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Omnia.9

W

WNTIRadio

And we begin another processing thread, bound to start a few bar brawls amongst the golden ears ;D

Okay, so it's on the bench as of today.... my impressions so far:

- Holy crap.

- Really, holy crap.

- Game changer.

In all seriousness, this thing has the cleanest high end I've ever heard. No audible aliasing (there isn't in Frank's O-11 clipper either), just clean, defined sounding high end. It doesn't get smushed in with everything and buried. Bass is deep and strong. No time smear on the crossovers. And the de-clipper does a pretty good job of restoring the missing dynamics so the following processing stages have something to work with, especially on recent material. It's also smart enough to leave the non-crunched older stuff alone.

In a preliminary A/B with the Vorsis Air Aura, the one spot where the Vorsis falls apart is on the crossovers. 31 of them is a lot to manage in DSP (or analog), and I can hear it on the high end on 95% of the material I've put through it, which has been a good cross-section of my roughly 7,000 song library. It's a "smeary" sound on the highs. Tried all sorts of presets, backing the clippers off etc. to no avail. In their defense, I'm sending an email out to Mike in a few minutes to see if there's a solution to this.

Back to the Omnia.9, remember how clean Breakaway Broadcast is? Now take that and multiply it by about 4, and then add every control at your fingertips. Naturally, if you're not familiar with the inner workings of basic audio processing, you can get yourself in heap-big trouble pretty fast. There are simple controls too, like the ones in Breakaway if you don't want to dig deep.

What impresses me with this unit too, is the bonus features of being able to store audio on it in case of STL failure, the dynamic RDS encoder (can send the Inovonics back and save my client $2,100 in the process if the Omnia is purchased) and the ability to send a stream right from the processor.

I've only had it set up for 6 hours, so more to report tomorrow soon. Leif, if you're reading this, please PM me... got a slew of questions for you!
 
WNTI,

Keep the test reports coming! I have several clients wanting to demo the Omnia 9 that are on waiting lists. What is your take on the "Psychoacoustic Composite Embedder" which they claim allows up to 140% audio peaks in stereo at 100% total modulation. That claim is from the Omnia 9 website. Is this some form of composite clipper? Is it always active or is there a drive control? How does the composite output compare with the AES output (for stations that want to use pre-emph AES to exciter)?? Thanks
 
Peak control is as water tight as a frog a** (my grandfather had a list of these sayings about a mile long), nothing even creeps up to 102% to light the peak flasher even with aggressive processing. The composite just hangs there at 100%, even on the Inovonics 531, which is pretty fast reacting. Yet, it still has dynamics. Really weird, not what I'm used to hearing when the meter looks like a sinewave at 100%!! Peaks on L/R are around +1 where I'm running it, and the Inovonics, Day Sequerra (that I need to run thru an exciter/dummy load to see) and Belars all agree. That's of course, not de-emphasized audio.

The downward expander is nice to have, especially with "oldies" material. Gets rid of a lot of the hiss but you can't hear it pumping or working.

It's worth the wait... If I had a spare $10k laying around I would keep one at home to listen to everything. Can't wait to put it on the air next week and hear it in context with the other NYC blowtorches.
 
If you are playing things at home on a computer just buy the $29 Audio Enhancer. My kids are tired of me saying "what a great program" when listening to music. Wish half the stations that I have ever worked at sounded as good as the audio enhancer!
 
Already have Breakaway Broadcast at home. But it's not the same, not being able to get to all of the controls and tinker on BBP. Sure, it does sound great, but an engineer has to tweak controls (formerly known as knobs and trim pots).
 
This Omnia.9 is the 8100a of now... a revolutionary product that will have a lasting impact on the craft of processing. I don't say that lightly either, it really is quite a radical departure from the norm ("NORM!"--sorry for the Cheers reference), in a very good way. I wish I could attach a video of the L/R meters on the Belar flopping around with dynamic range and peaking at the end of the scale while the composite meter just hangs at 99% like it's been glued there.
 
I'm curious how the O9 compares to the O11. I know that they are totally different boxes but I wondered if anyone has made any comparisons. And going from an O6 (which we were quite satisfied with until the 11 got here) on our format of DG Adult Standards to the 11 is an amazing change and the station really stands out from the competition (even more than the 6, which stood out nicely on it's own).

I'm not an Omnia shill, at heart I'm an audio purist who is very impressed by the quality of these boxes to make FM sound much more pure and clean but still loud and punchy where it needs to be. I also won't likely get to evaluate a 9 for myself so these reviews posted here are very educational to a guy like me who has a full time TV job but does some contract engineering as a part time fix for the radio addiction.

Thanks for the info and the indulgence.
 
The 9 and the 11 are very different processors. In fact, they have no technology in common at all. Some people like one, others prefer the other -- it's best to try both and see which one suits you best :).
 
It does do that!! I'll try and make a video tomorrow afternoon. After I do, if anyone wants one they can PM me.
 
...if you've ever tried to hunt down something obscure on the internet and reached a dead-end at a forum post which referenced something no longer accessible, you know why PM is a bad idea. Forum posts stay in the internet archives forever, and it's especially annoying when the dead-end forum post is the top search result, with every other reference referring back to the first dead-end!
</pet_peeve> :)
 
I guess I could do that... I'm just technologically weird. Into computers/RF/etc. for years, but took me forever to get a smartphone (last year), forever to get on Facebook (girlfriend prodded me to do so ) and don't have a Youtube account, Twitter or any of the other ones.

I'll set up a Youtube and post it there either tonight or tomorrow.

**Ever so slowly being subsumed by the tide of social media**
 
If you email me the video, I will post it for you and put the public link here.

My email is ccollins.krvv (at) gmail . com

Spaced for the bots.
 
I'll get that video soon... got swamped this week with an unexpected big upgrade opportunity for an AM client and a new FM transmitter arriving for another. When it rains it pours, and in this economy, I'm not complaining!
 
I'm keen to see the video as well. If you can, take some footage of the Omnia as well, doing its thing and
perhaps push some buttons so we can see what the menu is like and how it looks in use.
 
I sent Chris the video to post on Youtube... took it with my Blackberry which shoots video like crapola.

Will get better video later on this weekend when I'll have an iPhone at my disposal to take HD video. I'll shoot some of the screens as well as the remote control application on the PC. That's one of the many awesome features. Being able to blow everything up on a 24" screen and see the spectrum analyzer (built in!) and all of the dynamics meters AND have all the adjustments on the bottom is the best way to work!
 
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