Is it just my ears, or would it be fair to say omnia went backwards when going from the Omnia FM to the 3FMT and 6FM? We operate two 3fmts, an Original, and a 6FM, and I think the Original sounds the best of all! The definition on the vocals sounds fantastic, whereas the new models tend to tear up the vocals. Also the top end sounds harsh, especially on the 3fmt....yuk. It's hard to get the 3fmt sounding bright without it tearing up the topend. Any tips?I want my 8200 back :'(Optimum modulation all the way!
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Omnia 3fmt
- Thread starter stace
- Start date
It's been so long since I had the original cards for my omnias...knowing what I know now I wished I had those cards at least for a week or two just so see the difference. Several people have said that the original sounded alot better than the upgrade. Frank...any ideas?
The Omnia 6 is much better than it's previous processors... same with the 8500.. better than the 8400 and leaps and bounds ahead of the 8200.One AC station near me recently replaced the 8200 with either an 8500 or Omnia 6 (it's probably an Orban since it has that Optimod bass). The difference was so drastic you knew it was changed as soon as you tuned in. There was so much midrange distortion with the 8200 that was gone with the new box. I never liked the 8200.. it was too far before its time and lasted too long in the game.Going on a limb, it wasn't until the 8400 and Omnia 6 that I was convinced digital processing was it. I felt, in the late 1990's, that a tricked 8100 with 6 band limiter... good AGC in front (usually consisting of a Compellor and Prisms) and careful composite clipping was better than the Aphex 2020, 8200, Unity 2000 and Omnia.FM. The only box I can't say that about was the CRL Millenium, never heard it.
Some of the best processing I've heard has come from an 8200. The 6 sounds natural but they're very difficult to set up to sound good. The 8200, (and all optimods for that matter) are a piece of cake! Our Engineers have been working for years to perfect the sound of our 6's, and more recently 3fmt's but can't quite match the punchy, super clean optimods of our oposition. My ears feel they at least took a step sideways at best when they upgraded the originals to the 6fms.The only optimod I don't like is the 2200, 2300. They don't have enough control of the top end.I would like to hear from someone who has used the new Orban 5300 with the 5 band Optimod structure? I imagine this would be competition for our 3fmt's
M
menotti1
Guest
my o6 sounds great.running the preset from the omnia site,warm comtemporary...and jack fm in jackson runs the omnia 5 ex and it has plenty of punch and bass, darn great sound...i would suggest you call Mark at Omnia, explain your setup and see what they suggest..a good set of ears and SLOW careful tweaking can get the desired sound you want...don't know what your air chain looks like .i come in on the AES side with comp out...same as jack fm in jackson ms, keeping it digital ..
Boy I have to disagree. The 8200 had lots of distortion artifacts even against an 8100 with the right adjustments and accessories. I've always believed that the 8200 should have been an analog upgrade to the 8100 and that Bob should have held back a few years on "total digital". All 8200's I have heard trash horns, guitars and female singers. Highs and lows are livable, but never have I heard more grunge than from an 8200. Even after all the upgrades, it was never as good has promised and the Omnia.FM easily beat it when it was introduced.stace said:
I think the main difference is that a monkey could set up an 8200, but we spent about a 2 weeks at a station I was at previous which ran the 8200 setting it up. I think thats why I've heard some great O6's but lots of awefull ones too. Same goes for the Unity 2000 and 3fmt. They're just too hard to get sounding right. I don't think I've ever heard a crap optimod signal.What would one do to reduce a signal sounding a little harsh on vocals and occasional midrange distortion on heavily limited material?
You also need to let people know where your processor is located, what's feeding it, what mics are you using, mic processing etc. All of these can affect the audio in very dramatic ways. Just make sure you are not reaching the headroom level of a device downstream of the processor. If the audio into the processor is immaculate, proceed from there.
