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Omnia 11 first impressions

WNTIRadio said:
Well, it's here and on the bench!! Equipment used is iTunes (.wav only) out through an Echo Layla 24/96 card into a Wheatstone SP-6. Main SP-6 outs to Ariane Sequel, Ariane AES to 11 in. 11 to a Bext PTX-80 running real low into a 50w dummy load. Monitoring is either a Belar FMM-2, Day Sequerra M2.0X, Inovonics 531 or a Denon TU-680 tuner. This is the preliminary version, for a client somewhere near the Jersey Shore (fist pump if you must).

Now that the picture is painted, I've been running some of the famous "torture test" songs through it. VERY clean and open high-end. Almost too much when you first listen to it. Dialed in the CG Smooth preset and went back and forth turning the wideband AGC on or off and the Ariane on or off. Still like anything with the Ariane better than without it. So with that settled, the Ariane stays on and the listening begins. Went through a bunch of presets just to get the flavor of each.

That Kelly Clarkson song, "Because of You": The shredding is minimal on her humming at the start. Way better than the 8500 that was being evaluated before. Would have liked to try the 8600, but the deal on the O-11 was just too good to pass up and the time frame was starting to crunch.

The other ones on the Orban list of "problem child" songs were very clean as well.

One trip up though, Fleetwood Mac's "Seven Wonders". Try this on your processing set up if you can. The synth on the beginning gets shredded with all sorts of nasty distortion, then Lindsey's guitar comes in high on top of it and it's not pretty. It's clean going in, I did a double check with the audio on the board just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. Same thing happened on the 8500. Oddly, the one processor that passed it better than all the others (including ye olde 8100a) was Breakaway. The O-11 was more detailed and consistent than Breakaway in almost every other song, other than that intro. Which is what I expect with an $11k processor vs. a $299 piece of software...

That being said, this thing is CLEAN and effortless, no matter what I throw at it (except for Seven Wonders). I've only had it here for about 4 hours, sorry if this post is a bit rambling and disjointed. Kinda like the first ride in a new car right now, exciting and getting to know where all the buttons and knobs are and how the engine goes when you step on it.
Click to expand...

Wow, you lucky bastard!... What I wouldn't trade you for four hours alone with an O-11... And no, I would not let you watch!

I would ALMOST trade you the two best hours of my life that I spent with one of the hottest women on the planet!... And just to clear what I would be giving up...

1. She was better looking (in my opinion) than the woman in the Omnia.11 "more revealing" print ad... (No offense to the woman in the ad... She was very beautiful, and she might be related to Frank!)

2. I'm not the worst, but certainly not the most appealing guy in the world, so such an event will NEVER be happening again for the remainder of my living days.

3. She was there willingly. (not a "paid" guest, if you know what I mean)

4. Alcohol was involved, but not to the point of creating what we like to call "Beer Goggles".

Hmmm... This could start a whole new thread!

"Audio processors are better than women and/or men because..."

Okay, no offense intended! I'm tired and silly, and I'm going to bed!
G'nite all!
 
dannyscott101 said:
Hmmm... This could start a whole new thread!

"Audio processors are better than women and/or men because..."

Okay, no offense intended! I'm tired and silly, and I'm going to bed!
G'nite all!
Click to expand...

They are better because the processor doesn't have daddy issues, and doesn't freak out when told "I love you"?!?

In all fairness, I have better taste in audio processing then women...
 
I think I got the Omnia.12 of women, I got lucky... very lucky. The first 30 years of searching was sifting through Volumaxes, but in the end the wait paid off :) (And she doesn't read the engineering board, so I'm not trying to win brownie points)

Back to the audio side of things...

The more I use and listen to it, the more I can fine tune things to sound better. One of the interesting side effects that I've run into is that the box is usually so clean, that one tends to try to push it harder. Human nature. It's easy to go too far on one song and then the next one pulls you back to reality, that even though the clipper is the best I've ever heard, it isn't magic and you can't crank it all the way up to "crunch" and not expect to hear some side effects of the clipper. When run at a loud but normal level, those distortions are very minimal.

The other problem, so to speak, of that cleanliness is that it sometimes reveals the limitations of the source material. If you're running any type of compressed music on-air, the usual FM distortions won't mask the compression artifacts. This of course isn't really the fault of the processor, it's the fault of anyone running compressed material when 2TB hard drives are under $100. With storage so cheap, I can't think of any valid reason to compress source material any more.

Frank, Bob and every other processing guy has always said "garbage in=garbage out" and it is even more true now. I ran some MP3's through it just to see what it sounds like, and those high end swirls are there, that are more masked with the other processors I've used.
 
Just remember that "cleanliness is next to godliness" ;)

WNTIRadio said:
<snip>
The more I use and listen to it, the more I can fine tune things to sound better. One of the interesting side effects that I've run into is that the box is usually so clean, that one tends to try to push it harder. <snip>
Click to expand...
 
What format do you guys suggest/recommend that I put music on my hard-drive in?
 
.WAV, 44.1khz 16 bits. There's no reason to go any higher, you'll just waste space. That's how it is on your CDs, and you won't gain any advantage using a higher sample rate or bit depth. Remember that if you rip an MP3 to CD and then rip it back into another computer, it is still contains all of the compression artifacts of the MP3.
 
WNTIRadio said:
I think I got the Omnia.12 of women, I got lucky... very lucky. The first 30 years of searching was sifting through Volumaxes, but in the end the wait paid off :)
Click to expand...

Nothing worse than going home with an Omnia...

And waking up next to a Volumax!

