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Optimod 8200 vs 8300

Ah yes.....96 Rock in Atlanta WAS a fine sounding station! Bob Helbush had/has a great ear and the PD's all loved him and didn't argue about processing....they knew not to disturb a genius at work!!
And WKLS ran a 8200 the last two years I worked there!! Before it was a 8100 XT combo. I set up the 8200 to emulate the XT.....Bob put the final tweaks on it and perfected the sound.....again, Bob Helbush could really make a radio play SWEET!
We were not squarewave loud....there was much dynamic range. Light compression and clipping.
And the mic was legendary....the ol' tube Nuemann!! It made every voice, from ballsy to junior, special. And no mic processing whatsoever.....just a good, clean mic and a simple airchain with moderate, tasteful processing.
 
I have stations that run 8200s, a 8300 and a 8400. As with many things, like others have already stated, it's all in settings, for the most part. The thing I find limiting about the 8200 is that is DOES grunge a bit when the audio becomes more mathmatically complicated. You can hear it trying to keep up if you listen close. I will tell you this. The 8300/8400 DOES NOT have that problem at all. If you are looking for that old analog kick, try to find a 8200. The 8300/8400 stuff is so good it'll sound great, but it's very open sounding and really sounds quite different than the 8200 or down. With that being said, I'd rather have a 8300. Properly set, it'll scare you have how good it sounds, quite within limits, even without clipping being turned up. As with all of Bob's digital stuff, the preset it just that. You'll be tweeking on it for quite some time if you have a good ear because, for your market's sound, you won't want to stop with what the preset does. If I had to buy another processor, I'd buy another 8300. Forget the 8400... Save your money. If you don't accept all you can get out of the box is what it comes with at first, you'll be extremely happy.
 
Sgeirk said:
That said, give me an Omnia 6 and I'll have any competition either running illegal or pushing their box into distortion to try and compete with the freakishly open and loud sound the 6 can make.
Click to expand...

I agree, I know many stations that run 105%+++++ on the mod to try and compete with others, and they sound horrible when compared to the O6
 
My key to 8200 happiness is defeating the internal AGC going outboard instead - then following it up with a decent clipper.

Don't drive it too hard. With the right clipper, you can get a very open - very loud sound out of the 8200.

I have one station on an 8200 with a 222A, multiband AGC and Aphex exciter in front of it and a non-MSI clipper after it. It's scary loud and absolutely kills the competition while still sounding good. It sounds very processed - very synthetic - but very open and LOUD - and for the format it works well.

Of course then again, my Omnia 6 station does the same thing with just one box.
 
OK. 8200 in Audioweb, $1500. CP-803 in Classicaudio, $600. Decent AGC (your choice) $500 - $1000. So, for $3100 you got what you consider equal to the Omnia 6 (And I don't argue that point one way or the other, it's too subjective). But, it begs the question,
How come you got the 6? Cost you a LOT more money for the same thing, dint it?
 
It's not just subjective. If your air-chain leading up to what point is worthy of 24/96 (or 100% digital studio/chain), there's no way analog/digital gear hodge-podge can compete.

So it is only "too subjective" if your airchain doesn't warrant anything better than the quality you can get with the 8200... and only if you can even tell the difference between the two with your monitoring equipiment, and your ears. That would indeed make it less subjective to you, but it doesn't mean that anyone else won't be able to tell the difference.

Just some totaly off-topic thoughts. ;)
 
Remember.....the ears are analog. It will be a "hodgepodge" of digital and analog until we can directly stimulate the brain electrically and bypass the electro/mechanical ear!
Enough of this sniffing about "you aren't smart enough to hear it" nonsense! There are people who claim to hear sonic differences between gold plated wire and copper wire....I guess those are the "real" audiophiles!!
A properly set up 8200 sounds EVERY BIT as good as anything else out there.....but that does depend on what you mean by good(subjectivity.)
 
littlejohn said:
OK. 8200 in Audioweb, $1500. CP-803 in Classicaudio, $600. Decent AGC (your choice) $500 - $1000. So, for $3100 you got what you consider equal to the Omnia 6 (And I don't argue that point one way or the other, it's too subjective). But, it begs the question,
How come you got the 6? Cost you a LOT more money for the same thing, dint it?
Click to expand...
Oh. I'd gladly take another Omnia 6 - heck, I'd take 3 if the budget was there because I've had dominant stations with them - but the company I work for isn't known for dropping big money on new processors when there's a perfectly good (insert name of outdated or also-ran processor here) kicking around somewhere.