Tip: For more highs, start with the A/C preset, then speed up the HF limiter recovery time. We think this box sounds sweet just barefoot. "Sweet" being the operative word; you can't push it by increasing the drive or you're out of the sweet spot and it splashes something fierce. However, when set up right, there of the digital chainsawing gratch of the 8200. (IMHO)Is it just my ears, or would it be fair to say omnia went backwards when going from the Omnia FM to the 3FMT and 6FM? We operate two 3fmts, an Original, and a 6FM, and I think the Original sounds the best of all! The definition on the vocals sounds fantastic, whereas the new models tend to tear up the vocals. Also the top end sounds harsh, especially on the 3fmt....yuk. It's hard to get the 3fmt sounding bright without it tearing up the topend. Any tips?I want my 8200 back :'(Optimum modulation all the way![/quote]
We have had nothing but great luck with with our Turbos. I will admit out of the box with the presets I was a bit dissapointed, but a quick call to Omnia Tech Support cleared up our issues. For our rock format we use a modified Rock preset with a tweak in the crossover and in the limiters, we were able to get the warm Omina sound and bring out the high end we were looking for. We have tried to get a bit louder using composite clipping but it sounded too harsh. Also, another bit of advice; run the HP filter from the input menu @ 30hz, this should help clean up your "big ballsy voices". The 03 Turbo is located at the transmitter site and we are using a discreet STL with a compellor (which I think helps soften voices) in leveling mode before the STL. I do have one suggestion for Omnia: Maybe set up a users forum message board on the Omnia web site for engineers to talk about the products and share tips, ect. That would be a good place for topics like this one. 73's
B
BofH
Guest
Omnia has been the best way to get easily get you that solid faithful bass and soaring high end, admittedly with a touch of grunge on some vocals. Let's just say that Frank believes in retaining as much dynamic punch as absolutely possible with the occasional bit of roughness around the edges. The output is very faithful to the source material, which can become its downfall when hit with some modern mixes with over "Aural Excited" vocals and too much peak limiting. The Omnia 6 really is a legendary processor and when I first heard it on the air in our market back in 2001 it absolutely melted the competition. The station that was running the Omnia 6 has changed to an Orban 8500 recently but to be honest I think the Omnia 6 was still better 
Even though the Omnia 6 is now over 5 years old - I suspect it was just a case of - "oh the Orban 8500 is flavour of the month, let's get it on the air"... It takes more tweaking compared to an Orban to get exactly what you're after but it's worth it. I've got no doubt an Omnia 3T can be moved into that sweet spot with careful control of input levels, and if you're a real quality freak, can't be bothered to wavegain or set levels manually on your music library and/or have untrained jocks who don't watch their levels and/or your station still plays direct from CD - just throw an Ariane Sequel in front of the Omnia for spectacular results. Bob Orban provides a much more controlled output from his processors, which are effectively plug and play boxes with a very controlled sonic signature by design - this provides an amazingly smooth, extremely dense sound but compared to the source material it's like its being remixed in a real time manner. He believes in maximising sonic quality and especially source to source consistency, and is very good at keeping vocals at the right place in the mix, whether that be where the original artist intended or not. However one of the problems I have with his boxes, especially the AM ones is the bass sounds artificial. eg, its almost like it is faked... I'm guessing what is happening here is he is smoothing out some of the peak bass energy and lengthening its duration slightly to give more impact. It gives you that big booming bass sound that's not really realistic compared to the source material but for a lot of people it's a nice effect. Also I find the HF energy is a lot more controlled which does remove a lot more ambience that Omnia boxes let through. I have to admit the Optimod 8500 has gained a lot of ground on the Omnia 6 and is definately almost achieves an Omnia style impact DSP-X - well I'd like to say I believe Scott Incz has produced a very balanced product which from my use seems to produce the best of both worlds. It's definately more Omnia like than Orban, and I think really competes on it's own merits. Especially with the addition of the Ariane technology in the DSP-Xtra, it's probably the most dynamic, clean, and LOUD processor on the market today. Like the Omnia, you need to spend time customising your preset to get the sound you're after - but isn't that what the fun of audio processing is all about!? That's my opinion anyway based on what I've heard in my market... YMMV
