Stereo Tool :: Getting the best sound ? Some observations and questions

That makes sense, thanks

It depends! On what you're trying to achieve, how your station sounds, how you want it to sound, how your taste (and station) develops over time. Again... use your ears. If it sounds right, there is no point in changing anything. But in my case I tend to start hearing some new annoying thing every once in a while which makes me dive back into the settings.

Once I find the most troublesome songs, I processed them, to see if I could hear any strange artifacts, there are quite a few songs that will do that. I'll be adding some other tracks and see what they sound like on my Audio Test Station, and see what the response is, before committing to processing my files, I have a slow PC for steaming and DJ work, so I can't run Stereo Tool on it, it's only a Pentium Silver N5030 processor, 8GB RAM but it sounds good if I do the processing first, My Mixer I have has some a few microphone compressors and special effects built in. So there is little reason to use Stereo Tool in a live session, I suppose I could use it for the Limiter, which would consume low CPU usage if configured for limited use.

Because your content keeps changing, probably. Maybe less so if you don't have live content (like a DJ talking). But still, if you change some cuepoint on a track you don't want to have to re-process it. And you don't have any freedom anymore to change anything to your processing (without having to re-process *all* your files). And you don't want to have clipping on a transition between your nicely processed tracks.

Author:	Yodaman [ Tue Sep 05, 2023 6:41 am ]
Post subject:	Getting the best sound ? Some observations and questions
When I was trying to make my own preset, I was looking over others out there, which I guess is a good thing to learn by what others do. I noticed thet many of them use the Single Band Compressor and the compressor found in the AGC section. I have pretty good ears still and comparing the sounds of many of popular presets, with these features enabled, the sound to me sounds flat, or it reduces the dynamic range quite a bit. I lost my original preset that sounded really good, even though without having LUFS meters to test dynamic range and other things, it was a little on the bright side,. But then I had a massive power spike and the file got corrupt. and my backup was damaged. To make a long story short I had to recreate the preset from scratch. Question? If the point is to have the best sound quality , why do most of the preset setting related to the CPU are somewhere in the middle or even some settings have Take Shortcuts In Processing? Question 2: How often does anyone change their sound profiles of the station so it sounds different ? If the answer is not that often or not at all , once they find one or create one that suits the station. Which leads me to the next question if above is not that often or not at all.. Why would you keep processing you files every time you play a song or sound file ? It seems like many of the presets don't use full quality of Stereo Tool to it's full potential, if the quality setting are not maxed out, now I grant that many stations are using old equipment for streaming their audio or even on a radio stations, the processing power to do all the audio processing can be a heavy burden on the CPU and memory usage. Why not use your DAW and Stereo Tools and other VSTs to process the audio files with the best possible settings on a workstation that would process all the files including Limiting/ Clipping, noise reduction, EQ, any special effects, ETC with the highest quality and settings, now granted it will take some time to do, but if all you PC had to do was to play the file, it would do so using a lot less power, and I would think the PC would be more stable as well. I'll be posting a link to a test channel station for others to hear what I mean. in a day or two in the Listen to my link section. Hopefully if I get good reviews of the audio quality I'll post the preset, it is for streaming or HD Radio and alike since I don't use the FM transmitter sections. Comments are welcome Thanks

Author:	Mathijsco [ Tue Sep 05, 2023 7:05 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Getting the best sound ? Some observations and questions
Quote: If the point is to have the best sound quality , why do most of the preset setting related to the CPU are somewhere in the middle or even some settings have Take Shortcuts In Processing? Because maxing out the quality setting doesn't always result in a difference that is actually noticeable. Some of these settings are better theoretically but they make little difference in practice. Use your ears to determine if it makes sense to max them out or not. Quote: Question 2: How often does anyone change their sound profiles of the station so it sounds different ? If the answer is not that often or not at all , once they find one or create one that suits the station. It depends! On what you're trying to achieve, how your station sounds, how you want it to sound, how your taste (and station) develops over time. Again... use your ears. If it sounds right, there is no point in changing anything. But in my case I tend to start hearing some new annoying thing every once in a while which makes me dive back into the settings. Quote: Why would you keep processing you files every time you play a song or sound file ? Because your content keeps changing, probably. Maybe less so if you don't have live content (like a DJ talking). But still, if you change some cuepoint on a track you don't want to have to re-process it. And you don't have any freedom anymore to change anything to your processing (without having to re-process all your files). And you don't want to have clipping on a transition between your nicely processed tracks.

Author:	Yodaman [ Tue Sep 05, 2023 8:32 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Getting the best sound ? Some observations and questions
[Because maxing out the quality setting doesn't always result in a difference that is actually noticeable. Some of these settings are better theoretically but they make little difference in practice. Use your ears to determine if it makes sense to max them out or not. Quote: That makes sense, thanks It depends! On what you're trying to achieve, how your station sounds, how you want it to sound, how your taste (and station) develops over time. Again... use your ears. If it sounds right, there is no point in changing anything. But in my case I tend to start hearing some new annoying thing every once in a while which makes me dive back into the settings. Once I find the most troublesome songs, I processed them, to see if I could hear any strange artifacts, there are quite a few songs that will do that. I'll be adding some other tracks and see what they sound like on my Audio Test Station, and see what the response is, before committing to processing my files, I have a slow PC for steaming and DJ work, so I can't run Stereo Tool on it, it's only a Pentium Silver N5030 processor, 8GB RAM but it sounds good if I do the processing first, My Mixer I have has some a few microphone compressors and special effects built in. So there is little reason to use Stereo Tool in a live session, I suppose I could use it for the Limiter, which would consume low CPU usage if configured for limited use. Because your content keeps changing, probably. Maybe less so if you don't have live content (like a DJ talking). But still, if you change some cuepoint on a track you don't want to have to re-process it. And you don't have any freedom anymore to change anything to your processing (without having to re-process all your files). And you don't want to have clipping on a transition between your nicely processed tracks. I understand if your doing Live content or people (DJ) talking that would be the time to use Stereo tool in real time, but I was referring to recorded music. I would think that during a Live DJ when talking the processing would not be as much, a little EQ and compression and noise gate, limiter would do the trick, I would think that the other features like the bass EQ, Declipper, Stereo effects would not be needed at all, unless your doing like sound effects with a VST or something. Transitioning between tracks are usually done with the playout software so there is no spikes from that, the software has a limiter so that helps with clipping issues. Thanks for the info.

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