Build quality Omnia .9

[konbaasiang]

Replacing the motherboard with a different one? It's technically possible (with driver installations and all that entails), but that's not something anyone would sensibly do within the support period, let alone within the warranty period!

We chose the motherboard very carefully, one with long-term reliability and availability. Self repair and warranty are mutually exclusive, like with any company. This should not even need to be explained -- if you open your phone and replace parts, would the manufacturer still honor the warranty? Think about it.

We don't treat the Omnia.9 as a "PC", because that's really not what it is.

I've heard stories of a particular automation system vendor which sells sells pre-configured PCs with windows, and when something goes wrong, they blame Microsoft and tells the user to call them, because it's not their code. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. They delivered the system, they'd darn well better support it.

I guarantee on my honor that we will never do anything of the sort. It would never even cross my mind. I chose to base the audio processor on Windows XP Embedded. It was my decision, I fully stand by it, and it is nobody elses problem. I wouldn't have chosen it if I thought for a second it would cause problems down the line. The advantage is that I've been able to develop the huge number of unique features in the Omnia.9 rapidly -- not to mention the on-air sound quality, and that is ultimately what matters the most.

For anyone who feels that building your own PC and running Breakaway Broadcast is a better idea, by all means do it! That's why it's still available, and it will continue to be updated and improved. For the very small percentage of broadcasters who are comfortable building a PC, it is indeed a very good deal -- much lower price than is possible for any company to do on a hardware product, simply due to the economics of scale.

As Frank has stated, hardware modifications are underway, and have been for a while. Hopefully then we can put this issue to rest, and get back to something more important, such as listening to the on-air result.

//Leif

 

[chriscollins]

Replacing the motherboard with a different one? It's technically possible (with driver installations and all that entails), but that's not something anyone would sensibly do within the support period, let alone within the warranty period!

We chose the motherboard very carefully, one with long-term reliability and availability. Self repair and warranty are mutually exclusive, like with any company. This should not even need to be explained -- if you open your phone and replace parts, would the manufacturer still honor the warranty? Think about it.

We don't treat the Omnia.9 as a "PC", because that's really not what it is.

I've heard stories of a particular automation system vendor which sells sells pre-configured PCs with windows, and when something goes wrong, they blame Microsoft and tells the user to call them, because it's not their code. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. They delivered the system, they'd darn well better support it.

I guarantee on my honor that we will never do anything of the sort. It would never even cross my mind. I chose to base the audio processor on Windows XP Embedded. It was my decision, I fully stand by it, and it is nobody elses problem. I wouldn't have chosen it if I thought for a second it would cause problems down the line. The advantage is that I've been able to develop the huge number of unique features in the Omnia.9 rapidly -- not to mention the on-air sound quality, and that is ultimately what matters the most.

For anyone who feels that building your own PC and running Breakaway Broadcast is a better idea, by all means do it! That's why it's still available, and it will continue to be updated and improved. For the very small percentage of broadcasters who are comfortable building a PC, it is indeed a very good deal -- much lower price than is possible for any company to do on a hardware product, simply due to the economics of scale.

As Frank has stated, hardware modifications are underway, and have been for a while. Hopefully then we can put this issue to rest, and get back to something more important, such as listening to the on-air result.

//Leif

Leif, you are a good guy. Frank is too. I have a great deal of respect for both of you.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Part of that is the willingness for them to come in here and "take the heat" and criticsm of the product. That speaks volumes about what their work and product stands for. Ultimately it makes for a much better product because there is that direct feedback loop of info. Sometime soon I'd like to actually try the Breakaway version on a dedicated PC for our little non-comm. I'd like to just see how well it would work. With a quick way to swap over to a backup processor, I don't see a whole lot of risk really.

 

[Bojcha]

With this topic people are now farther away from the important thing about understanding real nature of Omnia.9!
I belive that there is just few people on earth in this moment that really understand what is "Omnia.9".

 

[Lazy J]

I too have a lot of respect for any manufacturer who is willing to participate in a discussion about their products on these boards. Nothing builds trust between a client and a manufacturer better than when you can have your questions and concerns answered directly by the guys who design and build the thing.

 

[konbaasiang]

OKCRadioGuy: Do it!

Any Intel-based PC newer than 5 years will run it (except for Atom CPUs).

Using a 192 kHz capable sound card you can get composite directly.

Top recommendation (Fully DC coupled outputs):
Marian Trace Alpha or Trace Pro - http://www.marian.de
MOTU 828 Mk3 or MOTU Ultralite Mk3

Next best (Not DC coupled but performs very well provided you're not an Urban station in NYC, LA or Paris)
ESI Juli@

Then there's M Audio Audiophile 192, which has capacitors too small for my liking. You'll have low frequency bounce-induced overshoots if you push the bass too hard, but could be okay for smaller markets.

For a "let's just see how it works" demo, ESI Juli@ is good enough, cheap, and readily available. Just make sure to adjust output tilt with an oscilloscope.

