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Breakaway hardware box

Re: Try a DSPX MiniFM SE

LA_Guy said:
For 1500 bucks, what do you have to lose?
Click to expand...
As he wrote on his blog, Goran Tomas did a lot to improve the sound of the DSPX-mini, but at least as of the firmware available last summer when I was able to give it a close listen, it still has problems with HF ducking and "pinching" on sibilants. (It is more noticeable with 75 uS pre-emphasis; Goran's clips used 50 uS.)

It's certainly not the worst I've heard -- especially considering the price -- but I have not heard this problem at all with Breakaway. In fact, I'd say Breakaway is easily able to match the 8100's elegance at handling HF transients. With a lighter preset like "CGSmooth" or "Reference", the HF restriction due to pre-emphasis becomes virtually inaudible, even at 75 uS.
 
Re: Try a DSPX MiniFM SE

satech said:
LA_Guy said:
For 1500 bucks, what do you have to lose?
Click to expand...
As he wrote on his blog, Goran Tomas did a lot to improve the sound of the DSPX-mini, but at least as of the firmware available last summer when I was able to give it a close listen, it still has problems with HF ducking and "pinching" on sibilants. (It is more noticeable with 75 uS pre-emphasis; Goran's clips used 50 uS.)
Click to expand...

Like it says in the article, the mini is not without flaws. I would agree with you that it performs slightly better at 50us. You have to take into account that there was:
  • Limited time for the improvements. In fact, even what was done was considered too much and long overdue by the management for a product with such low profit margin.
  • Limited DSP resources. The mini has only 4 DSPs that are not so powerful compared by today's standards. It is physically not possible to put in more sophisticated code in there and even putting this much required a lot of shuffling around and compromises.

The idea was to do much more with the research that I've done in the bigger boxes, but... You have to take into consideration that mini costs only $1500/€1200 and if you compare its sound and the performance to the other processors at that price, I'm sure you will agree it offers quite a lot. I've said it before - I don't think such solid processing has been available at such a low price before. Obviously, I can't be objective here.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
Re: Try a DSPX MiniFM SE

LA_Guy said:
For 1500 bucks, what do you have to lose?
Click to expand...
Actually less than that. There's an Ebay seller called Play It Again PC's that's selling 3.4ghz Dual Core Tangent PC's for under $200 including XP Pro, shipping, mouse & keyboard. I've put a Marian Trace Alpha in one with BBP ASIO on it and it runs great. So I'm more in $600 land and it sounds really great and it's reliable. My only concern (as stated earlier) is that I'm not quite ready to put a PC tower on the floor next to the rack with a keyboard, mouse & monitor piled up & announcing "here's your new processor" to a client. If I owned a station, I'd do it now. It works great on my part 15 in-house play toy...sounds better than anything else on the air & louder than most. And I have never seen the Inovonics 530 Total Mod Meter hang this steady on any 'real' station. This is as close as it gets to a free lunch. I'm just not ready to place a 'homebrew' processor on someone else's real station no matter how big of a fan I am and/or how awesome it sounds.

Now that I've bragged about it, it does have one troublesome spot and that is male voice with no music in the background. If you back the Final Clip way off (-5 on the New York preset), it helps a lot at some expense in loudness. I understand that the next update (no time frame available) will have a voice detector in it to help with that issue. And the phase rotator plug-in does help some. If they can get this to sound like it does now on music and have that 'NPR' cleanliness on voice, then we'll be knocking on perfection's door.
 
Wow! Leif will be happy to see such a vast amount of people waiting for "the box".

Like it's already been mentioned, he has been working flat out on it, from what I hear, the hardware was finished ages ago, it's just undergoing some final software tweaks!

JesseG will shed some more light when the time comes or you'll have to wait to hear it from the horses mouth yourself of the release. I can expect some prototypes to be floating aroung very soon but I think these will be on a need to know basis.

;)
 
well Im first in line guys, lol
I just cant wait to see the actual hardware box and display.
 
Shay O Boyle said:
well Im first in line guys, lol
I just cant wait to see the actual hardware box and display.
Click to expand...
I can't wait to 'hear' it as well. First time I get my paws on one, I'm shooting dry male voice through it and seeing if it sounds as clean as the music does. They've done a great job on the music with BBP, but unless you back the clipping way down (-6.0 on New York), dry male voices can sound pretty harsh. But even with the clipping all the way down, BBP still does a respectable job. The thought of a 'pro' version of BBP makes me drool.
 
Leif states that the pricing of the new Breakaway hardware box will be more expensive than a Omnia one, but to be fair if the the box is better and has asimilar impact that the Omnia one did on the processing world, well hats off to you.
 
I wonder if it will do parallel FM/HD paths? Or AM/HD paths? Even if you don't have "HD" radio, it's nice to use those outputs for a web stream or a house (pre-delay) feed. The other question is, will this box also do AM? I've got an AM that could benefit from it too...
 
WNTIRadio said:
I wonder if it will do parallel FM/HD paths? Or AM/HD paths? Even if you don't have "HD" radio, it's nice to use those outputs for a web stream or a house (pre-delay) feed. The other question is, will this box also do AM? I've got an AM that could benefit from it too...
Click to expand...

My understanding is that both the future release of the software and the hardware box will have both program outputs and pre-delay outputs for monitoring. I also understand that, yes, AM settings will be included.

Those of you attending NAB 2011 will get a chance to have a look. The box is suppose to be there.

Interestingly, on an unrelated note, Leif was part of the team that received a recent engineering Emmy for their work. Leif is listed as the inventor of the product. He is definitely talented. Take a look...

http://www.linearacoustic.com/pdf/110110 - Linear Acoustic - EMMY PR FINAL.pdf
 
My experience is that voice with Breakaway is leaps and bounds better than any digital processor I have ever used. But, I haven't used every box or one of the very newest, so...take it for what it's worth.

Trick is, you really need revisit how you process voice ahead of Breakway. We found that backing off the mic processing made voices sound no less loud and much cleaner.

No matter what box you use, each one has a character it places on voice...for better or worse, in my experience anyway.
 
Shay O Boyle said:
well Im first in line guys, lol
I just cant wait to see the actual hardware box and display.
Click to expand...

I've seen what it looks like in it's early stages and it's gonna be just as you'd expect from a box conceived in 2011 in terms of looks and technology....

It will also be unleashed at the Amsterdam Processing freak-day in March which I'll hopefully be at also......very exciting stuff indeed! ;)
 
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