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well, you made me wrong.
For years I’ve been telling people to get hardware for processing. Mainly because most affordable solutions suck, or the cost in cpu grunt was excessive. I am now making a completely 180 on that opinion.
I’m caretaker of a users forum for OtsAV, and someone there posted a link to your software. I almost didn’t come check it out, after being disappointed countless times. But after a couple of hours, my curiosity got the best of me, and a few minutes later, I was running the demo.
WOW! You nailed it. You have convinced me. Processing finally done right, in an affordable package. It didn’t seem to cost my cpu that much either. Very impressed.
At first, I was a little disconcerted about the lack of controls. It only took my ears a little listening, and my eyes to read a little more to see the light here. You’ve done well to make fairly goof proof. Your philosophy is sound, and the proof is in the product.
I guess you don’t have a mac section on this forum yet, but I’d like to give you some thoughts on that too. I am awaiting the Mac version. I’m also caretaker for a users forum for Radiologik on the Mac. I’m really hoping I’ll be able to use it in that situation. It appears as though use will be limited to within iTunes though. You’d make me happy if you could make a version work outside of any application, perhaps in a ‘listen to one sound device – play out another sound device’ mode. With soundflower, I would play my radiologik app to it. If Breakaway could then listen to soundflower, and play out a soundcard, we’d be golden. OR, wouldn’t it be swell if I could make use of two soundcards to have my main audio go out to my mixer, the mixer back to an soundcard input, Breakway picks it up from there, and outputs to the second soundcard device. I could then use it to process everything in my mixer. I’d be so thrilled, I think I’d explode!
Excellent, excellent work. I can’t believe I was converted! Software processing done right. Thank you.
Thanks, man!
And, you’re welcome 🙂.
The thing is, what runs in hardware boxes (unless they’re analog), is in fact software. The type of CPU (whether it’s an Intel Celeron, Motorola 56k DSP, or Analog Devices SHARC) is irrelevant — it’s the algorithm that’s running on it that counts. And even if we’re talking about Analog processing, you simulate any circuit close enough (even a clipper) as long you oversample properly. As long as nothing of significant amplitude hits nyquist, Sampled audio is equal to analog 🙂.
I’m ecstatic I convinced you! Making the controls was a very tricky tradeoff – I wanted the controls to be much more powerful and useful than for example "Less-More" while making them easy enough so that someone could play with them and listen, without having to study a manual. (And for hints, there’s tooltips).
Thank you for your excellent post, and welcome to the board 😉.
///Leif
I’m a ‘used to be’ programmer and circuit designer, so I understand what happens in digital processing hardware, and that an algorithm is an algorithm. 🙂 For stuff like this, I usually prefer an appliance. Something that doesn’t have Windows to contend with is more likely to always be up and running. Plus, it seems darn silly to wrap a general purpose computer around something like this. But Breakaway makes sense here because it’s not intrusive, is easy to operate, and plays very nicely with the DJ application feeding it. And I do tend to favour analog circuits actually, for zero latency reasons, so where analog can do the job, I’ll use it. Just a preference.
I meant to mention before. Is ASIO on the horizon? I personally like avoiding WDM. But I’m really waiting for the Mac version anyway. 🙂
A well designed installation of Windows running inside a machine where nobody can install & mess with stuff is sooo much different than your average workstation. 😉 For instance, when I worked at "a #1 net-radio channel & network" I managed hundreds of production audio windows machines, and the only problem I found with XP is that the "Windows Audio Service" has a limitation where it will not make sound, no matter what, after exactly 365 days on the nose.
So what I’m saying is I had almost 200 windows machines all with uptimes of AT LEAST a year, but I had to reboot them cos of the silly bug. And although they were firewalled, they were on the net too. So, as far as I’m concerned, a good installation of Windows can go a long long way. 🙂
Also something to think about, even the processors running SHARCS etc, are using Linux for the front-end interfaces & controls, and networking. The stability they have also comes from how well the installation is designed & configured. I would LOVE to hear of an installation that has had near 200 even partly dsp-based digital processors, and had not a single one go down (for whatever reason) for 365 days.
In fact, other than my yearly rebooting, they ran like that for almost 5 years, before said net-radio company moved the production gear to another NOC.
I agree with you. My own windows machine are on continuously. No problem in terms of uptime, under my control. Unless someone gets aggressive with shutting off services etc., it still runs too much ‘junk’ etc. to dedicate a standalone PC to this task. Since Breakaway seems to fit nicely into a pc already in use as a more typical windows install, running a few things at once, no problem adding it on. If I had to dedicate a PC to this task, I simply wouldn’t. To me, it’s cutting butter with a chainsaw.
