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Folks. Listen to me. I am a 20 year veteran of the music industry. THIS IS ALL BS!! All this software does is re-equalize and re-compress and limit the signal that PROFESSIONALS have spent countless hours recording, mixing and mastering. Who do you think knows better how the content should sound: Some piece of software or men and women who have been doing this job for decades in rooms that are specifically designed, built and tuned for the purpose of LISTENING?!
The vast majority of audio content we hear (NOT listen to. There is a big difference.) these days is already so edited, automatically tuned, spatially enhanced, compressed and limited that it no longer even vaguely represents what the artist played or the sound they had in mind. All this piece of software does is make this problem even worse.
You don’t have to believe me. Believe the facts. Do a search for "volume wars" or "listener fatigue." Educate yourselves. Refuse to fall into the pit of commercial BS and consumerism that promises a Fix-All.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me at chriswlanger@gmail.com. I welcome all inquiries.
Your argument would be good IF we could believe that every record producer was as dedicated as you. However, many these days just crank the pan pots left and right, and then beef up the EQ to give lots of bass and treble so it will cope with the odd asshole who has fancy-schmancy speakers. They also use pitch correction and other "effects" that grate on the nerves of we who don’t need "colouration".
You also don’t take into account the listening environment. Not all of us have acoustically tuned lounges, studios or back patios. "Boxy" or "echoey" environments exist, as do many with overly-soft furnishings or rooms with hard, reflective surfaces.
Just as you tweak the mixing desk to make the artist and musicians sound the best they can (to your subjective ears), we mere mortal listeners need to adjust what we are hearing to better match what we would like to hear to our listening environment, or to match live performances that resonate with our memory.If we all had the same, bland listening capabilities, with 20Hz to 20kHz bandwidth, then your argument would be reasonable, and I would concur. I am an orchestral musician in my 62nd year. I know what instruments should sound like, but many CDs are not quite right in my listening environment. BA lets me fine tune the audio produced by you so-called "experts" to exactly match what MY instruments in MY listening environment to my liking.
Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, music is in the ear of the beholder.
I agree that we all have our listening preferences, but I can’t believe that a piece of software that compresses and limits the signal even more than it already is is the answer. As a classical musician I am surprised that you would advocate compression or limiting of ANY kind. Regardless of what you are listening on or what kind of room you are listening IN compression and limiting is not the answer. They don’t make music sound better. They don’t even make it louder! Make-up gain makes it louder. If you want to listen to your music louder just TURN UP THE VOLUME!! That’s what that knob is there for.
I hate to tell you, but if you need a piece of software to fix your listening environment then maybe it is time to spend a little bit of cash on better speakers and do some research about basic acoustics to improve that environment.
My problem is not that people are making this stuff to help listener’s improve their experience but that they are selling it as a Fix-All for something that isn’t broken to begin with.
Most people these days listen to music from a laptop, PC or portable device. MP3, flac, WAV or whatever.
Not from a CD. The audio CD is (almost) dead. I don’t even remember when i bought my last CD.
Young people download (legaly or not) their music from the net.No (MP3) song have the same volume when you listening to them. I need to adjust the volume knob all the time, with every song. That is not comfortable. That’s when Breakaway comes in.
Here is the deal, hardcore.
You are absolutely correct….IF….let’s say I’m going to fire up Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, and listen from beginning to end. I disable Breakaway in these rare instances.
But usually, I’m enjoying the weekend in the house or backyard and have a playlist playing on random that ranges from Sam & Dave to Godsmack to Johnny Cash to Katy Perry. As you well know, the newer stuff like Godsmack and Katy Perry has been brick-wall limited in the mastering to be as loud as possible; but the Sam & Dave and Johnny Cash sound like they were mastered at about half the volume. The last thing I want to do is run over to the volume control every time a new song comes on. Breakaway, using the reference preset, evens all of it out to a nice consistent volume without adding a lot of color to the sound. In fact, it’s amazing how transparent Breakaway can be using the reference preset. Now for those that want that super-processed sound, it is available in other presets.
My main system is a Harman Kardon integrated amp from 1986 running a pair of Boston Acoustic speakers. I have owned B&W and Rotel gear in the past. I know and appreciate good sound; and will trade audiophile references with you all day long if you like. But the majority of my listening these days is hanging with the family and/or friends while good music plays on a good system.
So, hardcore, while I agree that Breakaway is inappropriate when doing serious listening on a good system, casual listening is helped immensely by it…and I would recommend it to everybody.
100% agree with hardcore if we talk about Vinyls & CDs Listening (not hearing) experience!
100% disagree with hardcore if we talk about the horrible 128kb/s MP3s
I cant wait until Digital Music Distributors say hello to Lossless ..
I personally dont listen to 128 K MP3s, just too many distorsion in them (minimum is 192 for me). But when I have to, or when it’s badly (re)encoded, I prefer to disable or lower the sound processing because any sound processing is a MAGNIFYING GLASS to glitches and bad compression. You hear much more the lousy less with a sound processor (which will try its best to turn up the lost frequencies due to the mp3 algorithm, thus increasing the loss).
But as I said in a previous post, as long as I only hear to 192 or flac/wav only, I always use Breakaway (Live in my case) on my listenings (even for films or games). And I really wait to see the new versions coming!
