NEW FM PROCESSOR

[jesseg]

and also... some how the New York preset in that beta isn't my absolute latest, which was my bad for not sending to Leif before... 5 minutes ago.
:
But yeah, the latest compared to the one in the current beta... sounds even a bit more well controlled, bit less harmonic distortion, a bit smoother & a touch less strident, and the addition of massive amounts of noise reduction, mainly on the low frequencies.

Anyways and yes, Jill FM... is something I've wanted to do for a long time. As you probably figured out, it's my answer to Jack FM. And is my personal favorite for a great balance between loudness and openness. The preset is just pristine on everything that gets put through it too.

I'm also hopefully going to get two more presets sounding good enough for launch, a 1970s influenced one (think... DBX comp -> DAP310 -> Level-Devil), and the "Ibiza" preset.

 

[Tom Wells]

I am ready to buy NOW

Despite Breakaway FM being perfect for FM, I find I can set it to permit what I need:
Sufficient peak information to hit 125% frequently, yet enough range to permit the mod to drop to 50-60%,
permitting BIG PUNCH if the sound has it, and giving enough % range to sound loud on AM, with enough room to hear side chain reverb.
Balance is good at any listening level on the radios. I'm testing on about 5 different radios, from ancient to PLL digi-tuned radios.


I have my wallet open.
I have accquired a laptop to run the whole thing on, networked it, tested it, and love the result combined with my ART VLA.
BUT, French Kiss is SO wet, I might-could retire the ART after more experimentation.
I have almost pushed the BUY button, but there's now a good reason for me to wait a wee bit longer.
( Pause while waiting attentively )

Many thanks to those behind this project. The price to value ratio is incalculably small considering the definition this adds to audio.

 

[konbaasiang]

Hi Tom!

I will create a Breakaway AM thread right now .

///Leif

 

[konbaasiang]

For future discussions regarding AM broadcast with Breakaway FM, please go here:

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,113197.0.html

See you there, Tom!

///Leif

 

[oldiesstation]

Really good presets.when is the final version going to be ready for sale?

 

[konbaasiang]

It won't be long, Oldiesstation.. I know, I've been saying it for a while, and I've been working constantly on it. I can almost guarantee it'll be ready for sale this month .



New version is up! New name too, in fact:

Breakaway Broadcast Processor

It just got too confusing to call it FM, when it's also optimally suitable for Web radio, HD radio, DAB radio, DRM radio, and even AM radio (optional asymmetrical clipping, even!)

Several new presets have been added (try French Kiss in particular, it's alarmingly addictive) - and BBP now saves the slider settings for each preset, to make it much easier to compare presets.

New calibration tones (both for FM and AM) as well, and lots of other things I can't even remember -- it's been constant work.

URL is the same for now, but official website is only days away!

http://bredband.leif.cx/browse/bafm

Best regards,
///Leif

 

[Ted Russell]

Leif,

In the personal edition of Breakaway, I have been playing around with the demo version, and am strongly considering buying it for a webcast stream that I hope to be setting up soon.

Here's the thing, I find that the input / output settings, The only choice for input is "Breakaway Pipeline" and the only choice for output is my sound card. Are there more options in the purchased version of Breakaway personal? Will there be more input and output choices in the purchased version?

Thanks for the info.

Ted Russell

 

[konbaasiang]

Hi Ted!

Those are the available choices in the $29.95 broadcast quality digital processor. See an oxymoron somewhere?
It's what we had to do, to be able have a product in the price range of regular people, without sacrificing audio quality

For webcast, the product to use is Breakaway Live. It doesn't exist yet, but it's next on my to-do list after Breakaway Broadcast is done, and will cost $129. It will have the same audio core as the personal edition, but will have all the broadcast related presets from Breakaway Broadcast, and several options not available in Breakaway Personal (beyond using sound cards for input and virtual cables for output) such as the choice between Low Latency or Phase Linear, ASIO support (for true low latency monitoring -- this way it can be used as the low latency output for Breakaway Broadcast).

Remember, the $129 price tag must be compared to processors like Omnia A/X and Optimod 1100.

Best regards,
///Leif

 

[The F Mister]

Funny how you keep comparing stuff..... Omnia A/X and Orban 1100 in one sentence...... ??? :-\
Maybe it's time to brand your product as a new league and stop comparing it to the rest that is clearly launched with other goals in mind. Should I compare your $200 BAP to an 1100 HARDWARE card??? I bet I can't run you software in an 600Mhz pc so I'll need to invest on that and add those costs to your $200 and maybe then it's up for comparing...... unfortunately I'll still have CPU usage with your software while the 1100 does his thing on its own...... see why I won't be comparing any time soon.

I have nothing against your product but I think its better if you just launch your product and leave the comparing to the people that actually need to make the decision between product a/b/c etc.