Sometimes corporate just won't give you money for improvements that are seen as needed on the local level and you have to get creative.

If you know what you're doing with each individual piece of gear, you can piece together a system that performs very well and yields performance similar to an Omnia 6 or 8500.

What happens in the 6 isn't voodoo - it's just a collection of AGCs, compressors, limiters, EQs, spatial enhancers and other audio goodies written into code. The one advantage it might have over separate pieces in the hands of someone who knows how to use them is better SNR and lower IMD.

BTW... I wouldn't touch a CP-803 with a 10 foot pole - and my facility runs linear audio, out of ASI soundcards into Wheatstone boards. The facility is wired with Gepco.
 
Only the top music playing money makers change processing like underware. For the rest of the world, many older processors hang in longer (usually until they end up being a doorstop). This is where you add on little things to try and add muscle... which is where Texar Prisms and Stereo-Maxx and CP-803's and Ariane's come in (although the Omnia 6 is even much better with the Ariane).

The hope is that the average listener who tunes in with his/her GPX or Radio Shaft brand portable radio or on their Kenwood POS car stereo with overhyped bass will not notice that the horns are a bit clippy on the station running the 15 year old processo over the smoother sound of the $10,000 processor.

The real hope is that the moron adjusting the Omnia 6 at the competition has no idea and you could easily beat him with a pair of DAP-310's. 8)
 
OK. 8200 in Audioweb, $1500.
Click to expand...
Sure this not a fraud?

$1500 seems quite less.

There is a audigonseller and audiogonstore, both are offering a 8200 for a different price. One is originated in England, the other in america..... :-\

Regards,

Fugazi
 
"There are people who claim to hear sonic differences between gold plated wire and copper wire....I guess those are the "real" audiophiles!!"

If you go back through the Proceedings of the IEEE, you'll find a doubleblind test which was done between some of the gee - whiz high dollar dreck to hook up loudspeakers and #6 srtranded copper wire. The last sentence of the repot was - as closely as I remember, and I'm too lazy to go look it up - "Approximately half the group thought there was a problem with the system, and the other half thought they had heard the Emperor's new speaker cables."

However, replace 50 feet of 8451 with some of the $25 a foot stuff between amp and loudspeaker, and it will sound better, so the guy who reports the improvement is being truthful. Although he would of got the same result from the #6 stranded. Likewise, the PD who helps the engineering type coerce the bucks for a new proc amp out of the front office is telling the truth when it replaces something that's aged in the plant for five or six years with little attention. As an object lesson, in your market, try to tell which stations have analog paths between the source and the antenna someplace, and those who are a bitstream from the cd player to the modulator. I'll give fairly high odds that you can't. What you >can< do is pick out the technical operations who take pride in what they're doing and pay attention to it. The audio may be hammered dog-doo to the satisfaction of the programmers, but the pauses will be silent. There will be an absence of clicks and pops and extraneous artifiacts. It won't change from the cool of the evening to the heat of the early afternoon. Them's the folks who are doing their job.
 
littlejohn, wise words.

for those who think people can't hear the diff between cables... check out Andrew Lipinski's bio:
http://www.lipinskisound.com/about.php
specifically
Andrew Lipinski's perfect hearing abilities were recognized by the US National Bureau of Standards, where he was the only individual to achieve a perfect score on the listening evaluation of phonographic recordings. "...one listener achieving a perfect score...""A score of 10 correct of 10 selections would be expected 1 out of 1000 times" - National Bureau of Standards (NBSIR 88-3725) on Mr. Lipinski's score
Click to expand...
they are talking about during Phillips DAT research, when he *perfectly* double-blind ABXed the difference between DAT recordings with & without SCMS copy protection.

nuff said. 8)
 
I have some gold plated copper strap to sell you guys "who are smart 'nough to hear the difference"....it'll make yer Omnia6 sound real damned digey-tell.
 
The "advantages" of gold-plated copper have been debunked many times. In fact it'll smear the phase responce more than just gold or just copper. Nice try tho. ;)

[edit] it's cos the electrons are "skinning" on the gold, and in this case the copper is simply an inductor. then again, you won't notice on that bose setup anyways. [/edit]
 
OKCRadioGuy said:
Forget the 8400... Save your money. If you don't accept all you can get out of the box is what it comes with at first, you'll be extremely happy.
Click to expand...

I agree. With v2.0 software for 8300, there's currently little difference between 8300 and 8400/8500 in terms of processing algorithm...


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
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