• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

How is our online processing?

Andrew-

I listened for a short bit on inexpensive desktop speakers to the Windows player. While your station is loud, I found the sound to be somewhat fatiguing. No disrespect meant, but I'm sure you want truthful answers. That said, there are others here with much better ears, so I would be interested in their evaluation.
 
Listened on Genelecs... nice stream for the bitrate. Processing's nice, the fatigue factor depends on the music itself. There are songs that out of the cd sound already fatiguing. The graphic shows some dynamics, commercials sound balanced.
What's the setup?...
 
stream is 256k on media player and aac 64k...
Anyway, stream is not loud at all, as previously stated. Processor is i guess orban. While there is decent 'dynamic' there are 2 problems i noticed. This format deserve bit better/louder bass (subs) and more important, highs are nice, but sometimes are too much kicked down usually on highs burst.
 
I personally like your sound for the most part; pretty gentle, and good volume control without crushing the life out of the music. I will confess I'm a fan of multiband compression density, so as you might imagine, it's a little lacking for me in that area... I hear the broadband AGC bounce up and down but not really "thicken" the sound... which is fine on pre-recorded music, but the live mic was just too all-over-the place and challenging to listen to.

I've heard so, so much worse that it's hard for me to criticize. I like the eq, I generally like the broadband AGC, I wish you had a bit more source-to-source consistency.

You've done an excellent job! You have plenty to be proud of on this stream.
 
Thanks for the input guys! For reference here is the competition in our area:
http://991hitsfm.com/mediaplayer/player.asp

No one has correctly guessed the processor yet ;) I'll give a hint that it fits in only one rack unit and isn't PC based...

I'll probably tone down the final limiter and lean to the multiband, that should help reduce the drop in level on bursts of audio (Bojcha: it was worse before when I had the drive for the final limiter drive up too much :)).

The live mics usually just go through a preamp/simple dynamics, when voice-tracked it goes through a proper compressor to prevent the audio from clipping. I guess I can turn up the drive to the WB AGC and see how that goes.

I wish there was an easy way to stream the FM processor/on-air signal. Would be awesome to get an opinion on that too, I'll see what I can do as a temporary stream of the competitor and us (FM tuners and a real audio card).
 
I turned up the WB AGC a fair bit, and I didn't notice that it sounded any worse but I haven't got a chance to listen any longer than a couple minutes.

No one has even guessed the right brand of processor yet so I'll tell you with a video ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHqf8PjHhA

It's an awesome machine, I'm still working out a way to stream FM for a bit. I'll probably just end up using the Icecast box that hosts the AACplus stream.
 
Yup, the phase rotator is on to help process the live voices a bit better.

I have tried to adjust for a bit more bass as well, the music could use a bit more 'thunder'. Let me know if I end up overdoing it hah!

What does everyone else use on their streams? I have heard good things about the Orban 1101 and BBP but not much about anything else, would be nice to hear everyone else's opinion.
 
Bojcha said:
how this sounds to you http://goo.gl/Lh4xN
Click to expand...

The mp3 compression kinda takes away from the quality but other than that it sounds pretty good, one reason I love AACplus! I usually like a bit more top end but it is very listenable and not overly compressed (could probably back off on the limiter/clipper a notch or two). I did also notice that your stream sometimes exhibits the same drop in audio as ours did until I increased the WB AGC and reduced the limiter. I'm not the greatest in recommending what to do to make it sound better, I always find it's much easier having the settings in front of you. What are you using for your stream?

Oh and I haven't the slightest clue what any of the IDs or liners say ;)

Our setup is something like this:

AES from MCR -> Omnia One Multicast -> AJA AES to Analogue converter -> Antex LX-44 (since our new AudioScience AES card doesn't want to work with the computer currently in use)
 
Bass is a bit over-hyped, coming out as a "thud" more than thunder right now. Too much bass boost will actually drive the limiters harder and counteract what you're trying to accomplish.

Where do you have the low band AGC and limiter release set? Attack too?

Slow the attack on the low band down a bit, and the release too. What is your bass clipper set to?

Slow the wideband AGC down just a hair and let the multiband do its thing.

High end sounds nice, so does the midrange.
 
WNTIRadio said:
Bass is a bit over-hyped, coming out as a "thud" more than thunder right now. Too much bass boost will actually drive the limiters harder and counteract what you're trying to accomplish.

Where do you have the low band AGC and limiter release set? Attack too?

Slow the attack on the low band down a bit, and the release too. What is your bass clipper set to?

Slow the wideband AGC down just a hair and let the multiband do its thing.

High end sounds nice, so does the midrange.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input and I did notice that after listening for a while earlier, these are the settings:

Low Band:
AGC Attack: 3.0 Release: 2.5
Limiter Attack: 4.0 Release: 4.0

Bass clip is at 2.0dB Girth

I also increased the attack and release on the WB AGC a notch each, and reduced the Low Drive a dB. I'll see what I can do with it tonight before my extra long weekend :) It's pretty hard to audition bass on headphones, even with good ones. I might have to purchase some nice monitors someday.
 
Slow down your low band AGC attack to 2.0 or 2.5 and see how it sounds. Try the low limiter at 3.0 attack too. Keep the release at 4.

The key is you want enough of the bass dynamics to pass through the compression sections.

Slow down the attack on the WB AGC as much as you can and still keep things in the sweet spot in the following stages. With the hypercompressed material that you're playing, the WB AGC should only be acting as a "slow hand on the pot" to ride gain.

Back the bass clipping down to .5 to 1 max, that's where a lot of the "thud" is coming from. Set your filter to a high number, like 6 or 7 and see how that sounds.
 
WNTIRadio said:
The key is you want enough of the bass dynamics to pass through the compression sections.

Slow down the attack on the WB AGC as much as you can and still keep things in the sweet spot in the following stages. With the hypercompressed material that you're playing, the WB AGC should only be acting as a "slow hand on the pot" to ride gain.

Back the bass clipping down to .5 to 1 max, that's where a lot of the "thud" is coming from. Set your filter to a high number, like 6 or 7 and see how that sounds.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for the help :) Everything makes just a little more sense, I always have to refer to the manual when trying to figure out if higher numbers are slower or faster.

I tried to aim for the 'hand on the pot' WB AGC but I guess I never actually put much thought into getting it right, though when it is right it makes a huge difference!

Anything clipping usually doesn't sound the greatest, one reason why FM radio has that traditional 'radio' sound (intermod distortion, etc.) From hearing an Omnia 11 on another local station it really proves how awesome FM radio can truly sound.
 
Hm-m-m... listening to Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" (a rather dynamic recording) and I don't care for how much wideband AGC you have on the line... I hear it pumping and breathing with the voices, percussion, etc... the loudness and density I think you're looking for will come from driving the MULTIBAND harder, not the wideband, IMHO.

I'd slow down the AGC / reduce the compression ratio / raise the threshold or gate / lower the drive to try to get a little more natural sound fed to the multiband section... I don't know the Omina One's setting options, but I rarely have success in wideband AGC going any higher that a 3:1 ratio... and lower usually sounds even better.

...On a positive note, the levels you're feeding your encoder look good and clean. It's amazing how many stations screw that one, so-easily-fixed, item up. No matter how good your processing was, if you were hitting the encoder too hard, your work would be in vain.

Keep after it! This is interesting to follow.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom