Stereo Tool

hello all,

as far as i read many posts, in order to use ST as an FM processor, we need:
an i5 or i7 based PC, with ssd (i suppose to boot fast), redundant psu, etc..
Windows XP 32 bit.. with updates off.. (are there any updates now ?).

i have some questions...
which sound card ? i suppose with 2 outputs, one for monitor and one for the radio link.
are Xeon processors better than i5 or i7 ?

as i said in a different post, working last 4 years in a radio station which is using an Orban, i couldn't understand any latency in my voice.
the only people who understood the latency, were some musicians, during some unplugged live sessions.. i suppose this was happened because they "played" the music

i'm interested in building such a PC, for testing reasons..

i5 is already enough. I know station that uses 2 instances of ST (one FM and one for streaming) on same PC with i5 (3.4GHz) and all works fine. Affinity is adjusted core1/2 for ST1 and core 3/4 for ST2.

About XP, yes. I always recommend XP32bit over Win7. But latest 4th Intel's chipset/boards generation does not support XP anymore (drivers) so on mentioned PC is Windows7 Pro 64 and all seems working fine.

Latency in ST is bigger then Orban.. However Afaik there is also low/high quality in orban wich also affect "delay" and seems most stations keeps that om low latency, so... lower quality.
Question is, is it realy necessary to have monitor from FM processor/tuner? Why just not use Monitor from console?
I have adjusted that whenever music stops for some amount of time (eg. 20 sec) i get mail. So i don't need to listen it and not jocks.

hello,

i suppose its better to listen the sound after ST, because its just better to the ears than the original

when i switch between the sound of the console and the on-air sound after the orban, the difference is obvious..
on-air sound is better.. microphones are better, stereo is wider, everything is better..

I'm talking about a local radio station in a city with 30-35 radio stations and 1.5m potential audience.
and the guys who tuned our orban, made it to have the louder, better sound of all..

but since i'm a computer geek, i think that ST can make it better....

The SSD harddisk is for reliability, basically if you want a pc to run stable for many years you want to avoid moving parts as much as possible - and an SSD disk does not move.

I'm finding that some of the newer mobo's don't have drivers for XP any longer, so I need to know if Win7 can be as reliable as XP. And I assume that the Marian Trace Alpha's Win7 drivers are good. I know that I have to use a very early driver (1.02?) on XP to make the Trace Alpha pass audio properly. Before I drop a grand on an industrial rackmount PC, I need to make darn sure it's going to support a solid OS and that the drivers will work with the Trace Alpha. And I want to order one during this tax year. I hope HVZ will weigh in with assurance that I'm on solid ground.

is this Trace Alpha the best audio hardware ?
are there any latency measurements for audio cards ?

The Trace Alpha is the gold standard for FM usage. It's unnecessary for non-broadcast usage. It's the only known single output DC Coupled sound card and is unequaled in it's ability to tightly control modulation peaks on all types of programming (I have 3 of them). There are other cards that can pass for non critical FM usage. That requires reducing the average modulation from 100% down to perhaps 85-90% to allow for the overshoot that will occur with lesser cards on certain songs. In uses like small LPFM stations in low population areas, it will make little difference. However, if your use has competition from stations with Omnia's and Optimods, you're going to need the Trace Alpha to allow Stereo Tool to effectively squash the competition.