Optimod 8600 or Omnia.11 on air?

[erwin33]

Which station is the first one air with the new Optimod 8600 or Omnia.11 on air?

 

[rorban]

8600: KSWD, Los Angeles

8600s are now shipping in reasonable quantities, so there will be dozens more soon.

Bob Orban

 

[erwin33]

KSWD The Sound in LA. Are they using the output of the 8600 for streamin on the internet? Or are they using 1100 or 1101?

I hope this posting gonna be longer with stations who using one of these new processors.

 

[rorban]

KSWD The Sound in LA. Are they using the output of the 8600 for streamin on the internet? Or are they using 1100 or 1101?

I hope this posting gonna be longer with stations who using one of these new processors.

I don't know about the stream, but I am told that they are using the 8600 for their HD1.

Because many stations consider their processing proprietary, listing our customers on a public forum is something that we only do if we get permission to do so, which we did in this case.

Bob Orban

 

[fugazi]

Bob,

I am really curious when the update boards are about to ship for the 8500 users.
I am very interrested to buy such upgrade especially after listening to your 8600 sound clip.

BR

Evert

 

[rorban]

Bob,

I am really curious when the update boards are about to ship for the 8500 users.
I am very interrested to buy such upgrade especially after listening to your 8600 sound clip.

BR

Evert

8500 upgrade kits will be available mid-2011. We felt that folks who paid full price for the 8600 should should get their money's worth by having a period of exclusivity .


Bob Orban

 

[jackos]

The Omnia 11 is on air in Melbourne Australia and has been/is being tested head to head against the 8600 in a number of other stations. The 8600 is an appreciable improvement over the 8500 but the Omnia 11 just sounds so much better than the 8600 it’s amazing. In the AB tests it was like someone was throwing a pillow over the speakers when we switched to the 8600. Don’t get me wrong the 8600 is great but there is something new happening with the Omnia 11 which is more than just tweaking of the 8500 can offer us. Sadly I suspect that anyone who races the 8600 against the Omnia 11 will opt for the Omnia. The good news for 8500 users is that they will be able to get more horsepower out of their existing processor when the upgrade ships, but it won’t beat the 11 head to head.

 

[fm-engineer]

The Omnia 11 is on air in Melbourne Australia and has been/is being tested head to head against the 8600 in a number of other stations. The 8600 is an appreciable improvement over the 8500 but the Omnia 11 just sounds so much better than the 8600 it’s amazing. In the AB tests it was like someone was throwing a pillow over the speakers when we switched to the 8600. Don’t get me wrong the 8600 is great but there is something new happening with the Omnia 11 which is more than just tweaking of the 8500 can offer us. Sadly I suspect that anyone who races the 8600 against the Omnia 11 will opt for the Omnia. The good news for 8500 users is that they will be able to get more horsepower out of their existing processor when the upgrade ships, but it won’t beat the 11 head to head.

Well, from a marketing standpoint Orban should have re-packaged the unit with a fresh chassis and graphics. The existing 84,85,86 chassis is 10 years old now. I have only listened to the clips provided on their website. You cannot deny there is major difference with the new clipping, and a step away from traditional Orban sounding highs. I think I read where Bob chose to invest the money in research and software, rather than into a new hardware platform. Maybe Omnia will post some linear clips comparing the Omnia 6Exi with the Omnia 11. I'm sure both units will begin to creep into the markets soon.

 

[BabyDJ]

I know someone who has an 8600 in California. We've been trading emails. It creams a 6EXI.

I'm sure that set up by the right set of ears it can play just fine with an 11.

 

[oldiesstation]

@Jackos

I didn't think the Omnia 11 was shipping yet?? Hate to ask a dumb question, but did you see it??

Reason i ask i was told a station was running the new 11.turned out it was the 6exi with a new nautel xmtr/exciter and eri antenna.But it sure sounded great,but it was not an 11.Normally the newer boxes first show up in markets like NY,LA in the states and London in the UK for maximum impact and chatter...thanks...

 

[erwin33]

Are there Omnia.11 soundclips available?

 

[erwin33]

@Jackos

I didn't think the Omnia 11 was shipping yet?? Hate to ask a dumb question, but did you see it??

