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Can someone compare the loudness and quality of Breakaway FM with Stereotool latest version http://www.stereotool.com
?I testet and buyed both software fm proccesors and I like both.
I think that stereotool is louuuuuuuuuuuuuuder……..and has composite clipper with ..less less less money.can someone else compare the 2 software?
# 2008/12/03 v3.40 Loudness filter: Completely rewritten. Now reaches much louder sounds (up to +12 dB) with far less effects on the sound quality. Even notoriously difficult sounds such as xylophones are now handled without introducing distortion.
# Added FM transmitter calibration. If you are having problems with your FM signal (caused by low quality transmitter equipment, sound card, long cables etc.), you can now configure Stereo Tool to accomodate for that. (On my system, stereo separation is increased by 15 dB after calibrating!)
# Composite limiter now operates at 705.6 or 768 kHz. This removes peaks that were introduced by the lowpass filter of the sound card.
# Hard limit now operates at 352.8 or 384 kHz. This removes peaks that were introduced by the lowpass filter of the sound card.
# Removed the Loudness ++ option because it is no longer needed.
# Tweaked the presets to take advantage of the improved Loudness filter (more punch).
The CPU load is roughly identical to that of version 3.30 in Low and Normal quality mode as long as the composite limiter oversampling is not used. And it will be a lot slower on PC’s without SSE2 support.
2008/09/01 v3.30 Composite limiter added. Gives about 7% (0.5 dB) extra loudness on FM transmitters, without affecting the FM Pilot and RDS signals.
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Memory footprint reduced by about 12 MB (3.29 used 34 MB, 3.30 uses 22 MB)
2008/08/26 v3.29 Bug fix: Lowpass filter filtered at the wrong (too low) frequency when using high (> 60 kHz) input samplerates.
2008/08/24 v3.28 Small (6-10%) performance improvement.
Improved Final limiter filter: More stable output.
Added Highpass filter to filter out low rumbling sounds (especially useful when playing from vinyl) and sounds that may interfere with FM stereo transmissions.
Added VST plugin version (beta!).
2008/08/16 v3.27 Huge performance improvement (48% faster than 3.26 – although still 6% slower than in versions 3.21 and older versions).
Improved Final limiter filter: More stable output.
Improved Loudness filter: Switch ("++") available to choose between loudest possible sound (same as in older versions) or slightly less loudness with much better sound quality.
2008/08/12 v3.26 Improved Loudness filter: Distortion caused when a large amount of high frequencies was present (mainly FM pre-emphasized sounds) is reduced.
2008/08/11 v3.25 Improved Loudness filter: Removed edges in the sound.
Updated FM presets for a more stable (less pumping) sound.
2008/08/08 v3.24 Improved Loudness filter: Reduced pumping for loud bass or hi-hat sounds at high Loudness settings.
Spoken text for unregistered versions increased from once every 24 hours to once every 12 hours.
Pop-up added requesting to register (shown only once every 30 days).
2008/08/03 v3.23
BETA Redesigned Loudness filter processing: Same volume and clarity as older versions, but with quality of 3.22.
Far lower CPU usage for loudness filter in High Quality mode.
Redesigned Final Limiter and Loudness filter for better sound quality. Suggested new setting: 0.01 s.
2008/07/24 v3.22 Improved Loudness filter processing: Much less distortion.
Increased maximum Loudness setting from 1.75 to 2.0.
Bug fix: Loudness filter in High Quality mode caused a slight phase shift. Resolved.
2008/07/22 v3.21 Improved Final Pre-limiter: More powerful highs for FM pre-emphasized sounds.
Improved Loudness filter processing: Better highs.
Increased maximum Loudness setting from 1.5 to 1.75. Warning: Values above 1.5 cause some distortion for loud sounds. Only use it for sounds that don’t often peak to the maximum volume.)
Changed presets for more punchy sound, Radio presets also for more punchy bass.
Bug fix: (De)selecting Low Latency no longer causes continuous static.
2008/07/15 v3.20 Stand-alone version: Added ASIO support for lower latency (10 ms microphone-to-speaker without processing). ASIO is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH
Added low latency processing mode (200 ms latency with all processing enabled).
Improved sound quality for bass sounds (multiband compressor, stereo image filter).
FM pilot tone and RDS signal volume can be adjusted.
Bug fix: Linked sliders (up speed, down delay) now remain linked properly.I dunno. The originating post seems in poor taste to the hosts of this forum.
