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Prophet Nexgen Audio Questions

C

calavan888

I bought NexGen for our FM Low Power Station. I am trying to figure out some features on it. So Here goes...

1)I Noticed that NexGen optimum level is -10dbfs ,however ,when I compute clipping in the editor I get a level above the recommended level. The only way to get that level low enough is to set the normalize to -15dbfs. However there seems to be some songs that are still too hot.Am I doing this wrong?

2) I tried a few songs , which are only wave files, on the air. I noticed that at those normalize settings I had to turn the pot way ,way up.I mean almost as far as it would go..

All of my music is directly from TM Jones CD or Gold Wave.

Any help would be much appreciated.


Best Regards,
Thomas Evert
 
I was testing it on a general computer card.. And thanks for the info. I just posted it in that section.


Best Regards,
Thomas Evert
 
Is this the player 101 version? i use the full blown nexgen 2 with audioscience cards that control 4 pots on the board.Fader for each playout.I assume you could do this with player 101.Have you talked with prophet?Is this the play card you will be using?
 
Well I did send prophet a email. It is Prophet Player101, sorry my bad. I don't know yet about which card we would use. Do you use wave files Or the standard MPEG files. I noticed that when I use the -10dbfs down with MPEG 1 Layer II the files seem louder than wave files. And they seem to be within specs , the editor says that they are OK! but only in MPEG 1 Layer II. I wonder if this is a Vista Problem.


Best Regards,
Thomas Evert
 
I looked into buying the 101 and you need to use an ASI card for on air.


The Prophet Remote Studio, which is just for VT remotely, can be used with any card as you are not broadcasting. Just tracking.
 
Thanks for all your advice. ;) I talked with support. I am wondering though , when you say it does not run on vista well,what exactly do you mean. At support they informed me that there is no problem with Vista. I would like to get back to XP. But the computers I see at the stores are all Vista.
 
calavan888 said:
Thanks for all your advice. ;) I talked with support. I am wondering though , when you say it does not run on vista well,what exactly do you mean. At support they informed me that there is no problem with Vista. I would like to get back to XP. But the computers I see at the stores are all Vista.
Click to expand...

While you were talking with support, I had my own list of questions for RCS.

I confirmed with sales that "(P)resently, only Windows XP Prof is approved for Player101."

I think this may have a lot to do with Vista's generally poor reputation with commercial users and software vendors, as it's been adopted by far fewer businesses than expected and is considered a failure in that regard. Vista is a serious hog of computer resources compared to XP and is considered to be less stable.

RCS about the audio cards:

"You may use a machine's onboard soundcard; but you will then be limited to the capabilities of that card. Generally, we recommend the ASI5111 card with Player101."

(That's AudioScience's rather nice low end...$450-500 street...broadcast card)

...and...

"There are instances of Player101 using the Delta Series from M Audio; but, we do not resell or work with or support those cards."

You can still buy OEM and full install copies of XP Pro online (just google around a bit), including eBay. But if Vista is not an actual issue in YOUR system and RCS support is not having any issues with 101 on that OS, you're golden.

Hope that helps.
 
Oh I get what you are saying. I have tried everything at my end. The program at my end does have problems with Vista. I cannot get any levels correct , the sound is fairly good. I have tested it with my laptop too with a digigram VXpocket 440 , just to see if there was a difference . The sound was really good ,but the same issue with the normalization. Just to be clear what does the normalization in NexGen or Player 101 do? The guy that sold it to me said that I should use MPEG 1 Layer II , I just don't believe that sounds good. I would rather use wave.Anyways ,thanks for all your help I really do appreciate it! I may have to just go with the trusted CD Players. Seems much simpler,lol , but alot more costly with announcers that don't know how to handle cds.

Regards

Thomas Evert
 
The normalization is supposed to make each audio cut 'peak' at about the same level. It gives smoother, more consistent level on the air.

It does seem strange that 101 would use MP2 as the main audio format, rather than MP3. MP2 is an older audio compression format that is very widely used in broadcast. Even though it's less sophisticated than MP3 or, say, AAC...it sounds better than MP3 at bitrates of 256 kbps or higher. It also great for broadcasters to use inside their stations because is very friendly to the sound quality when you re-encode it to MP3 or AAC for streaming (less underwater sound and other digital artifacts).

Also, the system will play back MP3's but NOT edit them. You need an editor program like ProTools, Cool Edit/Adobe Audition, or the free Audacity to edit and normalize MP3's for 101.

Wave is obviously the best quality there is, being the same as a CD (better in some cases).

In spite of relatively small and weird things, you've really an excellent system there, especially if you want to voice track the station. Of the low-cost automation systems, 101 does this best IMHO.
 
That does makes sense. I wish the music industry made all songs around the same level. They take most of them right to the clip limit.While yet others they leave a lot of dynamic range in. I purchased all our music from TM Jones. They really are the best quality! Here is yet another question(s)! Why does prophet use -10dBFS and not -6 or -4? Is that because they base the output on an ASI card? Anyways, this has been very informative. Its great to learn about all of this.
 
OK , support got back in touch with me tonight. They said that it is not Windows Vista issue ,as such. There is a code problem that they are addressing at there end. It seems , according to them,that the player101 version cannot accurately normalize PCM linear audio unless the user decides to encode the files in MPEG 1 Layer II. NexGen code is different because that is primarily used for terrestrial broadcast ,whereas player101 is primarily used for the internet. But RCS says it recognizes that there are a lot of small to medium market stations using player101 and opting out of Nexgen because of the price difference. So they are working on rewriting the code. Did not, however, say when that would be.

And yes it's true that Windows XP has been approved , while Vista has not. But overall it's in a testing stage.However, they have talked to some stations that are using Vista and there are no major complaints. I suspect that they are using NexGen.

Thanks
Thomas Evert
 
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