Even though the Omnia 6 is now over 5 years old - I suspect it was just a case of - "oh the Orban 8500 is flavour of the month, let's get it on the air"... It takes more tweaking compared to an Orban to get exactly what you're after but it's worth it. I've got no doubt an Omnia 3T can be moved into that sweet spot with careful control of input levels, and if you're a real quality freak, can't be bothered to wavegain or set levels manually on your music library and/or have untrained jocks who don't watch their levels and/or your station still plays direct from CD - just throw an Ariane Sequel in front of the Omnia for spectacular results. Bob Orban provides a much more controlled output from his processors, which are effectively plug and play boxes with a very controlled sonic signature by design - this provides an amazingly smooth, extremely dense sound but compared to the source material it's like its being remixed in a real time manner. He believes in maximising sonic quality and especially source to source consistency, and is very good at keeping vocals at the right place in the mix, whether that be where the original artist intended or not. However one of the problems I have with his boxes, especially the AM ones is the bass sounds artificial. eg, its almost like it is faked... I'm guessing what is happening here is he is smoothing out some of the peak bass energy and lengthening its duration slightly to give more impact. It gives you that big booming bass sound that's not really realistic compared to the source material but for a lot of people it's a nice effect. Also I find the HF energy is a lot more controlled which does remove a lot more ambience that Omnia boxes let through. I have to admit the Optimod 8500 has gained a lot of ground on the Omnia 6 and is definately almost achieves an Omnia style impact DSP-X - well I'd like to say I believe Scott Incz has produced a very balanced product which from my use seems to produce the best of both worlds. It's definately more Omnia like than Orban, and I think really competes on it's own merits. Especially with the addition of the Ariane technology in the DSP-Xtra, it's probably the most dynamic, clean, and LOUD processor on the market today. Like the Omnia, you need to spend time customising your preset to get the sound you're after - but isn't that what the fun of audio processing is all about!? That's my opinion anyway based on what I've heard in my market... YMMV"The 03 Turbo is located at the transmitter site and we are using a discreet STL with a compellor (which I think helps soften voices) in leveling mode before the STL."The above configuration is probably the single best way to run an O3t (maybe anyprocessor) because it puts all of the power right before the input to the transmitter and removes overshoot and splatter issues which are frequently causedby too much comp clipping into a composite STL. The compellor controls levels into the STL (usually set the process balance control to a 10am position) and also helps keep the O3t in the sweet spot. Of course, I loved the above setup feeding an O3 (non turbo) when I ran that previous to the O3t. THAT was a very clean and rich sound.
That, of course, is workable "if" you have a discreet stl. If you are using a composite, you're sol. Discreet STL, by the way, IMHO, is a better arrangement. If you lose one of your stl's at least you can still broadcast.
The Boxes are stand alone at the studio, with a composite stl. The 3fmt sounds very natural next to the original, even thou they're running different formats, and the original is simulcasting a satellite signal from Auckland. We use a brand new RS12 Console and AKG 4500C-BC Mic's along with Shure SM7's. Bass band is fine, Midrange can distort occasionally, and the highband is subject to agravating sibilence now and again.Tis true Orbans bass sounds almost artificial, but doesn't it sound fantastic, and everything but the 22-2300 from Orban are VERY consistent cut to cut. The thing I like about the Omnia family is they sound very natural, yet consitent. When you listen to you PGM feed and compare to RF, the Omnia sounds very faithfull to the original material, with a correction to the eq if needed. Whereas when we used Optimods, like posted above, it's almost like it's being re-mixed in real time. Although it does sound terrific.
M
menotti1
Guest
how does that akg 4500 bc sound compared to the SM7.i have one and don't like it..use a Shure KSM 32 in prod and sennheiser 421..i doubt akg has sold very many of those 4500's...use the EV re 20 on air, doesn't evrybody??
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