Hi,
Well, I’m a huge fan and professional user of the famous Breakaway Broadcast Processor, but since BBP seems to be discontinued and Stereo Tool got the new GUI, I decided to give it a try. So here I want to share my first impressions/thoughts about it.
I’m running it for a week now on the workbench with a RME Fireface 800. Works really nice! The FireWire-connection is ultra-stable, the driver and control-panel are well-engineered and stable and it performs nice on very low latencies. Big recommendation for this soundcard! The output of the Fireface is also DC-straight (measured this somewhat earlier with BBP and a Hameg-scope), and it is plenty strong enough to drive all FM-exciters I’ve tested…
I’ve only managed to get Stereo Tool working in ASIO-mode. In BBP, it’s no problem to run non-ASIO, but only in Kernel Streaming mode. So it seems that Stereo Tool is not able to set the soundcard to 192 kHz in non-ASIO-mode. I think the reason is the crappy Windows Vista I’m running, and that the Windows-Sound-System is not able to set the sample rate to 192 kHz, until you fully bypass it (as in Kernel Streaming or ASIO-mode). So will it be possible to implement Kernel Streaming in Stereo Tool in the future? Sometimes, it’s handy not to be forced to use ASIO…
I really like the declipper. Performs awesome, even with somewhat weak analog-feeds. Also the BS412-Limiter is a great tool for us as a broadcaster in Germany. I’ve tested it with a pira.cz mod-monitor on the bench, and it works very nice! All these things and the fact that you have full control to everything are the big advantages, compared to BBP for the use in a professional environment.
I’ve done a little A/B-comparison to BBP. On lighter processing, ST sounds really awesome, but when I try to push it a little harder, the final clipper of ST sounds distorted and squashed way earlier than BBP. I remember, once I’ve set up BBP for a pirate station that wanted to be freakin’ loud, even some square wave shapes in the output didn’t sound too annoying in BBP, but in ST, they do…
What I also don’t like is that there is no dB-scale for the Input-Meter, so I don’t know on how much head room I’m feeding the processor, until I can see it in the soundcard-control-panel. A dB-scale for at least the multiband-meters would be also nice, to have a better overview what’s going on when adjusting the baby
The web-interface is also a very handy feature, but I don’ know how I can change a preset from there. Is this not possible at the moment? That would be a big improvement, as you can prepare some settings and change them easily with a Smartphone when you’re driving in your car while listening to the own station
So, just my 2 cents…