An associate had a particular machine that simply needs to do too much, and was never able to get a software sound processing to run well enough until Breakaway. Certain tasks would ultimately result in audio stutters, despite endless hours trying to config everything just right. She’s finally got the various software bits working in harmony using Breakaway for sound processing. A testament to some good coding skills for Leif and Co.
Hi Lane!
The nice thing about PCs is that once you know how to write reasonably optimized algorithms, they’re *incredibly* powerful. A modern average PC, let’s say a Core 2 Duo, can do a truly staggering amount of audio processing.
If you consider that Breakaway without the GUI uses barely 5% on such a machine.. Imagine what you could do if you dedicated the whole machine to audio processing. For a phat analogy, i’d say it’s like cutting butter with a software modulated laser. 😉
The other nice thing about PCs is speed of development. After changing something in the algorithm, I can recompile an be listening to an updated version in literally 10 seconds flat. This helps tremendously since audio development is an iterative process – if I had to develop the way Orban does (where an algorithm change-write code-compile-flash-listen change takes at least a day), Breakaway would still be in the lab, and I would be pulling my hair out! 🙂
I don’t have an ASIO version planned yet, but the Mac version will be out some time this year. 🙂
///Leif
Thanks for the nod about the Mac version.
Please, understand that my own preferences are my own preferences. Where I’m not willing to dedicated a computer and it’s OS to the task of audio processing, I’d never fault anyone else for being willing to do that. I’d rather just stick some hardware in my rack. Because Breakaway coexists on an otherwise busy computer, I’m very willing to have it borrow a few cpu cycles. Yours is the best product in terms of happily co-existing that I’ve experienced.
Actually, there is one way I might consider a dedicated computer just for the task of audio processing. I’m strongly considering getting some very low power motherboards. I’ve seen some that use only about 20 watts. Penalty is cpu grunt. These aren’t power houses. I could see myself getting one of those in my rack, stripping down the OS, and running breakaway on it for processing. I find it an attractive idea to reduce the power consumption in my studio/office. It’s getting so bad, I don’t even need to heat the room in the winter. 🙂
Hi Lane!
No worries. Nothing wrong with having preferences — I sure have a few myself!
A low powered PC would probably work just fine for Breakaway.
A friend and I just opened a karaoke restaurant here in Thailand. I finally got my own audio solution going today!
The PC is a Celeron 420 (1.6 GHz) with an Edirol FA-101 firewire audio interface (8 channels in and out, including two mic preamps). The lowly computer is running is a custom program I call AsioKaraoke:
One Breakaway Stereo core for the music
Two Breakaway Mono Cores – one for each microphone
One Breakaway Speaker Compensation core with up to 5.1 support, 8 parametric EQs for each speaker, Pink noise generator, Adjustable Crossovers (and subwoofer output) as well as a volume dependent Loudness control with four adjustable parametric EQs (common for all speakers).It also supports calling Winamp plug-ins, and it’s currently calling the dsp_vst wrapper (I admit, I was too lazy to write VST support myself for this — it’s non-trivial) which is in turn calling a VST reverb plug-in, for the microphones.
All of the above is using 35% on that celeron. Without the reverb, it uses roughly 15-20%, and that includes the breakaway cores and all the parametric EQs.
Indeed, the PC wasn’t free – it was $300 including a 17" CRT, and the Edirol FA-101 was another $380.. But, it would have been very expensive to match this functionality in hardware, and it works like a charm 🙂.
Please note, this is *not* a product — just something I hacked together. Just an example though of one way to solve the audio problem 🙂.
(Before I did this, guests were actually complaining that it was either too quiet or too loud, had to adjust the volume on the darn karaoke machine all the time. Also, the sound just wasn’t particularly good, particularly not the mic sound. Multiband Compression can do wonders, and so can Parametric EQ in combination with a pink noise generator, a calibrated measurement microphone, and spectrum analyzers 🙂.
I’d be very interested to see how much Breakaway used on a very low power motherboard though. It should definitely be able to run what I described above, minus the reverb.
Oh man I love audio and computers 😉
///Leif
Footnote: Computer runs XP Professional. Was gonna run Windows 2000 (much cleaner), had it all installed and ready, and then noticed that the Edirol FA-101 drivers don’t support it.. Ah well, XP runs fine. Now all I need is a 10-key keypad, MPEG-1 (VCD) playback support, and a USB Coin Acceptor, and we’ll REALLY be in business.
For low power, and low noise computing… check out what VIA is offering.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/eden_ulv/
7.5 watts max, under 1 watt "average", for a 1.5gHz CPU that doesn’t even need a fan.
There’s also a few features that aren’t seen in any consumer CPU on the market, such as it’s the fastest AES encryption/decryption in x86 (hardware or software), and two quantum-based true random number generators. Stuff you might not ever use, but cool to see such a green CPU (lead free, production carbon emission free, very low power) with technological advances not matched by anyone.
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