Stereo Tool

Another update:
- Default setting for the new slider set slightly lower to allow a bit more deep bass to pass through
- "On" and "Diff" checkboxes added - now you can hear what this filter does (what it removes)
- Value of the slider is now displayed.
- Values are saved to disk.

I'm curious what your preferred setting of this slider is...

NOTE: If you check the effect of this slider, it may sometimes seem to throw away a lot of bass. However, the normal Loudness filter would do the same thing, because too loud bass sounds cannot pass through it. So the effect on the actual output sound will be less than what you hear when enabling "DIFF".

Once again, the links:
Winamp DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... r_BETA.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... r_BETA.exe
Command line: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... d_BETA.exe
VST version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... l_BETA.dll

wow, this is starting to be interesting

This is best slider (option) for deep bass .. i think...
So default is 100% and i think that is best for default ... i get interest results when i set it to 90-95% and Bass boost to 100%.
I bet Bass fans will love this new option !

One little request?
Can this all new sliders be controled by keybord cursors, like "Avoid distortion" slider in final limiter and this new one. - 1click=1% ?

Nice Hans! I'm using 75% bass boost and 135% deform bass peaks for the hiphop. I love the meter also. I'm a kind of visual meter freak I don't trust my ears completely, I wanna see what happens too.

Stereo tool is implemented for a Jazz station (we used breakaway live there). Sounds great on 'cool' Jazz! The setting is 67% bass boost and 116% deform bass peaks.

I'm currently working on another new feature in the next version: An improvement of the Stereo Boost filter.

See this thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=729&p=2406#wrapheader , starting from post #4.

What i think will be the final version is available now.

One more change: I've made some changes to the Loudness filter which makes it handle certain sounds like female voices (Bojcha's post from some time ago) a bit better.

Don't expect anything drastic, but it does really make a difference.

This MAY have other effects on the sound, so I'm waiting one more day before releasing it just to make sure that I don't introduce other problems.

So, if you hear anything weird in this new version, please let me know!

Winamp DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... r_BETA.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... r_BETA.exe
Command line: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... d_BETA.exe
VST version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... l_BETA.dll

rly?.. let's try

What has changed, in short:

As the final step of the Loudness processing, I was allowing a bit of distortion to occur in cases where I had trouble keeping the amplitude at a constant level. It was only a bit, but enough to get the amplitude constant.

Now it turns out that in the case of female voices, this distortion was quite noticeable.

So I made 2 changes:
- I'm still allowing some distortion to occur, but NOT if sounds are very soft - in that case allowing or now allowing distortion does not make a lot of difference for the peak level of the output signal. And in the voices that I used for testing, the distortion occurred at frequencies where there was almost no sound.
- I've moved the maximum distortion level from 400% of the original volume to 150% of the original volume.


The thing is, there's a reason why I did allow distortion to occur in the first place. NOT allowing distortion causes more 'ringing'-artifacts (basically there's a trade-off between distortion and ringing), and the peak levels do get a bit higher, which means that the "hard limit" filter has to remove them, which may cause other artifacts. On average the output volume is now about 0.02 dB softer, but that's only the average...


Testing with notoriously difficult sounds (xylophone on top of low strings, female voices) the new filtering method seems to be better. But there may be cases where the sound deteriorates due to this change, which is why I'm waiting for some feedback before I release this new version.

Hi Hans,
I listened new updated version and i think it's really a bit better sound on vocals.

I try another thing which i did not try long time ago, and that is to turn off Hard Limit.
So on transmitter i let the FM overdrive (101%) to do the job, and seems to be even better now. But...
still present distortion on vocals is mostly generated by loudness.
Anyway.. with this new filter is less noticeable.

The basic problem that I described earlier is still there. The tighter filtering improves things a bit (for other types of sound also), but the sound is still changed a lot.