certainly a revealing and interesting set of comparisons. Some initial observations, referencing the comments/claims made in the .pdf from Orban that comes with the files:

1) Alive and Kicking: The snare sounds less grungy, but I wouldn’t say it cuts through much better. The cymbals are brighter but hardly open. You wouldn’t confuse it for an Omnia on the dial. Maybe a little less smearing, but not by much.

2) Electrical Storm: Significantly less IM in the synth part, and far less crunch in the glock – but it’s still there in several of the notes. Granted, a difficult song, but certain notes still sound awfully crunchy to me. The real surprise here is not how good it sounds out of the 8600, but how awful it sounds out of the 8500.

3) Every Time You Go Away: Perhaps less IM from the 8600, but not a ton of difference in transient punch. The 8600 is brighter, but not in a very pretty way.

4) Movin’ On: Perhaps the biggest and most pleasant comparison in any of the samples. The bass isn’t as clipped in the 8600 as in the 8500, and there’s a pleasant lack of mid-bass IM.

5) Sailing: Not too shabby. The vocals are indeed more open with greater transient punch, and I’ll give them a thumbs up on the bell tree. Other high frequency material doesn’t sound substantially different though.

6) Starchild: Goodness, the 8500 smears those hats, doesn’t it? Makes the 8600 sound a lot prettier by comparison. I like the dynamics of the synth towards the end better with the 8600, too. As in "Electrical Storm," though, what really surprises me is how poor the 8500 sounds, not how stellar the 8600 sounds.

7) Wake Me Up When September Ends: I’m amazed at how well the 8600 cleans up the horrific mastering of this song. Kudos here. The snare sounds nicer in the 8600 too, but I’m distressed at how badly it hole punches and makes the acoustic guitar do a disappearing act.

8) With or Without You: See #2 and #6. The 8600 doesn’t distort the guitar as much, but heaven help us, the 8500 just shreds it, doesn’t it?

Maybe I’m being too hard here, as these are very difficult songs, and the 8600 does clean things up nicely in comparison. I’d really like to hear some Omnia 6 and 11 clips of the same material, alongside BBP and Vorsis.

Feedback welcome 🙂

Jim

8600 On air sounds Crystal clear. Louder, cleaner than omnia or 8500. Bass is deep but not muddy or boomy. It really stands out on the FM dial and makes the other stations sound "old". The high end is CLEAN. I was not expecting this much change but there is a big difference. The audio clips don’t really tell the story at all. Good job to the boys in Tempe.