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Breakaway Broadcast Help

F

fm-engineer

I know some of you on here have the Breakaway installed. I've installed it here in the shop to play with. The PC has on-board RealTech HD sound. When running the test on the Breakaway it verifies 192K is working property. I set the line-out on the sound to 192K, and the MPX out on Breakaway to 192k, but no matter what I try there is no separation, just mono. The pilot is there at 10%, but there is no stereo separation. I'm coming off the line-out left, onto a piece of RG-58, then to an exciter unbalanced input. I did read that some Realtech sound may not work correctly, but the test mode in Breakaway verifies 192K. Any ideas? Thanks
 
In the settings, there IS one that forces mono output. Make sure it's not selected.
It's on the page with hf and lf cutoff, tilt, asymmetric mod, etc.
 
Make sure your in/output is set to the same sample rate: 192k. Not all soundcards perform the way they should. Do you have a scope to check the output on? Also they have their own forum on their own website, if you haven't joined, this would be just the type of question they could help you with over there.
 
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I'm pretty sure I set the input and output sample rate the same, but I will go through it again tonight. It may be the sound card, although it says 192k, and the on-board test verifies too.
 
So what do you think of the sound in mono? ;)

And I'm assuming you can just pull up any other stereo file directly in a player, and it's stereo then?
I've never used the setup for FM stereo. Where is the pilot 19khz being injected?
Any possibility it's not truly 19khz anymore? Just thinking out loud...
Are you listening on desktop speakers, headphones, etc, does the computer also have some goofy hardware audio settings beyond
the sound card's attributes? Have you tried headscrews vs speakers...are you using usb speakers? They have their own
advanced volume control pages with many options like mono, tone controls, and AGC .
 
Tom,
It sounds very_ good_ in mono. FWIU, the designer, Leif Claesson, worked for Orban at one time. It is a very neat program! The composite is assigned to the 1/8" stereo line or speaker out on the built in sound card. No USB stuff. The composite appears on the unbalanced left and right where I adapt one of those to RG-58. The pilot is there and it lights receiver indicators, but I will measure for sure later. Later this evening I will try to set up the sample rates again. The next step would be to try a soundblaster card, as Breakaway's documentation indicates some on-board may not work even at 192k.


Tom Wells said:
So what do you think of the sound in mono? ;)

And I'm assuming you can just pull up any other stereo file directly in a player, and it's stereo then?
I've never used the setup for FM stereo. Where is the pilot 19khz being injected?
Any possibility it's not truly 19khz anymore? Just thinking out loud...
Are you listening on desktop speakers, headphones, etc, does the computer also have some goofy hardware audio settings beyond
the sound card's attributes? Have you tried headscrews vs speakers...are you using usb speakers? They have their own
advanced volume control pages with many options like mono, tone controls, and AGC .
Click to expand...
 
fm-engineer said:
I know some of you on here have the Breakaway installed. I've installed it here in the shop to play with. The PC has on-board RealTech HD sound. When running the test on the Breakaway it verifies 192K is working property. I set the line-out on the sound to 192K, and the MPX out on Breakaway to 192k, but no matter what I try there is no separation, just mono. The pilot is there at 10%, but there is no stereo separation. I'm coming off the line-out left, onto a piece of RG-58, then to an exciter unbalanced input. I did read that some Realtech sound may not work correctly, but the test mode in Breakaway verifies 192K. Any ideas? Thanks
Click to expand...

You need to have a Realtek 883 chipset or higher.

Next step Go to control panel fine the Realtek control panel. Go into SPDIF and set 192k, then disable the output (this clocks the analog output to 192k sampling. but turns off SPDIF).

You can sweep the output, easily with a scope, to see if it rolls off.
 
Your Realtek card is NOT putting out 192Khz! Even though you are still getting the pilot tone which in turn is switching your Stereo light on! This is because the pilot carrier is very low at 19khz and this can get through at ANY sample rate.

Check your Realtek control panel like "audiophile" said but I doubt you'll find the answer there, you will probably have to go through the realtek WIN files and manually change the code to 192khz to turn it on properly.
 
bigrig said:
I doubt you'll find the answer there, you will probably have to go through the realtek WIN files and manually change the code to 192khz to turn it on properly.
Click to expand...