Either way, this program looks like Sound Solution. And while it was novel, for it’s time…ultimately I didn’t think it sounded that great. Worth a listen, I suppose.
yes i did, and Stereotool is by far NOT louder then BBP, alo the sound quality is no where near BBP.
It’s a nice tool but not as good as BBP.
/Martijn
stereo tool v3.40 is not bad , but i prefer bbp because the bass and treble are better with plutonium preset , the sound is more clean , and bbp have a agc (automatic gain control) than stereo tool haven’t , where as stereo tool amplifi the sound and limiter limit. But yes stereo tool is cheaper but breakaway is better 😉
Loud sound is not all , the power without control (distortion ) is bad
Stereotool has mpx clipper…….
mpx mpx mpx mpxxxxxxxxxx clippper..
..but i also like Breakaway FM…more
As mentioned by someone on another forum, the advantage of StereoTool over BBP is that it has a Processor, Stereo Coder AND an RDS encoder all built into one software and a calibration test page also.
I’m gonna download the test samples later and post back my results.
Sure, but that RDS doesn’t have data integration like Airomate does, such as:
And it doesn’t even send this full spec:
Or language & pin info:
So Stereo Tool’s support is not complete. As far as it’s compliance (or how well it cuts through the aliasing and side-band signal past 54kHz) I couldn’t say. I don’t have anything to test that properly, perhaps someone else here does (and might care).
As far as testing the calibration… with MPXTool you have highly superior monitoring (you can record MPX with any software, and still use the free version of MPXTool, if you can’t afford the full realtime version (but even the full version will run for 10 minutes at a time without a license)), and Breakaway Broadcast itself has a tilt compensator which Stereo Tool does not have (one of the most common problems), as well as a parametric EQ which is enough to correct for the frequency falloff on a GOOD soundcard.
And speaking of good soundcards, might I put forward an idea about Stereo Tool’s EQ and phase controls for it’s MPX output. Let’s assume that a perfect FM tuner is used (one doesn’t exist) to take that out of the equation. So if you need to use such granular correction for the EQ and phase of the soundcard sending the MPX signal… what makes you think that the monitoring input soundcard a person is using is going to be any better and actually able to monitor the signal without the same or WORSE coloring of the sound?!? Doesn’t it make sense that someone would already be running as good as possible of a soundcard to source their transmission? Than being said, then you flip the soundcards around, and you’re then adjusting the good soundcard with the worse one. Or maybe they are both the same, and either way…. you’re going to be "looking through rose-colored glasses". Know what I’m getting at?
Also I should add that… if you’re not just correcting for the frequency & phase response of the soundcard and transmitter… You’re going to end up correcting the sound of the audio processing itself. And when you do that, you’re going to LOSE peak control, and you’ll have to turn down the signal even more to be in compliance. With the method of adjustment Stereo Tool has provided there is NO WAY to know if you’re even doing that or not. This is a big problem. 😉
And if that level of correction needs to be done for the transmitter… then EQ and phase is the least of your worries, and/or you’re probably dealing with a few watts or less "transmitter".
Another thing Breakaway Broadcast offers is a range of useful test signals that most people would find difficult to create on their own.
That kind of makes good sense….
So if you feed BBP into another PC with a perfect tilt sound card and you run MPXTool you can adjust for EQ roll offs?
This image taken from the BBP website is showing no roll offs but if it did, you can compensate…right?
[quote author=”sebastien.wittebolle”]…BBP has an agc (automatic gain control) that stereo tool doesn’t…
[/quote]
I think Stereo Tool does have an initial AGC. He calls it a "dual band pre-limiter" for some reason, but it is right before the multiband so I guess that’s it.It’s refreshing to see that ST lets you shape the final band mix, as many of BBP’s presets are "almost perfect, but I want a different EQ". I’ll have to see if ST has the quality and loudness though; haven’t compared the two yet.
[quote author=”modman”]So if you feed BBP into another PC with a perfect tilt sound card and you run MPXTool you can adjust for EQ roll offs?[/quote]
Absolutely… but you don’t even need a second computer or soundcard. 😆 Check out the documentation:
http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.ph … &Itemid=83
there are several ways to calibrate it fully including the tilt of the card & transmitter pair. As far as high-frequency roll off, that is hopefully not happening in your exciter or it could be a sign of more serious problems (and once you have a calibrated MPXTool setup, you can compensate for that too, give or take the inaccuracies of your tuner). For testing the roll off of the soundcard, there’s several ways to do that and listed in Breakaway Broadcast documentation. 🙂Such as:
There’s a good example of correction of HF roll off with the PEQ. This test tone is generated inside of Breakaway and it does NOT go through the audio processing.
