For those whom like to use software audio processing.

[ThaDood]

https://telosalliance.com/radio-processing/radio-processors/omnia-forza     Yeah... It's another option to process audio to your station. Me??? I like discrete components, where I don't have to worry about software upgrades, then wonder if they are actually downgrades with bugs. and then, charge you for the fix. Hmmmmmmm... I've been there. Few times bitten, many times shy.


Thank you, Boomer! For, sharing that.

[RobRich]

I do not really track Omnia development, but I think Omnia Forza is like $600 to $700 for a subscription or more like $1000+ for purchase.


I have been a StereoTool user for many years here. Beyond broadcasting, it is also great cleaning up clipping and similar when listening to heavily processed music.

https://www.thimeo.com/stereo-tool/

Lots of the features are free. Declipper is not, though there is a more affordable ~$32 personal license for the Perfect Declipper Winamp DSP if interested.

http://www.perfectdeclipper.com/

Last I knew, the personal PD license code will activate the declipper in StereoTool as well.

I have an older ST license, but is is essentially the current Basic+Declipper+Natural Dynamics offering. About $125 these days.

[~SIGINT~]

JB Broadcast v2.0.3 is an excellent VST based processor that works like a charm right out of the box.
https://plugins4free.com/plugin/548/

MBprocess v0.185 is an other excellent alternative with the look and feel of Stereo Tool.
http://hornplans.free.fr/mbprocess.html

[RobRich]

Occasionally I used Broadcast for online streaming back in the day. It works reasonably okay in many scenarios, especially if one is not too interested in poking through lots of configuration settings.

Compared to the professional offerings, the downside to most of the free alternatives is the lack of extensive audio repair techniques like declipping, dynamics dynamics, spectral hole filing, and similar in a single software package; if available at all.

On a related note, the ST GUI is undergoing an overhaul.

https://imgur.com/a/edLcBEi

[~SIGINT~]

I hope the new GUI dosn't bring more latency in processing. I'm still running v9.91 which does have a fair amount of latency.

P.S. All of the mentioned applications so far all work well as a VST in Foobar2000. I saw the icon in your task bar.

[RobRich]

I run the Winamp DSP bridge for foobar2000 to host the ST DSP plugin. I feed ST at -6.2dB to keep out of the bridge's hard limiter, which in turn I use as headroom for ST to declip, add dynamics, and similar. I run all the above under Wine. Thankfully it works okay as foobar2000 is one the few Windows apps I prefer.

I mostly use foobar2000 for background music, so the Winamp DSP of ST is fine there. I can pipe audio through JACK to the ST standalone for more serious processing if needed.

ST 10.x running in a 2c/4t config on my AMD 5700u 8c/16t notebook suffices for my DSP playback config, though note I tend to shy away from AGC and multiband compression for playback since I am more interested in restoring dynamics for that particular role. ;)

Otherwise bumping to a 4c/8t config tends to handle pretty much whatever DSP config I throw at ST; perhaps short of cranking audio processing quality up to 150%.

[~SIGINT~]

I use foobar2000 for background music as well. Just a general player to replace WinAMP. Anything else I use RadioBOSS.

For ST, 2c/2t and I use a slightly modified version of an Orban OPTIMOD 8500 profile I found on the Stereo Tool forum. The OPTIMOD 8500 profile was modeled from the Australian Broadcast Corp OPTIMOD settings.

https://forums.stereotool.com/viewforum.php?f=9

[redhat]

My main processor these days is Stereo Tool running on a Raspberry Pi 4.  The declipper is mandatory with newer music.  I think with the options I bought for AM with advance dynamics and declipping, it was about $200.  Telos licensed the declipping algorithm from Hans, the developer of Stereo Tool.  They call it 'undo'

+-RH