Okay, I'm done hijacking the thread... Still, you are a lucky guy to get to spend hours and hours playing with someone else's box.

Ohhh... Did that sound bad?... The 'clippers' of tasteful posting are about to kick in.
 
I understand that there are at least two Omnia 11s that just went on in Toronto. Can anyone confirm this? Any off-air impressions?
 
I love my Omnia 11! After a few weeks of fiddling with the controls and going back and forth with Mr. Gould (thank you so much) about the different settings and what exactly is going on under the hood, it's sounding better than ever. The build out of the CP that it's going to live on should be done by mid-March, and I'll also set up a webstream with the HD output, since there's no HD on the station.

Can't wait for version 1.0 with all the other features ready to go.

I went back and forth with some different presets and settings, and tired it out barefoot without the Ariane Sequel in front of it. The WB-AGC that's in there sounds very smooth and you really can't hear it doing its thing. The window feature is nice too. I got very used to the sound and then switched the Ariane back in and turned off the WB-AGC. I still prefer to have the Ariane in line, it's nice to have the extra control and to my ears the midrange was a little smoother with the Ariane. But I just like the Ariane and would put one on my toaster if I could (would make it evenly golden brown)... hands down the best AGC out there.

I also wouldn't hesitate to deploy an O-11 without one if the budget didn't allow for the Ariane. And overall, the limiter and clipper stages are so transparent that you don't think they're really doing anything, until you look at the mod-monitor and then compare with other stations. The most drastic comparison was going between my little test setup into the exciter with the dummy load and some other stations in the driveway on the car radio.
 
Doesn't turning off the wideband AGC defeat that Chamelion density detector or at least throw it off? I would actually think putting any type of AGC in front of that would defeat the purpose
 
>>>There is an Omnia 11 on the air in Chicago as of today.<<<

I'm wondering if it is WXRT. They sound very different to me today (Feb. 18), since a few days before, or maybe even the day before. If that is the case, I'm sorry, I am not impressed. If it is not WXRT, I would sure love to know who it is then. How the heck are some of us supposed to know what the new boxes sound like on the air, if we don't know who is on the air with them? There are some of us that don't make it to the NAB, but still have purchasing power.
 
BabyDJ said:
Doesn't turning off the wideband AGC defeat that Chamelion density detector or at least throw it off? I would actually think putting any type of AGC in front of that would defeat the purpose
Click to expand...

No. The density detector operates on the multiband AGC section as well.

-Frank Foti
 
Brian Bowers said:
>>>There is an Omnia 11 on the air in Chicago as of today.<<<

I'm wondering if it is WXRT. They sound very different to me today (Feb. 18), since a few days before, or maybe even the day before. If that is the case, I'm sorry, I am not impressed. If it is not WXRT, I would sure love to know who it is then. How the heck are some of us supposed to know what the new boxes sound like on the air, if we don't know who is on the air with them? There are some of us that don't make it to the NAB, but still have purchasing power.
Click to expand...

It's not WXRT. Unfortunately, most customers wish to keep their processing chain as private knowledge.

-Frank Foti
 
WNTIRadio said:
I love my Omnia 11! After a few weeks of fiddling with the controls and going back and forth with Mr. Gould (thank you so much) about the different settings and what exactly is going on under the hood, it's sounding better than ever. The build out of the CP that it's going to live on should be done by mid-March, and I'll also set up a webstream with the HD output, since there's no HD on the station.

Can't wait for version 1.0 with all the other features ready to go.

I went back and forth with some different presets and settings, and tired it out barefoot without the Ariane Sequel in front of it. The WB-AGC that's in there sounds very smooth and you really can't hear it doing its thing. The window feature is nice too. I got very used to the sound and then switched the Ariane back in and turned off the WB-AGC. I still prefer to have the Ariane in line, it's nice to have the extra control and to my ears the midrange was a little smoother with the Ariane. But I just like the Ariane and would put one on my toaster if I could (would make it evenly golden brown)... hands down the best AGC out there.

I also wouldn't hesitate to deploy an O-11 without one if the budget didn't allow for the Ariane. And overall, the limiter and clipper stages are so transparent that you don't think they're really doing anything, until you look at the mod-monitor and then compare with other stations. The most drastic comparison was going between my little test setup into the exciter with the dummy load and some other stations in the driveway on the car radio.
Click to expand...

Which station is using it for there webstream? I wonder how it sounds.
 
Maybe Brian can check out Q101 and the loop.(Emmis).It seems that the 11 would stand out among the clutter and be easily identified,without call sign disclosure.. If not,what's the point in replacing a processor? Makes sense? Just my thoughts for what ever it's worth.I've heard clips of both O boxes and like them both.Some sound better on one than the other and vice versa.Preference and setup,i suppose.Subjective??,sure..
 
Thank you very much oldiesstation. I do like what I am hearing on The Loop. What I do like about them is low end punch that I don't think I've ever heard anywhere before, a high end that I am always struggling to attain on a processor of ours, that I would die for, and I like that The Loop's processor retains much of the original mix texture. I just recently started punching up them up while commuting since reading about their format tweak lately, and I was immediately impressed with their audio quality. One thing that does bother me about The Loop is that when the air talent opens the mic and does a break (I can't tell if it is a live break or voice-tracked one), I find myself turning down the volume, since their voice tracks or mic processing is very overwhelming, and is much louder than the rest of the station's programming. Just a bit too much for my ears. Not so much of a Q101 listener, but I will now punch them up and give them a technical listen. Appreciate the tip.
 
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