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optimod 8600 rumours..

F

fugazi

Guest
Hi all,

I have heard some rumours about a possible 8600 processor from Orban.
Is it bogus or has it some truth?

BR
 
That's great! Not that i can afford one on the fly. That means that 8300, 8500 will reach their V3 status soon.
Looking forward to see the 8600 coming.

BR

Evert
 
fm-engineer said:
No rumor, the 8600 will debut at NAB 2010.
Click to expand...

Well, looks like it's going to be another interesting NAB for audio processing, as I'm pretty sure Omnia will show something as well. Not only is Omnia-6 relatively long on the market, but IIRC Cornelius will be with Omnia for almost two years by NAB - he must have cooked something during that time ;) apart from from some presets...


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
I look for "cleaner" processors, but not necessarily any "louder." I would think we have reached the limit on loudness. But who knows, maybe there will be several new concepts debuting. Orban went from the 8400 to 8500 rather quickly, but it was pretty much the same box with more HP, and 20 kHz HD path.

Goran Tomas said:
fm-engineer said:
No rumor, the 8600 will debut at NAB 2010.
Click to expand...

Well, looks like it's going to be another interesting NAB for audio processing, as I'm pretty sure Omnia will show something as well. Not only is Omnia-6 relatively long on the market, but IIRC Cornelius will be with Omnia for almost two years by NAB - he must have cooked something during that time ;) apart from from some presets...


Regards,
Goran Tomas
Click to expand...
 
fm-engineer said:
I look for "cleaner" processors, but not necessarily any "louder."
Click to expand...

Those two are interconnected - if the processor is cleaner at the same loudness, it means it can be pushed to be louder at roughly the same level of distortion. Those are two sides of the same coin...

Which is a bad thing, because many processor designs were made in an effort to improve quality and cleanliness, only to be used to achieve greater loudness with the same, or often worse, audio quality. But it's in human nature that there will always be someone who'll turn to "the dark side". And since the dark side is appealing and hard to resist ;) it usually drags the large part of the market there as well.

But I agree with you that loudness shouldn't be a major goal any more. There's more room for improvement in other areas.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
I don't think so on the V3, as the 8500 V2.06 hasn't been out very long (Sep09) I would guess V2 is it, but again, it is a guess. Paraphrasing here, but Orban himself said in another post that "they have limited engineering resources" and those are focused on new products.

fugazi said:
That's great! Not that i can afford one on the fly. That means that 8300, 8500 will reach their V3 status soon.
Looking forward to see the 8600 coming.

BR

Evert
Click to expand...
 
As some has surmised, the 8600 will not be louder than the 8500, but its improvements extend beyond "cleaner." Our goal was to give anyone in the market for processing a reason to buy an Optimod, even if they had not previously considered the brand because they had previously preferred certain aspects of other brands' sound, all while retaining or improving on Optimod's traditional strengths, including source-to-source consistency and low distortion.

Regarding loudness, we think that the internecine "loudness wars" are yesterday's battles. FM's challenger for audience share is now all-digital services and this is only going to become more pronounced in the future. Hence, our philosophy in designing the 8600 was to create a processor that allows FM to compete on a more even footing with services that do not suffer from the audio quality limitations caused by 50 or 75 us preemphasis. Research on this took two years and required developing some completely new "you can only do this in DSP" processing techniques.

All 8500s will be upgradable to full 8600 functionality by swapping a control module and DSP board, so anyone buying an 8500 at its new lower price will have an upgrade path available for approximately the cost difference between the 8500 and 8600. We do not plan to do a version 3 for 8500 because the existing DSP power is tapped out with version 2 and because, as another poster observed, we have limited engineering resources.

Stay tuned for further details.

Bob Orban
 
Sounds like this NAB may be very exciting for "us" processing enthusiasts! ;D

rorban said:
As some has surmised, the 8600 will not be louder than the 8500, but its improvements extend beyond "cleaner." Our goal was to give anyone in the market for processing a reason to buy an Optimod, even if they had not previously considered the brand because they had previously preferred certain aspects of other brands' sound, all while retaining or improving on Optimod's traditional strengths, including source-to-source consistency and low distortion.