I concur with the vast majority of individuals on this thread that Breakaway Audio Enhancer has definite merit in producing better audible sound in a real environment for a critical classical musician and music listener (slightly more aged than even the 62-year-old youngster who replied earlier). I use three largely different systems (all putting out over 200 watts of audio power) in three vastly different environments (including one onboard a ship), but derive the digital audio from the same external hard drive. This identical signal produces beautiful and flawless audio output from two of my systems, without using Breakaway Audio Enhancer, but produces atrocious frequently distorted output, particularly when listening to piano music when rendered through my desktop computer (attached to four speaker models, including M-Audio and Klipsch components). (The other two environments utilize laptops, one running Linux [Ubuntu], and the other running Windows Vista, as is the desktop machine.) HOWEVER, when adding Breakaway Audio Enhancer to the desktop system, I can play the identical tracks without any of the maddening distortion which occurs without Breakaway enabled. It appears that BAE can somehow precondition the signal so as to alleviate certain characteristics, which when played using SOME software/hardware/speaker/environment combinations can ruin through distortion the otherwise available audio information stream, especially noticeable on program-related maximal volume peaks. The one dissenting opinion could easily have arisen because the original poster happened to have a combination of equipment/environment etc. which produced fine audio without any need to add BAE, and indeed he/she was thus UNABLE to discern any beneficial effect from BAE for their listening needs and environment.
The upcoming versions of BAE will have a much lower drive into the final limiters, you’ll be happy to know. 🙂 Leif also wants to make it possible to bring Undo into BAE, possibly by increasing the price (an upgrade path will of course be available). Between those two things, the concerns of the original poster will not only be removed from the equation, but will actually be a *better* scenario with BAE enabled… for much of the modern recordings coming out within the last 15-some-odd years.
If you haven’t heard what Undo is yet… basically it’s a flawless declipper and a psycho-acoustics based dynamics restoration effect… in other words, it removes the loudness war from everything you run through it. It’s a HUGE revolution in audio processing. 8)
Breakaway is a TOOL. Like any tool, its effectiveness is dependent on the skill and intent of the user. I, for one, am glad to have this tool. I find it quite flexible and useful for a variety of source material destined for a variety of listening environments – from high fidelity home systems to cheap pc speakers, and even extremely hostile car audio or earbuds on noisy subways.
Sorry you think it’s crap, but it serves my purposes, and I consider it money well spent.
To each their own, I guess.I just found out about breakaway by searching the internet for some software that works with the htpc software I am using, which is SageTV Ver. 7.0.19. Most of the sound enhancer software out there are plugins for specific music player software, so that wasn’t an option. I thought my music and movies sounded very bland and have been searching for years to find something that would work with my setup. Then I found Breakaway. I installed it and within 24 hrs. I purchased it. The difference in the quality of sound is incredible. I hear sounds in my music and movies that I never heard before. Thanks so much for creating this software. I am also very much looking forward to the Theatre version of the software. Any idea as to when that may be available. I would also like to be available as a beta tester if that is possible. Thanks!
I come back and visit the forum from time to time hoping to find some hope for a mac version of BAE.
After reading some of the negative replies here I think that what some of us fail to realize is that there is a large percentage of listeners that like to listen to a variety of music ( a lot of it old ). They also want to listen to the music and not the equipment. For several years I have used A PC and BAE with lossy mp3 files to drive a micro fm transmitter for listeners in our small condo area who derive a great deal of enjoyment from their inexpensive fm radios ( It also sounds great on a Bose ).
I have tried many versions of software to enhance, control volume levels and prevent distortion. There is nothing that even comes close to Breakaway.
My only wish is that there was a Mac version so I can finally get rid of the real crap ( Windows ).
I read your statement about you being highly experienced and knowledgeable etc. I think you are however mistaken. I struggled for ages to get my realtek onboard driver in my i5 win7 machine to output a decent sound when plugged in to my surroundsound and hdtv. Now, without getting into all the details, simply put, enabling enhancements in order to decrease the difference between perceived high and low sounds while playing videos, resulted in my sound not playing at all and my freakin pc telling me I need to disable enhancements.
Now, once I installed this piece of awesome software and then setup the thing correctly, bang I have perfect surround sound, no more high and low sounds and missions trying to hear human vocals. This does it perfect and automatically. So for those of us who are not so fortunate as to have a degree from Oxford or be some sound fundi, I think this program does its job perfect. At least it did for me.
And yes, I did try everything, srs etc etc etc. I went through the entire troubleshooting process and I tell you, every question you ask microsoft just gets an answer that suggests re installing windows. Freakin rediculous. I now however have no issues at all and my sound is rocking. So my dear friend, yes, I do believe this c\p. If you would like to maybe share some of your immense knowledge on how to get the sound perceptively perfect, I would love to hear it. My, it is so easy to diss another persons creation while being of absolutely no help at all. Thank you for this awesome bit of software, in my opinion it completely out does anything else. Oh and by the by, did you know that when it comes to sound quality it is not actually the size of the speakers that matter but rather the firmware that is running it and who configures the profiles within? Go with your gut guys and girls this software is spectacular and the pre-configured settings are stunning.
Hey hardcore, if you such a professional, what the hell are you listen to music on a computer for anyway? Why don’t you turn off your computer, turn on your classical music and stop posting stupid topics.
Thank you Demodave for your response to hardcore, who must only listen to one style of music in a room by himself.
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