Seeking more cut to cut consitency on Helix

Passive Aggressor sacrifices "always nailing 0dB" levels during already dense audio… to maintain a very consistent track to track loudness consistency, but…

in order to keep density the same too, you basically have to do somewhere between expanding the "too dense" tracks, and slamming the bejesus out of the "too dynamic" tracks. i don’t know why they called it a prism, but that’s somewhat what it did, when calibrated to run hot into another processor such as an 8100A1/XT2. 8)

most inconsistency when heard with Helix is generally because of the rates of the multiband, so perhaps you can try SLOWING down the speed, and see if that makes it more consistent. i think i remember that happening with Helix. i don’t actually have much time to have fun playing around with the end-user GUI controls, as per my main use of Breakaway is…

Breakaway Audio Enhancer, for my on-board card’s 192kHz SPDIF output to my source selector & speaker/headphone DAC… mainly for system sound, websites, and movies. 🙂

Breakaway Live, for my main high quality outputs to my source selector etc… for all music listening and mastering. The only thing I’m using in Live is the parameter EQ for pre-correction of the several output sources I can select. All other processing is bypassed, so it’s probably overkill, but I haven’t heard an EQ that I like more for the job…

Although… I’m warming Leif up to the idea of *drumroll*…

A hybrid filter topology, where there’s linear-phase filtering for upper-mids & highs, and minimum-phase filtering for low-mids and bass. In many people’s opinions, and in my experience too, this has a much more musically appealing natural sound to it, and also has much better transients for the bass… clearer bass. 🙂

The nice side effect is the overall latency of a filter network using hybrid design like this has much lower latency too. Sort of a WIN/WIN imho.

Good things to come guys, good things.

Oh and… I’ll have to compare the Helix that’s currently in Live, and the Helix that I have, because I do remember doing a number of things to it, that at the time I thought improved it, and maybe I’ll either consider releasing that, or changing that even more to make that Helix idea even more apparent.

I have a number of presets on the back burner that I have never talked about before, and one of them is "Tokyo" which reminds me a little bit of Helix too, but… is probably destined to become an awesome talk radio preset. It has an uncanny ability to improve the intelligibility of speech… from very high quality, to POTS… plain old telephone service… 😉

Oh and… it’s also great for music too. It’s a very "smooth" sounding preset, with a pretty fast multiband.

Good things to come guys. 😉

[quote author=”JesseG”] i don’t know why they called it a prism, but that’s somewhat what it did, when calibrated to run hot into another processor such as an 8100A1/XT2. [/quote]

I believe Glen Clark called them "Audio Prisms" because, as multi-band processors, they did to audio what a traditional prism does to light: Moves it through at different speeds and ultimately divides it up into separate visible portions of the color spectrum.

One of the big selling points was the ability for each of the 4 bands to do nothing if the situation called for it. Prior to that, a compressor was always expanding or compressing the audio – but the Audio Prism could determine when the signal did not need any correction within each band.

Though the Prism was designed to take unprocessed audio directly from the board, many stations ran a wideband AGC ahead of the Prisms such as an Aphex Compellor, or Orban 414 or 424 to keep the front end from overloading.

The Optimod 8100 typically followed next in the chain, either in stock form, or preferably with a replacement Card 5 from Texar – the RCF1 (or later, the Cobalt Blue) which were more tailored to handle the output of the Prisms and allowed the user to have more control over the level and texture of the bass.

The 8100, at that point, functioned mostly as a peak limiter, clipper, and stereo generator, as the release time was typically set as fast as it could go and you didn’t dial in more than a few dB of gain reduction.

It wasn’t recommended to use the Prisms with the XT or XT/2 six-band limiter/clipper. When you added the XT chassis, it was intimately integrated into the 8100 topology (it actually plugged into the 8100) and required the user to change some internal settings so that the main compressor and limiter in the 8100 behaved very differently than they did in stock form, acting as very slow gain riding stages so as not to "fight" the XT – exactly opposite of the settings you’d want from the 8100 when running Prisms.

Engineers were typically very polarized on the sound of the XT/XT-2 – they either loved it or they hated it. I liked it, personally, for the right format. It wasn’t always as loud, agressive, or bright as other setups – including the Prisms – but it was smooooooth and very, very consistent from source to source.

Another very loud but less common setup with the 8100 was to load up the whole Aphex analog chain in front of it with some Prisms – Compellor, Aural Exciter Type III, Prisms, and Dominator – and use Aphex’s own replacement cards on the input of the 8100, effectively bypassing everything in it except the clipper and stereo generator. Talk about dense!

The early 80’s to early 90’s were fun times for analog audio 🙂

Jim

[quote author=”JesseG”]i had the pleasure of hearing KISS FM, from LA, in that era… running two daisey-chained customized 2020s setup by the one Sir Foti. i know he made it big because of his work centered around NYC, but you should have heard KISS back in the day. 8)[/quote]

Aw, man, I wish I could have heard that… I never got to use the 2020, nor have I knowingly heard one on air. I can only imagine what a thrill it would have been to hear that station.

I did get to hear what I BELIEVE was his secret handiwork on, of all things, a television station out of Cleveland owned by Malrite Communications at the same they owned WMMS and Frank was at the engineering helm.

At the time, audio was the neglected step-child of TV. As long as it was making noise, most stations didn’t care one way or the other about sound. Then again, most viewers were listening on 4" speakers built into their TV’s. I used to watch "Star Trek: The Next Generation" on Channel 43 with an early Dolby Surround Sound receiver and the sound was incredible! That was when I first learned TV could actually sound good….

Jim

[quote author=”sgeirk”]Did Frank really use 2020’s to achieve the sound on KISS in LA? I thought he modified compellors and dominators, in the beginning.[/quote]
I don’t remember where I read it, far down the rabbit hole somewhere… but yeah… two 2020s with about 40 mods on em, designed to work in serial, and he called that setup "The Intimidator", and it’s the only one he ever did… that he’s mentioned. From what I understand, there’s a number of those mods of his own design that are currently part of the MkIII. 8)

Unfortunately you probably still won’t find this information on Google. Even though I’ve mentioned it a few times even on Radio-Info too. Maybe there’s a media blackout on it? lol