Not true. I have the Realtek 883 chipset..I know what I'm talking about!

If you have the older chipset, it will playback at 192k but downsample internally to 96k and your stereo separation will suffer. I went through registry on the older ALC880 chipset and contacted Realtek, but never got it to go past 43 kHz audio wise...
 
This is a dell computer, and my Realtek HD manger does not have the S/PDIF output listed. Just the standard analog outputs. The mangager does allow me to set the standard outputs to 192k, but again, I only get "mono" composite with that configuration. It sounds like the lack of SPDIF may be the problem. Any thoughts?
 
Also,

MY Realteck manager input menu does not support 192k only 96k. So, the breakaway is sending the realteck the composite at 192K on the internal bus, only to be limited to 96k before for the D/A conversion. That is what I guess is going on.
 
It would seem the manufacturer of this device did not comprehend or provide that you might need to encode audio real-time into a
supersonic (above 20 khz) range which is necessary for FM matrix. I guess you need a sound card the output of which is truly
"linear" in audio (and supersonic) products throughout its supposed 192k rate, or an outboard encoder and let Breakaway and
the hardware do their parts separately, which woudn't be too awful a case.

This is the same thing that happened in high speed tape duplication circuits, where the circuits began to show non linearities at the supersonic frequencies that were transcripted at high speeds. Not to mention delivery speed flutter.
All this led to a general dissatisfaction with (pre-recorded) cassettes, which led to CDs, also just about obsolete, except as
medium of transfer that still permits a shred of paper and "ART" to be atttached, but you'd better get it into a computer wiith multiple
saved locations and backups before that CD dies.

I'd go straight to an outboard encoder and rest my mind.
 
You're probably right Tom, thanks

Tom Wells said:
It would seem the manufacturer of this device did not comprehend or provide that you might need to encode audio real-time into a
supersonic (above 20 khz) range which is necessary for FM matrix. I guess you need a sound card the output of which is truly
"linear" in audio (and supersonic) products throughout its supposed 192k rate, or an outboard encoder and let Breakaway and
the hardware do their parts separately, which woudn't be too awful a case.

This is the same thing that happened in high speed tape duplication circuits, where the circuits began to show non linearities at the supersonic frequencies that were transcripted at high speeds. Not to mention delivery speed flutter.
All this led to a general dissatisfaction with (pre-recorded) cassettes, which led to CDs, also just about obsolete, except as
medium of transfer that still permits a shred of paper and "ART" to be atttached, but you'd better get it into a computer wiith multiple
saved locations and backups before that CD dies.

I'd go straight to an outboard encoder and rest my mind.
Click to expand...
 
audiophile. said:
bigrig said:
I doubt you'll find the answer there, you will probably have to go through the realtek WIN files and manually change the code to 192khz to turn it on properly.
Click to expand...

Not true. I have the Realtek 883 chipset..I know what I'm talking about!

If you have the older chipset, it will playback at 192k but downsample internally to 96k and your stereo separation will suffer. I went through registry on the older ALC880 chipset and contacted Realtek, but never got it to go past 43 kHz audio wise...
Click to expand...

Yes it is! I have that chip also!! And like I said, I had to change the code in the driver files to switch 192kkz on properly!

Those chips have been fitted into various motherboards and with XP, Vista and Windows 7 doesn't mean every single person will have the same GUI settings in the soundcard menu and your suggestion obviously hasn't helped the OP so maybe you don't know talking about!
 
fm-engineer said:
Also,

MY Realteck manager input menu does not support 192k only 96k. So, the breakaway is sending the realteck the composite at 192K on the internal bus, only to be limited to 96k before for the D/A conversion. That is what I guess is going on.
Click to expand...

Bingo! My experience was the same as yours. If the Realtek did not have a 192k setting then it would not work for stereo properly. In Mono it works just fine however.

Closer inspection of the Realtek chipset specs I found that it had to support SPDIF at 192k, before it would work properly...

I simply got another motherboard with a Realtek ALC883. Works now...
 
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