Stereo Tool

BETA022 is posted!

More clipper changes, I'll describe them here.

Changes with no new settings, so you get these immediately if you update:

• Highs Priority now also uses the "Ignore bass that affects total IMD less than" filter; that had virtually no effect on the highs but allows slightly more mid-bass through again.
• There was a massive bug in the delayed punch bass clipper behavior, when using > 1 thread. This bug must have been there ever since we added support for multiple threads. It caused the punch to last too long, and in some cases even for the level to go up and down.
• Due to a wrongly calibrated filter, a lot of highs clipping in ABDP caused a reduction of audio between 1000 and 3500 Hz. That's now solved. So mids respond a little less to highs again.

Changes with new settings:

• This is in a different place: Under "Bass/Highs hole punch protection settings", there's a new "Flat highs" setting. In the current design, the lowest part of the highs (say around 5000 Hz) are prioritized over the highest part of the highs (15000 Hz). "Flat highs" makes the response a lot flatter, resulting in less "crunchy"/sandpaper highs around 5 kHz, and slightly (unfortunately not a lot) more highs above 10 kHz. This probably needs to be tweaked a bit further, but I think it does already sound very slightly better (more hifi-ish, when listening with 75 us pre-emphasis). The total amount of highs goes down though.

This last change was made because some people still prefer the highs of the clipper from several years ago. This change should get us a bit closer to that sound, without making the frequency response too bumpy (as it was at the time). I might need to make some frequencies configurable for optimal results, but I'm first awaiting feedback on this change.

BETA023 is uploaded. I have an appointment now so I don't have time to update the forum post, will do that later. Please be advised: Some people have had random crashes with this new build.

BETA024 is uploaded. There were several (4 in total) bugs that could cause weird behavior or crashes in the last 2 beta's, and they are fixed now. I hope that that was all.

IMPORTANT: THE BEHAVIOR HAS CHANGED. Please read the following:

There is a new "Legacy clipper from hell" setting (directory under the 2 "Loudness" sliders). With that turned ON, you get the old behavior from before I started working on the clipper. This setting will be enabled if you load any existing preset.

To switch over to the new behavior:

• Disable "Legacy clipper from hell"
• Set "Reduce bass to avoid highs detection threshold" to 5%

That last setting is necessary because that value already existed, the default value was just not that great.

All the new settings are now populated with our proposed new values (which still need tweaking!). One thing that we really need feedback on is the "Flat highs" checkbox that I added yesterday. I think I prefer it off, but I heard from others (in 75 us pre-emhpasis markets) that they prefer it on. So, we need feedback from multiple people to decide on a default setting. Current default is on.

@hvz detection? "Reduce bass to avoid highs distortion threshold" to 5%! This?
These in the screen are the other values of the new suggested settings?

Beta 10.22-024 (Mar 2 2024). It seems that when you delete a user defined preset..GUI goes black and crashes. Need to relaunch for ST to work.

BETA024 (Win10, x64, standalone) is still crashing:

Framework Thread
(Exception 0xc0000005 at address 0x7ff7d76af2f4 of C:\Program Files\Stereo Tool\StereoTool.exe, read/write=0, r/w location=0xac0)
Offset-info: 0x7ff7d837f12a, version 10.22 BETA024.

Framework Thread
(Exception 0xc00000fd at address 0x7ff7d8779328 of C:\Program Files\Stereo Tool\StereoTool.exe)
Offset-info: 0x7ff7d837f12a, version 10.22 BETA024.

A piece of audio was ignored due to a timeout. This may have caused an audio glitch.

This may have been caused by a (momentary) spike in CPU usage on your pc.
A piece of audio was ignored due to a timeout. This may have caused an audio glitch.


BETA022 was the last working version.

Het valt me op dat in deze nieuwe versie de present van @hvz adaptive bass monster erg goed klinkt zonder AGC en extra betaalde functies zoals natural dynamics en auto bass equalizer. Zijn die extra betaalde functies nog wel nodig?
@hvz waarom bij deze preset geen AGC en hoe zet je die adaptive mode aan een een ander preset?

Google-Translated to English

It strikes me that in this new version the present of @hvz adaptive bass monster sounds very good without AGC and extra paid functions such as
 natural dynamics and auto bass equalizer. Are those extra paid functions still necessary?

The Bass Equalizer actually isn't used in Adaptive Bass Monster. However, the Advanced Dynamics package that contains the Bass Auto EQ also contains the new Adaptive mode for the compressors and AGC. The preset would sound fundamentally incorrect without the Adaptive mode and thus an Advanced Dynamics license is necessary.

Google-vertaald naar het Nederlands

De Bass Equalizer wordt eigenlijk niet gebruikt in Adaptive Bass Monster. Het Advanced Dynamics-pakket dat de Bass Auto EQ bevat, bevat echter ook de
 nieuwe Adaptive-modus voor de compressoren en AGC. De preset zou fundamenteel onjuist klinken zonder de Adaptive-modus en daarom is een Advanced
  Dynamics-licentie noodzakelijk. 

Can you send me your .ini file? You can find it in C:\Users\username\stereo_tool.ini . Hopefully the issue will reproduce on my end with that file, which would make it a lot easier to figure out what's happening.

The first error looks like the one that I thought I had fixed specifically in this beta.

PM sent.