> The Omnia 3 Turbo is a much improved box over its original
> software, but for me there is still too much harshness in
> the mids on horns and other nastiness that can ride the
> clipper (sustained notes esp. female voices, pianos and bass
> and electric guitar etc).
I chime in a little late, but I do agree with Mike on his comments about vocal and midrange distortion with Omnia-3. When you are processing competitively, this distortion is unavoidable and depending on your sensitivity, it can be irritating. I'm noticing it with Omnia-6 as well, though to be honest I didn't have the opportunity to try the LowIMD "i" upgrade.
As far as pre-emphasis is concerned, both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. I like Orban's HF limiter design as it gives a consistent high-end presence from cut to cut. Putting pre-emphasis before limiter assures it's pretty much always sufficiently driven. With Omnia-3, high-end varies a lot with how much high-end energy there is in original audio. On the other hand, you can't get much away from how the Orban 2300 sounds if you don't like it, whereas with Omnia-3 you can tailor high-end much more freely and get different effects (unless you want it to sound just like Orban, that is ;-)).
Lastly, DSP-X offers the greatest adjustability of all processors, including setting pre-emphasis before or after the limiters (or in-between), thresholds, timings, everything... This gives you a lot of power to do whatever you want, but on the other hand makes things more difficult to adjust. Admittedly, I haven't yet got a full grasp on the unit to make it sound just the way I want it. It takes a lot of listening and a lot of time to get to know the processor really, really good and to know what works and what doesn't. It took me couple of years of day-to-day work to get to know Omnia-6 and how to make it play the way I want it (which is a little different than Frank had in mind, so I guess that made it a bit more difficult). Back to DSP-X. I haven't been able to try v2.6/2.7 yet but seeing Mike really likes it, I'll have to make it happen soon. Scott makes upgrades and improvements at the speed it's hard to keep up with ;-) I did like what similar clipper improvements did for DSPXmini v1.1 as I was able to tame the high-end more to my likings and get more cleanliness as well.
As always, these are subjective opinions and your mileage may vary. I always recommend you get all three processors, listen and then choose. What works for person A may not work for person B and vice versa. Don't take anybody's word for it - try it! This is a very subjective field.
Regards,
Goran Tomas