Reason i ask i was told a station was running the new 11.turned out it was the 6exi with a new nautel xmtr/exciter and eri antenna.But it sure sounded great,but it was not an 11.Normally the newer boxes first show up in markets like NY,LA in the states and London in the UK for maximum impact and chatter...thanks...

Absolute Radio, previously Virgin Radio in the UK is also an Omnia user, 6exi or ONE? I don't know, maybe they using the .11 already?
The same for Z100, KTU and other Omnia users in NYC.

 

[rorban]

The Omnia 11 is on air in Melbourne Australia and has been/is being tested head to head against the 8600 in a number of other stations. The 8600 is an appreciable improvement over the 8500 but the Omnia 11 just sounds so much better than the 8600 it’s amazing. In the AB tests it was like someone was throwing a pillow over the speakers when we switched to the 8600. Don’t get me wrong the 8600 is great but there is something new happening with the Omnia 11 which is more than just tweaking of the 8500 can offer us. Sadly I suspect that anyone who races the 8600 against the Omnia 11 will opt for the Omnia. The good news for 8500 users is that they will be able to get more horsepower out of their existing processor when the upgrade ships, but it won’t beat the 11 head to head.

Australia is a 50us country and the 8600 factory presets for 50us were purposely tweaked not to sound harsh. They typically use 2dB lower band 4 thresholds than the 75us presets. Usually, the "pillow over the speakers" comment relates to different amounts of HF energy between the units being compared.

It may be necessary to raise the thresholds of bands 4 and 5 in the 8600 if it is in an HF response competition against the O11 in 50us countries. The 8600's 50us presets are capable of a great deal more HF output compared to their factory settings before the 8600's HF limiter starts to sound nasty. The 8600's HF limiter is capable of at least 3 dB higher output power at 15 kHz than is the 8500's HF limiter.

That being said, HF wars like this are usually run by men. Before one assumes that a larger amount of HF energy is needed than is found in the 8600's factory presets, womens' ears should be added to the assessment. What sounds pleasingly bright to men often sounds shrill and unpleasant to women.

Bob Orban

 

[rorban]

Well, from a marketing standpoint Orban should have re-packaged the unit with a fresh chassis and graphics. The existing 84,85,86 chassis is 10 years old now. I have only listened to the clips provided on their website. You cannot deny there is major difference with the new clipping, and a step away from traditional Orban sounding highs. I think I read where Bob chose to invest the money in research and software, rather than into a new hardware platform. Maybe Omnia will post some linear clips comparing the Omnia 6Exi with the Omnia 11. I'm sure both units will begin to creep into the markets soon.

The choice we made to package revolutionary sound in an evolutionary package was made for several reasons:

--In a challenging economic environment for radio and its equipment vendors, concentrating our engineering resources on sound quality improvements allowed us to get the 8600 shipping faster.

--We believe that putting an very expensive display on a processor is simply a waste of our customers' money because a processor is usually located in a monitoring environment that is far from ideal. Most serious preset tweaking will be done using 8600 PC Remote software running on a Windows computer with a much higher resolution screen than either the 8600 or the O11. Continuing to use a modest but adequate-for-the-task display allows us to keep our pricing under control -- the 8600 costs no more than the 8500 used to cost when it was our flagship. The cost of developing a new platform would have to be passed on to customers and the platform is not what people hear on the air. There is an old adage in the movie business about making sure that as much of the budget as possible "end up on the screen." In the 8600's case, most of the budget "ends up on the air."

--Most of the control software is the same as the 8500's. We have had five years to debug this software and to make sure that the various features work properly in a wide variety of environments. A newly developed platform is bound to have "version 1.0" issues.

--The 8600 control software's performance can be further optimized. For example, the next 8600 software release will speed up certain operations like scrolling through preset lists by about 3x.

--We are not abandoning our 8500 customers; we will provide an affordable upgrade path to full 8600 functionality. Particularly in the current economy, this seemed to us to be the right thing to do.

Finally, I should note that the 8600's DSP still has substantial headroom for future developments and at Orban, we have had a track record of creating major software upgrades for existing platforms. We did this with the 2300 (added stand-alone stereo encoder functionality), 8300 (added digital radio processing), 8400 (improved algorithms, reduced latency, and an HD Radio upgrade path), and 8500 (added independent EQ and 5-band compressor/limiter to the digital radio processing).


