meta fix – Virtual 7 pro, Sambc, Breakaway and Edcast

This is my first post guys so please be gentle, it may be a bit wordy but you have to know where someone’s coming from before you can tell them where to go……

I am a semi retired fcc first class broadcast engineer and psychoacoustic junkie that worked on the debug team for the optimod 8100a at a midwestern facility, have met Bob O, Mike D as well as a lot of other boxmakers that thought they had ‘the next big thing" in the black box and have spent too many years with a soldering iron in an audimax/volumax and sta-level or CRL 4 piece rig.

However I left the industry when computers started replacing announcers in mass quantities – actually traded 5 pagers and a bottle of maalox for a life in 95’- 🙄 so im a late bloomer in the world of digital and progamming and code are not my best friends, but i still do road gigs with a few Virtual dj 7 pro powered rigs which is my weapon of choice these days and strive to get the very best sound i can afford.

Someone talked me into doing a stream on the game secondlife as a hobby, and having a wealth of leftover garb collecting dust and a 2 year old windows 7 64 bit powered quad core monster to dedicate to the cause got started with the mess, and here’s how it all got done. My first idea was to try to use winamp and the volume logic plug in a separate computer as nothing but a processor – no good– can’t run winamp in line in mode and thru volume logic in realtime, or at all for that matter – while trying to locate a way to run the vl in something else came across this forum and my thanks to DJ Buik and his setup guide.

So after me and a bunch of money parted company now have a rig that runs Sambc and Virtual 7 pro into a usb audio (turtle beach roadie) to a Mackie minimixer (402-vlz3) because the mic sections of both sam and virtual just are slow and generally bad sounding, and so is the agc in sam for that matter, the output of the mix goes to an auzentech knockoff pcie card in asio mode (asus xonar dx) which runs the Breakaway live processor and the stream. The onboard realtek audio runs my cue functuions as well as the conventional everyday windows audio stuff, and its an unbelieveable mess that sounds wonderful with a few self created analog mods in the mix. Now running a near zero latency 100 listener stream at 128 playing 80s and 90s as a alternative based hot ac format with an all day solid gold saturday (nods to dick bartley) and several live shows along the way.

Only problem i have is getting metadata from virtual pro 7 to the edcast. I experimented til i found a workaround but its messy: Virtual pro can run its own stream unprocessed but with tags, so i set up a dummy 1 listener stream and monitor this with winamp – edcast finds the "window" of winamp easily in window mode but in order to go back and forth, i have to disconnect edcast for a second and switch from text mode to window mode, and run a winamp muted for no real reason.

I am looking for a way to get virtual meta into the edcast unit the same way we do from sam if possible– i know of no normal way and the folks at atomix have been no help and neither has thier forums. maybe someone knows of a regedit or possibly where virtual decodes its meta at, cause i cannot find it active anywhere but on its screen or in its video feed output.

the only other option i can think of would be to use its logging feature but have no idea how to make virtual only show whats playing and ignore the rest of the log.

i wish there was a separate app that would monitor any mp3 played in the computer from some point that could feed edcast direct, that way it would capture anything playing from windows somewhere, maybe in the roadie usb audio chain– i dont know.

I have a webserver that i could set up an ftp to with sam, but have no idea how to make Virtual 7 pro do that – is it possible to make the edcast deocode the virtual 1 listener stream in http mode?

I also need to find a way to have edcast run the new shoutcast beta dnas if possible as i want to run an aac stream with my current as a hq option and i have a shoutcast id and lic for mp3s there to be listed on the shoutcast page. last i knew of, this was not possible. id be happy if i could get my shoutcast hash string id to work with this as is.

If anyone has any ideas please let me know and if you want to hear a breakaway unit runing in its glory and sounding better than most of the optipump CHR’s in my area here http://98.142.213.19:8156/listen.pls

I’m a fan of heavy handed chr style processing (Helix:gain at 70 power at 60 timing at 85-final drive at -2.0-yeah- 😯 – and a bit of bass boost-+14 and -9 shape) – my first pro gig was an 10kw am with 2 daps and 9 other comps in the chain in 1976 and screamer superstar format chr radio in the midwest usa (dont let the music stop or you WILL get sucked into the mic 😈 ) – the library is still in flux and this is not a finished product formaticly speaking but technically for now, it’ll do on this budget.

hope i can do that here – thanks to all of you and to Leif for some amazing work, nice job m8! 😀

Edit and afterthought: Nods to Jesse if this is the same Jesse G – that’s your Helix preset with a slight bit of premphasis in the usb eq – just a bit of reduction in the mud freq’s – actually more compensation for sam than anything.