 

[jesseg]

Should I compare your $200 BAP to an 1100 HARDWARE card???

Yes. A/X and PC1100 both *require* a running Windows computer to function. Also I might add that the PC1100, being digital, is not hardware but is in fact software running on DSP chips. As far as I'm concerned hardware is only the actual physical gear, be it DSP, CPU, or pure analog. A CPU would have no problem what-so-ever running the PC1100 code... In fact your CPU could probably get away with running 5-10 instances of it.

I bet I can't run you software in an 600Mhz pc

Actually... you should easily be able to run Breakaway Live (or system), and several encoders... on a 600mHz Pentium3 (just a guess as to what your CPU is, but mHz means nothing)

so I'll need to invest on that and add those costs to your $200 and maybe then it's up for comparing......

An Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 is actually going up in price, since it's now starting to be an older chip, but it's still around $170 OEM, and even the full Breakaway Broadcast processor only uses about 11% CPU. With Breakaway Live, you should be able to run OVER 50 INSTANCES on that cpu. And it's NOT a fast CPU anymore.

unfortunately I'll still have CPU usage with your software while the 1100 does his thing on its own...... see why I won't be comparing any time soon.

Does a PC1100 cost more than the Q6600? (not even considering what you could get for your current P3, which would probably be hard to give away honestly) Take that into consideration as well. If anything, the comparison is unfair to the A/X and the PC1100, because of how much more advanced Breakaway is. But those companies have not offered anything that costs less, much less in the same cost class as Breakaway. Breakaway is a massive value double-play.

I have nothing against your product but I think its better if you just launch your product and leave the comparing to the people that actually need to make the decision between product a/b/c etc.

The only option that is fair to compare Breakaway Broadcast & Live to anything else... as far as audio quality... is the top-end FM and DAB processors from Orban, Omnia, Vorsis, DSP-X, etc. In fact - it's unfair to Breakaway, from an audio quality perspective, to be compared to A/X and PC1100.

 

[jesseg]

By the way, "Jill FM" and an improved version of "New York" presets are in the newest Breakaway Broadcast beta. What do you think of them?

I also have what may be the final version of Helix done, for Breakaway System/Live... which sounds AMAZING imo, and I'm planning on "porting" it over to Breakaway Broadcast shortly. I can't wait until you hear either of them.
;D

 

[Ted Russell]

Hi Ted!

Those are the available choices in the $29.95 broadcast quality digital processor. See an oxymoron somewhere?
It's what we had to do, to be able have a product in the price range of regular people, without sacrificing audio quality

For webcast, the product to use is Breakaway Live. It doesn't exist yet, but it's next on my to-do list after Breakaway Broadcast is done, and will cost $129. It will have the same audio core as the personal edition, but will have all the broadcast related presets from Breakaway Broadcast, and several options not available in Breakaway Personal (beyond using sound cards for input and virtual cables for output) such as the choice between Low Latency or Phase Linear, ASIO support (for true low latency monitoring -- this way it can be used as the low latency output for Breakaway Broadcast).

Best regards,
///Leif

OK, Thanks, that is good news. The reason I was considering the personal edition over the broadcast version is that it is much less taxing on the system resources (processing power). This is critical as I'm sure I'll be given an old computer to process and encode the audio on. It wasn't so much the price, but the system resources. I'll be looking for the Breakaway Live edition.

Thanks again!

-TR

 

[jesseg]

Erm, scratch that. the "New York" in the current beta wasn't updated. Leif said he would for the next beta, which should be out today/night. I should be able to get the new Helix in by then too. "Ibiza" is getting renamed to "World Tour" as it's modeled after the sound of a large-scale TurboSound setup. It sounds quite different than most of the presets. Not sure if it's going to make it as an official preset or not. You'll find out one way or another.

 

[The F Mister]

Should I compare your $200 BAP to an 1100 HARDWARE card???

Yes. A/X and PC1100 both *require* a running Windows computer to function. Also I might add that the PC1100, being digital, is not hardware but is in fact software running on DSP chips. As far as I'm concerned hardware is only the actual physical gear, be it DSP, CPU, or pure analog. A CPU would have no problem what-so-ever running the PC1100 code... In fact your CPU could probably get away with running 5-10 instances of it.

I bet I can't run you software in an 600Mhz pc

Actually... you should easily be able to run Breakaway Live (or system), and several encoders... on a 600mHz Pentium3 (just a guess as to what your CPU is, but mHz means nothing)

so I'll need to invest on that and add those costs to your $200 and maybe then it's up for comparing......

An Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 is actually going up in price, since it's now starting to be an older chip, but it's still around $170 OEM, and even the full Breakaway Broadcast processor only uses about 11% CPU. With Breakaway Live, you should be able to run OVER 50 INSTANCES on that cpu. And it's NOT a fast CPU anymore.

unfortunately I'll still have CPU usage with your software while the 1100 does his thing on its own...... see why I won't be comparing any time soon.