Regarding loudness, we think that the internecine "loudness wars" are yesterday's battles. FM's challenger for audience share is now all-digital services and this is only going to become more pronounced in the future. Hence, our philosophy in designing the 8600 was to create a processor that allows FM to compete on a more even footing with services that do not suffer from the audio quality limitations caused by 50 or 75 us preemphasis. Research on this took two years and required developing some completely new "you can only do this in DSP" processing techniques.

All 8500s will be upgradable to full 8600 functionality by swapping a control module and DSP board, so anyone buying an 8500 at its new lower price will have an upgrade path available for approximately the cost difference between the 8500 and 8600. We do not plan to do a version 3 for 8500 because the existing DSP power is tapped out with version 2 and because, as another poster observed, we have limited engineering resources.

Stay tuned for further details.

Bob Orban
Click to expand...
 
dspxscott said:
Bob

Will we be able to A/B it against the 8500 in the MBL at NAB?

Regards
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the basic plan, although the A/B might be on one of the kiosks through headphones.
 
Hi Bob,

Would you tell me (us) if there will be some major architectural changes in the 8600 ie. amount of bands, agc etc.

Regards,

Evert
 
fugazi said:
Hi Bob,

Would you tell me (us) if there will be some major architectural changes in the 8600 ie. amount of bands, agc etc.

Regards,

Evert
Click to expand...

The main architectural changes are in the "back end" clipping system. Version 1.0 will use the same AGC and multiband compressor/limiter (2-band and 5-band) as the 8500 because we believe that these work very well and that the main room for improvement is in the peak limiting technology. However, the 8600's DSP board has more than 2x the computing power of the 8500's DSP board, so this leaves us with substantial DSP headroom if we want to refine the earlier processing stages in a future software release.

The 8600's new peak limiter typically provides 2.5 to 3 dB more clean high frequency energy than the 8500, depending on program material. This provides a big increase in HF clarity and "air." The new peak limiter also provides much greater transient impact -- people who felt that the 8500 unduly constrains the sound of snare drums and other percussion are going to be very happy with the 8600's new technology. The difference is not subtle.

Achieving these subjective improvements while decreasing audible clipping distortion and maintaining clean handling of speech was the biggest technical challenge in development, as improving transient punch and HF power handling capability have traditionally been tradeoffs against distortion.

The sonic changes between the 8500 and 8600 are much larger than the changes between 8400 and 8500.

Here is a link to more info:

http://www.rwonline.com/blog/94246

Bob Orban
 
fm-engineer said:
Bob,

Are there any plans to implement the new clipping style into the AM Optimods, 9300, 9400?
Click to expand...

With respect, this is the kind of question I can't answer publicly because my competitors read this board too :)
 
rorban said:
The 8600's new peak limiter typically provides 2.5 to 3 dB more clean high frequency energy than the 8500, depending on program material. This provides a big increase in HF clarity and "air." The new peak limiter also provides much greater transient impact -- people who felt that the 8500 unduly constrains the sound of snare drums and other percussion are going to be very happy with the 8600's new technology. The difference is not subtle.
Click to expand...

Sounds good! The 8500 does lack transient punch of, well let just say, some previous Orban processors. However, if you used ultra-low delay presets in the 8500, you could get some of that punch back, obviously you are then not using the look-ahead distortion controlling algorithm. If the 8600 can merry both...


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
wgliradio said:
I'm told there is a field upgrade for 8500's to 8600's. What is the price point on that?
Click to expand...
Bob said last page: "All 8500s will be upgradable to full 8600 functionality by swapping a control module and DSP board, so anyone buying an 8500 at its new lower price will have an upgrade path available for approximately the cost difference between the 8500 and 8600."
 
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