Breakaway Live Questions

[Mike Phillips]

I'm new to Breakaway Live, which I want to use for a talk-only Internet stream. Is there a way to match the audio levels when the "Bypass Processing" button is pressed and when it is not pressed? The non-processed signal is at least 12 dB below the processed signal. The level controls seem to apply to both signals.

What would be a good preset for a talk format?

While testing Live with music, the bass is somewhat distorted even with the settings at their defaults. Nothing is being overdriven on my end, and the sound card is an M-Audio Delta 1010LT. Any suggestions for fine tuning would be helpful.

 

[konbaasiang]

There is a news/talk preset in Breakaway Live. You could also try Reference Jazz or Reference Classical, since their frequency balance is better for talk than the other presets would be.

If you left it in Plutonium, that could explain distorted bass, as it's a pretty pushed preset out of the box. You could lower the bass control or the final drive, and the distortion should ease off.

Bypass is bypass: All the gain normally applied to bring your signal up to full scale is bypassed. Peak ref level is still accurate even in bypass -- it's the maximum possible peak level the output can have, at full scale (0dBFS) input.

I do agree a bypass gain control can be useful when doing A/B comparison, and I do have it in more recent projects. I will probably add it to Breakaway Live when I revisit it for the next release, but will not commit to a date estimate, because it's dependent on having enough free time to do it, between high-priority projects for Omnia and Linear Acoustic.

Best regards,
///Leif

 

[VoiceOfReason]

Reference Jazz
Range: 100
Power: 70
Speed: 80
Bass Boost: +16
Bass Shape: +4

The bass boost looks extreme, but it isn't once the final product comes out the other end. It's mainly to compensate for the thin voice quality network radio produces (ESPN in my case). Obviously adjust boost to taste.

If your AGC is bottoming out, reduce the range a bit, or input levels. I find that a lot of range is needed though if you have a variety of sources or are automated.

Talk audio levels and quality tend to be all over the place, and these settings seem to tame them without "sucking a guys spleen through the microphone".

 

[chriscollins]

We level out our BCTools Switcher with a good compressor/expander. It helps a lot with the varying of network processing. Our final product sounds quite nice.

Chain is BCTools>Compressor/Expander>Audiovault>Board>STL

 

[konbaasiang]

Actually, there is no such thing as the AGC bottoming out (in either Breakaway or Omnia.9). The meter bottoms out, but the AGC keeps can go down as far as it needs to. This is distinctly different behavior from certain other processors I'm familiar with, where the AGC actually stops attenuating where the meter stops.

That's not to say Range 100 could still be excessive though. Especially since it also increases multiband range.

Best regards,
///Leif

 

[Mike Phillips]

Thanks for the replies. Leif, you've done some amazing work with your products. We're probably going to start using Live on two streams in the near future, unless one of the two gets an Omnia. Internet audio can be very challenging. I have not yet found a way to accurately measure levels to know where DFS is to avoid clipping. My best shot at the moment is to calibrate to Leo Laporte's streams and compare this levels with our own.