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SAM Broadcaster - Any advices for better sound?


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Hello everyone,

 

I am in need of some advices, for my SAM Broadcaster.

 

I am currently running a DSP plugin, called Stereo Tool 4.00. I have my AGC settings on "Bypass all", becouse i could not manage to set them up good enough :sad: .

 

Does anyone have any advice, about how could i improve the sound? Apart from the streaming bitrate and music quality though.

 

Also, a quick question. Which encoder, do you guys recommend? I am currently running the MP3 Lame encoder. I would do the MP3Pro, but it does go up to 96 kbs only :\ .

 

Thanks!

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Hardly anyone uses the MP3pro encoder any, it's basic dead. Most people use the AAC+ or MP3 encoder.

 

As for Stereo Tool, it's basically trial and error.

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I would make sure all your music is uniform. All high bitrate encodes from a lossless source, pre-normalized, etc.. Then from there you should be at a good state to play around with and tweak Stereo Tool to get everything sounding more smooth across the board.

 

And as already noted, do not use the Mp3Pro encoder but the LAME one instead. Mp3Pro can very easily make things sound worse and is useless to begin with on anything over roughly 64kbps.

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  • 4 months later...

As others have said, make sure the volume on all of your MP3's is normalized to a certain dB level. I don't have any problems using Stereo Tool. You should cruise their forums, because there are a lot of customized settings there that you can download and customize to your own sound preference. This of course requires time and patience to test the settings to see what works for your station. A lot of people don't have such time.

Stereo Tool, as far as software, I have not seen anything better, even breakaway.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We use Stereo Tool on our FM broadcasts and it sounds great!

 

With our internet broadcasts, we use the built-in AGC that comes with SAM and have found no reason to use anything else!

Reverend Aquaman | Station Manager | andHow.FM

Where it's *ALL* about the music!

A world-class, always eclectic, commercial-free, alternative, modern, retro, indie rock radio station.

Jamming the free world, one person at a time since 1998. Got Indie?

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  • 3 weeks later...
I enjoy Breakaway Broadcast's Amsterdam setting for my Progressive Rock(Album Rock), Classic Rock station. Many Audio enhancers overdrive the base for Rap and Top40 stations which simply won't do for an Album Rock station as most listeners are Audiophiles. Stereo Tool's Pheonix - Pristine setting is very nice as well but Breakaway Broadcast is a bit more clean and gives that 70's Album Rock sound IMHO.

Progressive Rock(Album Rock Deep Tracks),Classic Rock

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  • 3 weeks later...
Well I have found that setting down and just taking a day off the air and pick whatever song you use on your station and this is key, whatever format you are like pop rock, etc, depends on the sound you want to achieve. Just set there and tweak the sound you want, you will find it if you take the time and see what each control does. That is what I do, all by ear. I hope this might help you..
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I would be wary about that. Although a good idea in concept, keep it conservative on the modifications. Your listening setup likely isn't going to be the same as your listeners so changes made will have a much different effect.

 

I did this once some years ago as a test. I always had a favorite DSP setup that sweetened the sound on my system and sounded fine and not overpowered. Ran it through shoutcast and had some friends test run and just about everyone poo pooed it mainly with the bass being overpowering.

 

If it were me and I was at this stage of station setup AND it was an online only station, it'd be a flat EQ setup, no compression and just normalized evenly across the library, MAYBE a very slight V curve on the EQ.

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  • 2 weeks later...
The built in audio processing in SAM is just bad. Having it on any setting except "Bypass" is not good. I bypass the SAM processing in all decks and mixer, and using Breakaway Broadcast. Much better.

 

I couldn't agree with you more.

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  • 2 months later...

I'm NOT any type of audio expert. I'm trying to figure out how to use BB with SB. I have a (fairly) complex setup. Since I don't have the "stereomix" tool, I'm using Virtual Audio Cable. My setup if using NO outside program except SB are in the photo below. It is that way so I can have Google Voice calls on my show. It works great, and since I have a radio talk show, it is ALMOST enough, however, I do play occasional songs AND I'm looking to permanently murder background "hiss".

 

Because I have no choice but to run on a wireless DSL connection, I'm forced to take bandwidth into account, and since I'm using Spreaker, I'm limited there; my solution right now is to run AAC at 80kbps.

 

So far, such add-ons as Stereo Tool and even some AGC settings have caused skipping/popping, and I've tried various settings but can't get rid of that, even though it's not a problem when all add-ons are disabled or if I only use 2-band AGC.

 

So, what I'm looking for is:

1. If using BB, it has it's on brand of VAC, really, so should I just use those with the exact same pipeline set up as in the photo?

2. I'd like to run ALL audio through the enhancement; songs, callers/call-ins, and my voice. How to?

3. In my case, with what I'm trying to do, is BB even the right choice?

ScreenShot097.jpg

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Have you tried tweaking your latency buffer & packet time settings?

 

ScreenShot001.jpg

 

Any AGC on a lower spec'd server/PC will chew through the CPU threads and you will get a lot of lag and stutter.

Reverend Aquaman | Station Manager | andHow.FM

Where it's *ALL* about the music!

A world-class, always eclectic, commercial-free, alternative, modern, retro, indie rock radio station.

Jamming the free world, one person at a time since 1998. Got Indie?

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Yes I've tweaked those; that's the only way I could get 2 band AGC to work w/o stutter. It makes me think that maybe something as demanding as that is the max amount of demand I can use--like StereoTool and others (saying nothing of BB or BBL) are just too powerful for my machine/connection. I'm running a dual core 2.1GHz with 4GB Ram Win 7 64. It's a Dell insp. 1545; definitely nothing special, about 5 yrs old now or almost that old.
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