Everyone else, thank you for your comments! I very much appreciate it -- it warms my heart to see I still have some friends out there .

 

[richard.vanderveen]

Everyone else, thank you for your comments! I very much appreciate it -- it warms my heart to see I still have some friends out there .

Leif, I am pretty sure you have tons of friends out there, the foul wind blowing from a certain part of of the world will lie down
Your software is nothing short of amazing, you know it, we know it and so does Telos. And like I mentioned before, this is NOT about the quality of the sound OR about the big PC do or don't question. The Breakaway products are way up there, and the price is way down there. They're a bargain and can be purchased by pretty much everybody. With that price/quality in mind the inside of the O.9 does raise a questions or two, it just does not live up to the expectation (see my comment about the Omnia 8x/Telos Zephyr iPort). Under-the-hood-design, although it doesn't necessarily add to reliability, it certainly does add to the _percieved_ quality of the product.

Having that said, the professional way both you and Frank handle this issue makes me believe this will all be solved...

 

[gtomas]

I belive that there is just few people on earth in this moment that really understand what is "Omnia.9".

That's probably quite true!


Regards,
Goran Tomas

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

A contract eng friend and I were able to secure a demo 9 from SCMS for a bit and we took it out to our Oklahoma Assoc. of Broadcasters convention to show it off. There were several people there that absolutely blown away by the box. One of them now has the box on his station in a small-market Oklahoma cluster. My boss was very impressed too. We probably will be getting one in the next year or so when our little budget can afford one. The really cool feature the 9 has that really got her intrest was the ability to go mono automatically in mono programming. We are talk about 80 percent of the time, but we do run music shows. Without having to schedule some kind of closure in automation or something of that sorts, we could simply let the box handle it. We also have one of our towers that is actually in a hole past a bit of a landmass to it's intended target. Something tells me that going with the SSB stereo system would help some multipath stuff that happens for us. Right now we are using a Orban 2200. I'm quite sure even the casual listener would notice a big difference with the upgrade.

 

[satech]

We chose the motherboard very carefully, one with long-term reliability and availability. Self repair and warranty are mutually exclusive, like with any company. This should not even need to be explained -- if you open your phone and replace parts, would the manufacturer still honor the warranty? Think about it.

So if the CPU fan or one of the RAM sticks fail during the warranty period, will the customer need to ship the entire box back to Omnia to get that one small part replaced, rather than just having you ship them a "factory spec" replacement part and letting them replace it themselves?

In other words, is there no modularity of the PC motherboard inside, as far as Omnia is concerned? I.e. is the entire motherboard -- CPU, fan, RAM sticks and all -- treated as one single replacement part?

 

[WNTIRadio]

A couple months ago I took a station from a 2200 to the Omnia.9. It was like the leap from the Volumax to the 8000 in terms of a jump in quality.

The mono sense is a great feature. So is the auto balance, that can correct less that perfect source material.

Make sure you go AES in to take full advantage of the declipper.

 

[jesseg]

BTW: the thread has been removed from the Breakaway forum

It was moved to a non-public area because it was found that the main poster driving the "discussion" actually worked for a competing processor company. When confronted, this person denied responsibility, despite us having irrefutable evidence. : This kind of crap should be beneath any professional, and I hope this person's actions get forgotten under the carpet, for their sake. I like and respect the person's work.

It was absolutely not moved because of the other, and little, actual legitimate content. The original poster also has ties to another manufacturer (not an actual employee though), and we know who that is too, but we were willing to let it slide just to let some good conversation happen. Unfortunately this was spoiled. Someone can certainly post again over there, but this forum has a lot more exposure, arguably more experienced visitors, and a lot less fanboys, so it's definitely a better place to have some constructive criticism.

Make sure you go AES in to take full advantage of the declipper.

While this is true in terms of audio quality in general, the analog inputs on the 9 are awesome, and you'll be close to the same result if your analog path isn't completely doo-doo. There is automated tilt correction built into Undo™ before the declipper, so that any tilt from non-dc-straight path shouldn't be a problem. Remember, a decent amount of clipper distortion on releases is multi-generational, so you get tilted clipping on the original master itself. Undo doesn't care what caused it, it just fixes it when it happens.

Cheers.

 

[satech]

On the 9, can you just use the declipper, without also using the dynamic range expander?

 

[jesseg]

On the 9, can you just use the declipper, without also using the dynamic range expander?

Yes, as well as there being around 100 controls for the dynamics in Undo. The most easily used to "tone down" and "limit" what happens, without changing the desired "signature" of the expansion (if any), is the maximum expansion per band. (only 5 controls total, 1 for each band, yaaay)

If you approach that from an engineering standpoint, and really monitor how & how much it's effecting the processing down the path within the box, you could on some content possibly blend the Undo preset with the main preset more effectively, in the (hopefully) rare case your preferred Undo settings do something you don't like on a particular content, without harming the regeneration of everything else that needs it.

