Are these people on something ?

[BROADCAST]

There is a sound I can get out of my 8100 that I cannot get out of any other Orban box. You can hear it in the way the compressor releases and it adds a little tail to the audio. It also sounds explosive on drums, amazing. The newer Orban boxes sound "cleaner" and almost stifle the audio a bit.

I second those comments as that's exactly how I feel as well. The 8100 has something in the AGC action that seems a bit lost in digital Orbans (though I didn't yet hear the latest improved version of Orban's dual-band AGC, so I can't comment on that). Back when Broadcast made recordings of 8200 with the Tina Arena track, there's a vocal transient on a still slow instrumental. The 8200 with MidSlow setting breathes there, whilst the MidFast setting does better, however it overall sounds poorer than MidSlow. So using MidSlow with 8200 you have to accept these moments as they are. The 8100/XT2 OTOH, just so naturally handles this vocal transient, fills up the release just right with no breathing and processes this part without ever diverting your attention, as well as the whole song. That's just one detail I admitt, but as Bob would say, the devil is in the details

One thing I think might be a part of this is the gate, which acts much more differently and is much more actively involved in modulating AGC action in 8100 than it is in digital Orbans. I wish Orban modeled the gate in digital exactly as it is in 8100, but this is just an assumption on my part that it would make a difference.

I would also agree that 8100 (and I'd add, XT2) enhances transients and explosives. Maybe that makes it less perfect in terms of "fidelity", but that characteristic is something I always really liked about this processors. It just makes music more "alive" and therefore more involving, at least as far as I am concerned.

But, to be honest, I think the days of the analog processors are definitely behind us. If Orban was to produce an analog processor today (or any other manufacturer) and it sounded really, really good, I suspect there wouldn't be many station actually buying it... Apart from the obvious disadvantages of analog over digital which Bob already mentioned, there's a psychological factor as well. Digital is the name of the game today, and in fact has been for quite some time. Maybe these comments are also in part influenced by nostalgia for the "good" old times behind us. I guess we'll just have to make digital unmistakably better than analog

Goran,
Interestingly all my 8100a/xt2 recordings have a gate mod to stop the gate from being triggered by heavy bass,in the presence of midrange!
This has the effect of keeping the master band forward a touch more when this happens.
So the gate acts more like the 8200.

 

[Studio1]

Because, it's 2007, and we have different needs today. We have multiple jukeboxes to throw out in the ether.

Good point.. when they allocated the FM broadcast band all those years ago I guess they never could have foreseen how popular
it would become and how many stations would want a piece (or 10) of it.

Too many stations all wanting to be on the air now - and with the aviation band right above FM, and (in the case of the country I live in) other fixed land mobile users below it, there is no room for expansion!

Still, as most of the commercial stations head on over to digital and DAB, it will open up the FM band for us die-hard analog junkies I guess.

 

[wgliradio]

There is a sound I can get out of my 8100 that I cannot get out of any other Orban box. You can hear it in the way the compressor releases and it adds a little tail to the audio. It also sounds explosive on drums, amazing. The newer Orban boxes sound "cleaner" and almost stifle the audio a bit.

I second those comments as that's exactly how I feel as well. The 8100 has something in the AGC action that seems a bit lost in digital Orbans (though I didn't yet hear the latest improved version of Orban's dual-band AGC, so I can't comment on that). Back when Broadcast made recordings of 8200 with the Tina Arena track, there's a vocal transient on a still slow instrumental. The 8200 with MidSlow setting breathes there, whilst the MidFast setting does better, however it overall sounds poorer than MidSlow. So using MidSlow with 8200 you have to accept these moments as they are. The 8100/XT2 OTOH, just so naturally handles this vocal transient, fills up the release just right with no breathing and processes this part without ever diverting your attention, as well as the whole song. That's just one detail I admitt, but as Bob would say, the devil is in the details

One thing I think might be a part of this is the gate, which acts much more differently and is much more actively involved in modulating AGC action in 8100 than it is in digital Orbans. I wish Orban modeled the gate in digital exactly as it is in 8100, but this is just an assumption on my part that it would make a difference.

I would also agree that 8100 (and I'd add, XT2) enhances transients and explosives. Maybe that makes it less perfect in terms of "fidelity", but that characteristic is something I always really liked about this processors. It just makes music more "alive" and therefore more involving, at least as far as I am concerned.

Regards,
Goran Tomas

I have to agree with everything here. The 8100 fills the gaps just right, where the other Orban digital processors don't. I wonder if this is a gate manipulation.

I think the processors needs to "act" on music more than just forming a square wave. I like the enhancements the 8100 adds... the transients by the release "fill" action, the explosives with the wideband limiter that just adds enough "snap" to the audio to make it alive, large, polished, big, professional sounding.

 

[CW]

There is a sound I can get out of my 8100 that I cannot get out of any other Orban box. You can hear it in the way the compressor releases and it adds a little tail to the audio. It also sounds explosive on drums, amazing. The newer Orban boxes sound "cleaner" and almost stifle the audio a bit.

I second those comments as that's exactly how I feel as well. The 8100 has something in the AGC action that seems a bit lost in digital Orbans (though I didn't yet hear the latest improved version of Orban's dual-band AGC, so I can't comment on that). Back when Broadcast made recordings of 8200 with the Tina Arena track, there's a vocal transient on a still slow instrumental. The 8200 with MidSlow setting breathes there, whilst the MidFast setting does better, however it overall sounds poorer than MidSlow. So using MidSlow with 8200 you have to accept these moments as they are. The 8100/XT2 OTOH, just so naturally handles this vocal transient, fills up the release just right with no breathing and processes this part without ever diverting your attention, as well as the whole song. That's just one detail I admitt, but as Bob would say, the devil is in the details

One thing I think might be a part of this is the gate, which acts much more differently and is much more actively involved in modulating AGC action in 8100 than it is in digital Orbans. I wish Orban modeled the gate in digital exactly as it is in 8100, but this is just an assumption on my part that it would make a difference.

I would also agree that 8100 (and I'd add, XT2) enhances transients and explosives. Maybe that makes it less perfect in terms of "fidelity", but that characteristic is something I always really liked about this processors. It just makes music more "alive" and therefore more involving, at least as far as I am concerned.

But, to be honest, I think the days of the analog processors are definitely behind us. If Orban was to produce an analog processor today (or any other manufacturer) and it sounded really, really good, I suspect there wouldn't be many station actually buying it... Apart from the obvious disadvantages of analog over digital which Bob already mentioned, there's a psychological factor as well. Digital is the name of the game today, and in fact has been for quite some time. Maybe these comments are also in part influenced by nostalgia for the "good" old times behind us. I guess we'll just have to make digital unmistakably better than analog


Regards,
Goran Tomas

Last I knew/saw, 95.7 in Houston (it was KIKK then buit now KHJZ) was running an 8100 still!!! and sounding every bit as good as the other FMs with the more expensive digital boxes...I had an 8100 without the XT chassis at a transmitter site fed via ISDN for triple back up (pri was T1, backup was composite STL with 8200 at studios)....BUT when I went to the ISDN line and the 8100, the audio came alive!!!! Sounded fuller and richer than the other paths...(all three fed a CE 802D exciter) If it hadnt been for the ISDN delay, I would have preferred to have left it nailed up (I did for a few days while tracing down a drop out in the primary STL...both the T1 AND the RF xmtr were dropping out....SBC took their slow time and I swapped over to another STL xmtr...but the ISDN ran fine for 3-4 days through the 8100.....I thought the station never sounded better)