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Greetings from Boulder, CO! We operate a pirate radio station here in town (Boulder Free Radio/KBFR at 95.3FM) and just discovered this software. We’ve got multiple workstations in our studio that we pipe through to a Behringer DSP that cost us about $100. Pro sound quality (well, reasonably pro sound quality, it is, afterall, Behringer).
We love your software. Ease of use is a big reason, quality of sound is another. Your presets rock and really make it easy for different DJ’s to pick a processing preset that fits their sound the best WAY easier than reconfiguring the hardware based sound processor.
The question: Is there some sort of multiple CPU licensing scheme for non commercial pirate radio stations? We’ve got 5 computers in-studio, and alot of our DJ’s have their own laptops they bring in and plug directly into the mixer to do their shows with.
At $30 per CPU, it would cost us, we figure, at least two times more (and more like 3 times more if we count laptops) than our ‘piped through to the hardware’ based sound processor.
We’d, of course, promo the software and tell our our listeners they’d HAVE to get your software for their own setups. 🙂
Anyway, we know this is a somewhat out of range request, but anything you might be able to do for us would be greatly appreciated. Love your software.
Greetings from Isaan, Thailand! 🙂
Judging from how you described your setup, I believe your best bet is to wait for the Webcaster version.
The webcaster version will allow you to just process live audio (in through the sound card, process, and out through the sound card) with low latency. This way you’ll be able to use a single (cheap) computer to take the place of the hardware. No need to worry about licensing for all the DJs computers.
The webcaster version will be a couple of months at least, but it’ll come.
///Leif
Ahh… well, that does indeed sound like a solution.
We don’t actually webcast right now, it’s over the air (FM) but the process is the same. Looking forward to seeing this lovely software (it’s truly incredible stuff!) modified for us poor pirate radio folks!
BFR
Howdy!
Oh, it’s FM. In that case Breakaway as it is won’t do you much good – however Aeromax-HDFM (in whatever form it finally gets released in) will, and it will make you the best sounding station in town. Will be out this year 🙂.
///Leif
[quote author=”Leif”]it will make you the best sounding station in town[/quote]
if you have a decently high-quality audio path before your processing, a great AD/DA converter, and a decent quality transmitter as far as audio path is concerned. it’s all about the audio path, and the converters.of course the source material should be of decent quality too, but you can play great source material through a mackie or behringer or some crap like that, through a soundblaster (of any type, they all suck) or the like, consumer cards… and you won’t end up being the best sounding station in town.
it also helps to have people that are bringing in laptops have decent quality converters as well. people really should not be using on-board sound, and a soundblaster type consumer card is NOT any better. m-audio is not much better either.
bare minimum for the quality you’ll want to look for, if you have a good quality audio path in your studio, would be something like an RME FireFace 400/800. but shooting more towards Apogee, Mytek, Benchmark, etc… or else you *will* notice that on air.
But yeah, a lot of the battle is having a good enough quality of air-chain where you can notice that kind of stuff in the first place. Especially your mixer, and your processing AD/DA, and your transmitter’s audio quality itself.
</rant>
Aw, come on, Jesse 🙂.
I’ll take 192kbps MP3 -> Soundblaster Live Analog Output -> Aeromax HDFM
over
FLAC -> Digital Output -> Optimod 8500
..any day of the week.
///Leif
gee, I kinda like my m-audio delta 44 using asio. 🙂
although I agree with the point that there should be no weak links in the chain, if it’s going out over FM, I don’t lose that much sleep over it. many of my listeners will be car bound, and the rest are listening on low end consumer boomboxes, clock radios etc. It’s why I need something like Breakaway to begin with. Decrease the dynamic range, get the audio up above the ambient noise without the need to ‘crank it’. i doubt anyone could tell the difference between a soundblaster card and one of your recommendations in those conditions. If I had a transmitter and a recording studio, and had to choose which one got the junk and which got the good stuff, well, I’d take care of the studio first.
the delta isnt half bad, and by far the best converter that’s ever been in an m-audio
and re: my soundblaster bashing, it was related to the converters used in the actual processor, not the source. surely you wouldn’t opt for outputting from the converters used in the HDFM prototypes, through the mixer, and then being processed through software using a soundblaster live for converters. that was mainly my point. 😉
there’s no point in taking care of the studio if you can’t tell the difference at the transmitter. at least in the present terms. of course for archival purposes it would be, but you guys still see what i’m saying. 🙂 especially the quality of the output from the audio processing is paramount.
There is an old expression that fits here…
"The final result from an audio chain is as good as its weakest link"
Its all about matching stuff…..
Now – as far as audio cards go – if you have the required bank balance – Digigram – second to none audio – but heck of a price!
could up post a link to a PDF for one of their top-end cards that I don’t have to log in to download?
(logging in to download a SALES brochure? seriously, are they retarded?)it would be interesting to see if they are posting any real test data for their cards, like jitter performance, impulse responses, phase/frequency, impedance/frequency, etc, etc…
I don’t know, Knightrider – after spending top dollar for a Digigram VXPocket PCMCIA card several years back, and never really had it work properly (drivers were outrageously horrendous), I’m not so sure I want to touch anything with their name.
To be honest, my old trusty SB Audigy2 ZS Notebook has worked much much better — for outputting composite (192khz). I checked it with both an analog Tektronix Scope and a Belar Wizard – as long as you compensate for tilt (which you have to do with most any DAC) it’s pristine as far as FM MPX is concerned.
Now, the ADC is a different story. It can’t do 192khz to begin with, so I would definitely not use it for composite, no 🙂.
///Leif
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