Bob Orban

 

[FFoti1]

--We believe that putting an very expensive display on a processor is simply a waste of our customers' money because a processor is usually located in a monitoring environment that is far from ideal. Most serious preset tweaking will be done using 8600 PC Remote software running on a Windows computer with a much higher resolution screen than either the 8600 or the O11. Continuing to use a modest but adequate-for-the-task display allows us to keep our pricing under control -- the 8600 costs no more than the 8500 used to cost when it was our flagship. The cost of developing a new platform would have to be passed on to customers and the platform is not what people hear on the air. There is an old adage in the movie business about making sure that as much of the budget as possible "end up on the screen." In the 8600's case, most of the budget "ends up on the air."

Bob Orban

Bob's statements about development costs do not apply to Omnia.11. When our company develops a platform, it is done with multiple products in mind. This crosses all of our brands, Telos, Omnia, Axia, and Linear Acoustic. On account of this, platform development costs are extremely low, and they do not impact the end price. The Omnia.11 LCD screen is lower in cost than the two LCD screens that were used in Omnia.6.

At the end of the day, a product's cost is set for a variety of reasons. It comes down to the worthiness for the end-user, and are they getting the value/quality desired, for the amount spent.

-Frank Foti

 

[BabyDJ]

I think the biggest problem is using the front panel of the Orban boxes. The joystick is an ergonomic nightmare. So much more has been done with a touchpad mouse (Vorsis) or even the clickable wheel like the Omnia and BW.

I was disappointed when I saw *another* model with that same design. As much as I like Orban, the front panel designs have been lacking all the way back to the 2200 (the 8200 was actually OK). I know I am not alone on this.

 

[The F Mister]

The touch screen on the DSPXtreme is extremely easy to use. I use the remote software to adjust the processing when doing big changes. But a quick change here and there are done with the touch screen. I don't even bother to bring up the remote application.

 

[jackos]

@Jackos

I didn't think the Omnia 11 was shipping yet?? Hate to ask a dumb question, but did you see it??

Reason i ask i was told a station was running the new 11.turned out it was the 6exi with a new nautel xmtr/exciter and eri antenna.But it sure sounded great,but it was not an 11.Normally the newer boxes first show up in markets like NY,LA in the states and London in the UK for maximum impact and chatter...thanks...

The Omnia 11s in Australia were certainly brand new shiny boxes in real life retail packaging, I had 5 of them on my hands for a brief while and with the lid off there isn’t anything about them that resembles an Omnia 6. When Frank said it was a new platform he really meant it! The qualification to that was that there will be a firmware update in the next couple of days to bring the user interface up to speed and to turn on some of the fun features (not related to processing at all) which Omnia had turned off for our demo. Technically I believe these were some of the first boxes shipping for demo purposes so they were keeping some things up their sleeves. We have delivery times for more so I guess it must be shipping, perhaps a soft launch of sorts?

As to comments about the 8600 just needing some adjustment, it was being adjusted by guys who have tonnes of experience with the Orban product and they use the 8500 currently so I guess they knew how to drive it properly. The Omnia 11 on the other hand we just turned on, so I guess there was room to make the Omnai 11 better still. Seriously, join the queue and get an 11 on demo and put it up against the 8600. It’s worth the hassle.

 

[BabyDJ]

The Omnia 11s in Australia were certainly brand new shiny boxes in real life retail packaging, I had 5 of them on my hands for a brief while and with the lid off there isn’t anything about them that resembles an Omnia 6. When Frank said it was a new platform he really meant it! The qualification to that was that there will be a firmware update in the next couple of days to bring the user interface up to speed and to turn on some of the fun features (not related to processing at all) which Omnia had turned off for our demo. Technically I believe these were some of the first boxes shipping for demo purposes so they were keeping some things up their sleeves. We have delivery times for more so I guess it must be shipping, perhaps a soft launch of sorts?

Sounds fishy to me. I guess it's easy when there's no way to prove any of this

 

[dspxscott]

I'll probably going to get my knuckles wrapped for saying it but this board is really starting to lose credibility (it did a long time ago in many people's eyes).

There are just too many 'new sign up' anonymous posters making unverifiable claims or questionable marketing posts, often with the a little bit of 'praise' for the other guy/s to make it look not so bad, which often makes it look worse.

Say who you are and on what basis your opinion on is based, or say nothing at all. Then we would have a proper community going rather than this sideshow that we have now.