Stereo Tool

Stereo Tool 5 is almost ready. There are still some minor things that I need to fix, but here's a fully functional version, with no (real) bugs that I know of.

Winamp DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... r_BETA.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... r_BETA.exe
VST version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... l_BETA.dll
VST version (No SSE2): http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... 2_BETA.dll
Command line version: Not yet available


Note: I have not yet been able to fully test the non-SSE2 versions because I still need to connect my (very) old PC without SSE2 support to make sure that no SSE2 functionality is used in the non-SSE2 version. So if you have a Pentium 3 or older PC, you might run into issues.

Note #2: You can now increase the main window size, please note though that the CPU load will go up a lot if you make it very big. This seems to be caused by the waveform display at the bottom of the window. I still need to check why this uses so much processing power when the display size increases.


List of changes (probably incomplete):
# Completely redesigned the processing pipeline to reduce the maximum latency from over 1.5 seconds to at most 0.1 second, with a better sound quality.
# Made latency configurable in 4 steps: 512 (ca. 13 ms), 1024 (25 ms), 2048 (47 ms) or 4096 (93 ms, best quality) samples.
# Reduced CPU usage by more than 50%.
# Replaced 3 quality modes (LO, MID, HI) by a continuous slider.
# Reduced memory usage by 17 MB.
# Replaced Pre Limiter by an RMS-based 1 or 2-band AGC, which controls the volume much better.
# Added a Bass Boost filter.
# Added Phase Rotation filter that greatly improves the sound quality of many difficult sounds (trumpets, female voices) when loud output levels are required.
# Added a filter that removes any pre-ringing (weird sounds before a sound burst) which was present in older Stereo Tool versions.
# Improved the Multiband clippers audio quality: Multiband clipping sound much cleaner now.
# Removed "Trumpet sound filter" from earlier versions that was intended to improve the quality of certain sounds, but also caused a lot of side effects (no longer needed due to the new phase rotation filter).
# Removed Multiband HQ mode (no longer needed).
# Made main window resizable and maximizable.
# Bug: No 2 Stereo Tool instances can be loaded in a VST engine based using the same Stereo Tool DLL file. A popup now displays this message and gives a workaround.
# Presets updated (now using Bass Boost and Phase Rotation where appropriate).
# RDS without stereo no longer generates a 19 kHz pilot tone.
# In case of FM output, "normal output" is closer to the FM sound, and the FM sound is clipped better before 'FM Overdrive' - using FM Overdrive now leads to a 3% louder output signal than before with better quality.
# Input and output volume meters blink in red if the maximum volume is reached (input) or surpassed (output).

You are improving
So far no serious bugs, except the weird look over Windows XP.
And I think it will be a lot better to remove the window maximizing feature as it gets quite ugly on Full HD.

Hi Eurodancetest,

What's this weird look in XP? I don't see anything weird here...

About full screen mode: Well it doesn't really look great, but others have requested it and of course you don't need to use full screen mode.

I've made a few changes:
- Fixed bug with output bar displays at different Windows font size settings (was reported elsewhere on this forum)
- Improved the performance of the waveform display in the main window. (CPU load for displaying the waveform is now 1/3rd of what it was before)
- Improved looks of the waveform display (there was a bug in the code that occasionally caused small gaps in the display).
- Improved looks of drop down symbol in "Presets" menu.

Re-download the versions from the links in the top post of this thread to get the updated version.

Awesome. Thanks!

I've updated my HE-AAC preset (posted on that thread) to take advantage of the AGC, and to help normalize things a bit (more preamp gain, because with this version - I CAN!). There's no more level "diving" (fast attenuation). GREAT JOB!


I will download the updated build!

The AGC is fantastic in this version.

So is phase rotation. It helps a lot with what I do. I never dubbed it phase rotation, but that's exactly what it does!

It gets better
Less CPU usage. But still there is a weird small "border" that didn't existed in previous versions.

What border ?

I have solved a few more issues tonight:
- Fixed that border (eurodancetest: I read your post just in time; bojcha: only in plugin version)
- Fake Stereo did not work (reported by email): Fixed
- Changed name "Pre Limiter" to "AGC Auto Gain"
- Re-ordered the last few filtering steps of Hard Limit. This allowed me to set the final lowpass filter MUCH tighter. (I noticed that for AM output, when filtering at 4500 Hz there was still a lot of content upto over 5000 Hz. That's almost completely gone now). Filtering of FM output has also improved (less aggressive). This does come at a (small) cost: The output is 0.03 dB softer. The sound quality with FM processing enabled might be slightly better (but I'm not sure).
- VST plugin: Something went wrong after the notification that no more than 1 Stereo Tool instance can be created as shown. This could lead to crashes. Fixed.

New version has been uploaded, use the links at the top of this thread.


What remains is mainly the tweaking (and adding) of some presets, and there might still be a VST problem (reported in the bugs forum, waiting for a reply now).

- No weird border (yupeee!).
- OnLoad problem not completely fixed (it hangs the the winamp windows for 1-2 seconds when loaded from Windows 7 - 64 bit on AMD Quadcore CPU), but for Intel is fine.
- Indeed upload some presets that don't kill and cutoff the middle parts of the sound. The voice preset is a good start
As I saw this version can do much better, but it's CPU-intensive as all other versions when I turn on most of the settngs.

The CPU load does indeed seem to have gone up since a number of beta versions ago (8% higher with the same settings; with Bass Boost and Phase Rotation added it's another 4% higher (total 12%) higher.)

I think this is partially caused by improved filtering (improved pre-ringing filter probably costs a few %), but I'll have another look at the performance before I release this version. Still, it should perform about twice as good (run at about 50% of the CPU usage) of version 4.22, even with all the new filters enabled.


Edit: I've just compared the performance of the latest version with that of the fastest verion I've ever had. Difference is only 2% (explained by the improved ringing filter) - the rest of the difference is probably caused by differences in performance of my pc over time (I've just taken 3 different DLL's, and the difference now is really small, but the old ones also perform a lot worse than a few weeks ago).