DO u know what i realy like here?
Competition in software creation and ‘psychoacoustic" patents!That’s what i like!
like Orban with Omnia does.
Breakaway VS Stereo tool.
..both software engineers are coooOOOoOOOOOL!
So, Leif, keep up the creation of an…MPX clipper on Breakaway and ..leave the RDS to Airomate software.
BUT please, ADD MPX MPX MPXXXXXXXXXXXX clipper to the cheap version of Breakawayeverything is fine, you make an excellent code creation
[quote author=”camclone”]like Orban with Omnia does.
Breakaway VS Stereo tool.[/quote]More like Breakaway vs Everyone. As far as the software (for windows or for dsp chips, it’s all software) that is on the market right now, many people that have open minds have confirmed that Breakaway is currently top dog. It’s now running on several top 10 market top 10 stations, including the #4 station in the #1 market in the world – WCBS. 🙂 As well as across the entirety of several radio networks. And countless small-medium stations around the world. (run-on sentence much?)
So far on the Stereo Tool forums there are a few people using it. And the MPX I uploaded above shows for some content it isn’t all that bad. But it’s still not up to par even with current offerings from the likes of Omnia/Orban/IDT/Sound4/DSPX/ and even Solidyne (yes Solidyne has a new processor which is actually pretty good). But you really can’t care to argue about quality for the price of Stereo Tool.
If you just need to be compliant, not sound quiet, sound quality isn’t your priority… and can’t afford Breakaway Broadcast (which is only $99 more)… Stereo Tool is there. But like Leif has said several times, if your station’s budget didn’t allow for even the PIDDLY $199 for Breakaway Broadcast, then something was really wrong with your budget. You can’t even buy a fading de-calibrated Optimod 8000A for that cheap.
But no matter what, the number of people using a given processor or the size of the station or network, should not be taken at face value as having any relevance for how competitive it actually is on-air or on-line. Personally I welcome anyone to come into the waters of developing broadcast audio processing (and video processing) for the x86 platform. The water is nice and warm!! 8) You might be surprised at who jumps into the water in the near future.
And btw… only the top level Breakaway processor is going to have the MPX clipping backend. Don’t get your hopes up, cos it’ll never happen anywhere near $199. Leif has said it to you at least once too. He meant it.
[quote author=”celar”]Many of BBP’s presets are "almost perfect, but I want a different EQ".[/quote]
This is exactly how I feel. I know Leif plans a full-control version, but is this a possiblity for the regular Broadcast version? If you could just provide controls to adjust the multiband output mix, I would look no further.[quote author=”Leah Fortescue”][quote author=”celar”]Many of BBP’s presets are "almost perfect, but I want a different EQ".[/quote]
This is exactly how I feel. I know Leif plans a full-control version, but is this a possiblity for the regular Broadcast version? If you could just provide controls to adjust the multiband output mix, I would look no further.[/quote]Yeah, I agree also…..Although the on-board presets are good, I sometimes feel like ripping my hair out becuase it needs a little more of this and a little less of that (sound-wise) for my own personal tastes!
Also Leif, I know you’re a busy guy but any news on those Tilt & PEQ tests for those (on-board ASUS & Sound Blaster) cards, maybe that could cure my lack of top end problem. 🙂
i can give u thousants of dollars if that thing deserves it!
and it deserves it.so , let’s get loud…
1 )give us some ..controls to adjust the multiband output mix
forget the MPX clipper,
just give us some output mix before the stereo generator.
like octive streamsolo…many many many years ago..
2) also, make a more intelligent …stereo enhancer like bob orban does..
steeeereooo enhancer with high IQ 🙂it’s time to check my windows media stream… 64 kbps WM9 with no high frequencies..i know….
mms://1045fm.live24.gr/1045fm
http://1045fm.live24.gr/1045fm/Greeeeeeeek Music….the most difficult type of music proccess…ssssss
check 2, or 3 songs to be sure. ( i know that the codec is for ..tears..)
The heart of that sound is Breakaway latest version.. with a completely made of me ..preset.. not plutonium, not newyork, not not not..
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