Stereo Tool

Hi everyone,

First off Stereo Tool is a great program and I use it for my internet radio.

I have found that it is good to use stereo tool with a combination of other audio processing plugins. My radio streams in mono and I use stereo tool's "Watching a Movie" preset and enable "Center Bass". Then I use Dee2 and Enhancer 0.17 with Winamp altogether. If it was not for Stereo Tool my stream would be distorted but I think it sounds pretty good.

Check out how it sounds: http://newsingles4u.com (and go to RADIO) button.

If you like how it sounds, i'd be happy to share my configuration and set up with anyone!

Hi I listen you radio, and i think that sound is too bad! Bass is not natural! my speakers don't played other sound,only bass. For normal quality, you dont ned any other plugins, Only stereotool get the best sound.If you have mono, used the preset Fake Stereo, or make you personal preset based on some preset for Internet radio

Wooh! The first track I heard didn't sound too bad (very loud bass and highs, and I like loud highs...) but then the 2nd song started and now I indeed hear almost only bass.

On cheaper speakers which usually have very bad bass response (which is also the case for some on-board sound cards) I can imagine that this sounds good, but using a high quality sound card and high quality speakers it's horrible - and also a bit distorted. It sounds a bit like when you're standing outside a disco (but with far more high frequency content).

My first compression attempts sounded a bit like this - I also hadn't noticed it due to the quality of my sound card (actually before getting any feedback I was convinced that it sounded really good). And even the early 3.xx versions of Stereo Tool contained some low noise rumbling that I hadn't noticed due to the fact that my sound card just didn't play them.


Now I suppose you don't want to immediately but a new sound card and speakers. Fortunately there's an easier way to find out how it sounds: Burn the output on a CD.

DO NOT record it back from your sound card, but encode directly to .WAV (or MP3) and then burn that to a CD. Play the result back on a good quality system (could be your car stereo if you have good speakers there). Or better: On a few different systems. That will give you a feeling of how it sounds on different systems.


Note: If you're encoding to mono, DO NOT use fake stereo (which Boris proposed), that's only useful when you're listening to mono content and you're listening in stereo yourself. But converting the fake stereo sound to mono you'll get something really bad.


By the way: The Watching a Movie is not really intended to process music, it's main focus is to reduce very loud sounds with as little latency as possible so you can watch a movie without hearing the sound half a second after seeing something on screen... If you really like this preset, at least turn "Low Latency" off to increase the quality a bit (should have no effect on the sound except that it will be cleaner - low latency introduces the rumbing sound I mentioned earlier, so the bass quality deteriorates).

woow... this stream is over-bassed

Too much bass man ... i am just listening some r'n'b song on stream .. and this very low bass in song is over evry tone in song.

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Hey everyone,

Thanks for the opinions... I know it's a lot of bass. My thinking is that my radio for my website gets more hip-hop/RnB type music than Rock and Country (although there is plenty of both).

I know lots of people at work/schools with small, garbage speakers will like that bass because the school I went to had these horrible speakers that put out NO bass and it was depressing. Now I only use 1 other plugin along with Stereo Tool, I know what you all might of heard at first was too much and accessive but I think I've gotten it down now.

yes there is still a lot of bass but it doesn't distort and the highs are still in tact. It is in mono also (because I don't want to go to 128kbps for stereo only). I have not tried using the fake stereo preset but I use the "Watching A Movie" preset that comes BEFORE the bass/highs enhancing plugin and it does what needs to be done to the music before being enhanced so nothing is distorted and volume is constant with all songs.

If you listened to it on Saturday or Friday, listen to it again I think you will like it better. Although if you hate "lots of bass" forget it, you won't like it now either

* EDIT *
Maybe what I need is a preset that does what "Watching A Movie" and does what "Fake Stereo" preset does simultaneously. A big reason the bass is so much is because it is in mono... I listen to my music with decent $140 PC speakers but since it's in stereo it is not "over-emphasized". I am not good at making presets so I don't know if what I describe is possible but if someone could / has made it maybe that would be a great solution I don't know.

I haven't been able to listen yet, but about the fake stereo:

DON'T use fake stereo for a mono stream. Instead, if you want to have the rich full sound of the original stereo recording in mono, change the following settings:
1. Open the Stereo Image window
2. Turn "Stereo Boost" OFF - that has NO effect at all on mono streams.
3. Turn "Stereo Image" (at the bottom of the window) ON.
4. Leave all settings intact, except Phase and Width (on the left, both set to '1.00' originally) -> Set them both to '0.00'.

This way, sounds that were previously lost by the conversion to mono are no longer lost.

Alright I think I understood you correctly.

I opened that window (stereo window) and turned ON stereo image (i'm using Stereo Tool 4.04) and the four little sliders are all set to the far left (0.00 / 0) for all 4 settings and i have "CENTER BASS" enabled i dont know why but i thought it would make the bass sound a little better (since i have so many hip hop/RNB tracks)