 

[ChiefOperator]

BTW: the thread has been removed from the Breakaway forum

It was moved to a non-public area because it was found that the main poster driving the "discussion" actually worked for a competing processor company. When confronted, this person denied responsibility, despite us having irrefutable evidence. : This kind of crap should be beneath any professional, and I hope this person's actions get forgotten under the carpet, for their sake. I like and respect the person's work.

It was absolutely not moved because of the other, and little, actual legitimate content. The original poster also has ties to another manufacturer (not an actual employee though), and we know who that is too, but we were willing to let it slide just to let some good conversation happen. Unfortunately this was spoiled. Someone can certainly post again over there, but this forum has a lot more exposure, arguably more experienced visitors, and a lot less fanboys, so it's definitely a better place to have some constructive criticism.

Make sure you go AES in to take full advantage of the declipper.

I know who you're talking about and the disclaimer you added on the Breakaway site was certainly sufficient. I would hardly say that he was "driving" the conversation." He wasn't the original poster but he did make various general comments that were certainly legitimate and not improper. And he wasn't trying to steer others from the Omnia 9 or Breakaway to his company's product. In fact, he's a fan of Leif and Breakaway (as am I). He has even praised the Omnia 9.

By removing the link, you've given the appearance that you don't want folks to see the pictures, right or wrong. Now, folks joining the conversation here do so without the opportunity to see what we've seen. A better reason to remove the thread is that it wasn't a discussion about Breakaway; instead, it was a discussion about a different product.

I'm not implying that you had bad motives for removing the thread. I just think it should have remained until this thread ran its course.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

OK... Question about Breakaway vs. the 9: Does Breakaway have the "undo" feature for the clipping on source material or is that just exclusive to the 9?

 

[richard.vanderveen]

OK... Question about Breakaway vs. the 9: Does Breakaway have the "undo" feature for the clipping on source material or is that just exclusive to the 9?

Exclusive to the 9. But you can (and I do) run Hans van Zutphen's 'Perfect declipper' as a Breakaway plugin. This specific declipper is part of the 9

 

[jesseg]

I would hardly say [..]

You definitely missed part of what happened, most of it only up for about 6 hours (during the night in USA timezones).

By removing the link, you've given the appearance that you don't want folks to see the pictures, right or wrong. Now, folks joining the conversation here do so without the opportunity to see what we've seen. A better reason to remove the thread is that it wasn't a discussion about Breakaway; instead, it was a discussion about a different product.

If someone from another business comes into your space, and trashes the place, you stop it. If you want to keep the peace, you clean up the mess and let it go.'

That being said, you're right about the pics. Here they are, if you want any of them... both from the original poster, and the other person's troll-fail.

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5351/omnia9inside.jpg
http://img862.imageshack.us/img862/3034/omnia9inside2.jpg
http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/2175/28972474.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/oZipV.jpg

 

[ChiefOperator]

Thanks Jessie. My posting wasn't meant as a slam to you. Just letting you know about the appearance of removing the thread. And as I said, I think a better reason for removing the thread was that it was posted on the Breakaway forum, yet had nothing to do with Breakaway. Thanks for posting the pics. I think it gives those just joing this thread a better understanding of what this discussion is about.

This thread overall has been quite useful. Back in October I told a GM about Breakaway and suggested that it would fit his station just fine. I even offered to build it in a special case, using high quality MB, dual PS, etc. He and his PD openly laughed at me at the suggestion of "using a computer."
They went with another processor.

Fast forward to today. Saw him yesterday and told him about this thread. He now understands that the higher end boxes are just a computer and feels foolish for having overspent his limited cash.

 

[jesseg]

OK... Question about Breakaway vs. the 9: Does Breakaway have the "undo" feature for the clipping on source material or is that just exclusive to the 9?

Richard is correct about the declipper part, assuming it's using Leif's tilt-correction code, which Leif kindly shared with Hans. I believe that to be the case, but you should check his forums or ask him.

Something that you'll find more & more into the future is that there actually is starting to be less brutal clipping going on, but even more brutal limiting going on, which the declipper doesn't declip, since.... it's not clipped. There is however (a) still no dynamics, and (b) sometimes an epic mountain of IMD. my "Recite" preset for Undo can often reduce the perception of IMD, which means it's often doing what it should be doing for the program material... not just adding an effect or signature. The dynamics section of Undo is (in my opinion, of course) already just as important as the declipper, for the current state of content.

That being said, the other (and to some possibly more important) big difference between the two is the composite integrator in the Omnia.9. I've compared Breakaway and Omnia.9 side by side, both running New York preset, set to equal loudness on 75uS, and the difference is STUNNING. When pushed harder, or when peaking (where impact and detail lives), the Omnia.9 destroys Breakaway. That's also assuming you're not using any of the new features in the core dynamics processing.