Does a PC1100 cost more than the Q6600? (not even considering what you could get for your current P3, which would probably be hard to give away honestly) Take that into consideration as well. If anything, the comparison is unfair to the A/X and the PC1100, because of how much more advanced Breakaway is. But those companies have not offered anything that costs less, much less in the same cost class as Breakaway. Breakaway is a massive value double-play.

I have nothing against your product but I think its better if you just launch your product and leave the comparing to the people that actually need to make the decision between product a/b/c etc.

The only option that is fair to compare Breakaway Broadcast & Live to anything else... as far as audio quality... is the top-end FM and DAB processors from Orban, Omnia, Vorsis, DSP-X, etc. In fact - it's unfair to Breakaway, from an audio quality perspective, to be compared to A/X and PC1100.

so...... actually you agree not to compare these products. Thanks that's just what I wanted to say. If it's so much better than the others and Leif has great faith in his product why does it constantly needs to be compared to the rest and positioned as so much better. I'll just figure that out for myself thank you very much.

 

[konbaasiang]

You're right, F Mister.

I mentioned comparing it with 1100 simply because this is Orban's primary product for streaming, and at least used to be considered state of the art. Omnia A/X is good one to compare it as well since it's actually sold as software, just like Breakaway products. I made no claims to the performance of either product -- I just said that they're the ones to compare the price to. However, you're right that that this was uncalled for -- There's absolutely no reason to make any excuses for the price tags on *any* of the Breakaway products.

I'll be very interested to hear your opinion once you've tested and compared properly, and formed it.

///Leif

 

[Phaser]

Hello to everybody, Leif I make some listening tests on a Breakaway “personal” version with “helix” preset just from curiosity and have an brief opinion for “what is that” all about fuss?
Well it sounds marvellous clean HF, good balancing sound with many music formats, excellent job for the price I like it very much (I wish my current processor sounds like that
BUT very soon I discover a very bad issue, what about GATE function? I hear that missing too badly especially (breathings) at intro and outro of each track or after a crescendo following a low intro I hear a rush-up AGC? So where is the freezing AGC Gate function? Such issues are things of the past, I never tough that today I may hear such issue. It’s ok Breakaway of 30$ is just a “poor’s mans processor” so I don’t expect so much (its true that the opposite happens) but NON Gated AGC? Maybe is on FM version? I don’t try it yet, if so then why? Not be and on the personal version? Thanks a lot for replies.

Best regards
XFon

 

[speakerman]

A station I'm currently working with is using WMS for web streaming at 64k. It works ok however we are looking into moving to aacPlus to cut down on bandwidth and improve the quality. The Orban 1010PE encoding software appears to work well from what I understand. We are presently feeding the streaming computer audio-in with the analog stereo out from the 8400 with pretty good results.

I have two new 2.5Gig Core 2 Duo machines that I have planned for streaming with one to act as the encoder and the other to be the stream server (Wowza). I wonder if I could run Breakaway and the Orban encoder software at the same time on one of these machines. We have a bunch of these machines we run Audition 3 on with very little CPU load and no dropout problems so far.

 

[konbaasiang]

XFon,

Thank you for your comments! I'm glad you like the sound -- but I wonder what's going on with the gating.
The AGCs and Multiband are gated, in both the Personal and Broadcast versions! The gating threshold is -30 and the freeze threshold is -40 for most presets, including Helix. Setting it higher in a preset is possible, but it tends to make things unpredictable. If it's gaining up quiet parts too much, have you tried turning down the Range control? The purpose of the Range control is to prevent boosting quiet signals too much, so turning Range down a bit should fix this problem with no other side effects.

Speakerman, it should run great on those machines -- I would estimate roughly 25% cpu use for Breakaway Broadcast. aacPlus is a great codec, I have nothing but good things to say about it.

Best regards,
///Leif

 

[The F Mister]

You're right, F Mister.

I mentioned comparing it with 1100 simply because this is Orban's primary product for streaming, and at least used to be considered state of the art. Omnia A/X is good one to compare it as well since it's actually sold as software, just like Breakaway products. I made no claims to the performance of either product -- I just said that they're the ones to compare the price to. However, you're right that that this was uncalled for -- There's absolutely no reason to make any excuses for the price tags on *any* of the Breakaway products.

I'll be very interested to hear your opinion once you've tested and compared properly, and formed it.

///Leif

Oh and I did, and it does his job well. I've said this before but will emphasize it again. I have nothing against your product but I just don't agree with ceirtain comaprisons being made. They seem a bit black and white and easy.

 

[EncSpy]

I cannot get the software to run on my athlon Xp 2800+, my computer freezes up and crashes before the software will even open...