Stereo Tool

Really? But do you use it for lower Loudness values then? And why don't you use it for Loudness > 2.50?

Especially for high Loudness settings there's a lack of low frequency content, which can be improved by using the bass boost. At least that was the intention

Installers (NO changes in the processing, this is just the full list of installers, including VST and command line versions):

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

it's not because bass and bass booster. .. more is because i have some strange distortion on mid tones when live microphone is used (loudnes 2.40 and more).
Maybe is something with Soundmixer in studio or microphone. I must trace that first.

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Ok... If you want to, you can send me a piece of audio where you use the microphone. Without processing. Such that, if I use processing on it, I'll get distortion. Then I could see if there's something really weird about it, or maybe if I could add something to Stereo Tool that could solve it. For example, it could be that your microphone has an offset (non-0), which is amplified by the compressors and then causes havoc in the rest of the sound if it's passed through Loudness. If it's something like that, it should be easy to solve. (But if it's that, you should already be able to see it in the waveforms that Stereo Tool displays...)

Please send a .WAV file - don't encode it as MP3 (or if you do, check that the problem still occurs if you run it through Stereo Tool. If so, you can of course send the MP3).

great idea...
btw.. in studio there is nothing on mic ..(compressor or preamp..)
Mic is Rode NT-2A on Soundcraft S8

I'll send wav asap.

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I *think* I know what's going wrong here.

Actually there are probably 2 things happening.

1. The waveform has a very difficult shape. You might recall from some time ago the discussion about trumpet like sounds, well, these female voice sounds look very similar: A most-of-the-time not-so-loud signal with repeating very loud spikes in it. (Open it in a wave-editor and zoom in a bit and you'll see what I mean).

Now what happens is that Stereo Tool tries to reproduce this as good as possible, BUT - as you can imagine - the loud peaks will loose much more power than the lower ones.

This changes the way the voices sound.


Especially when there are no other sounds: Then there's nothing that Stereo Tool can use to "hide" distortion, and it needs to limit the loud peaks far too much.


2. I *think* there's also a hinge of reverb in one of the recordings (53532), which makes it worse.

Try the following settings:
- Loudness OFF
- Pre Limiter OFF (!)
- Pre Amp to a high value (for example 10.0)
- Multiband: All the "up speed" bands to 0.0360, down speed bands to 0.0752.

If you do this you'll discover some reverb. Now I know it's only a very small amount and this might not even be the problem at all (especially at a low Loudness setting such as 2.50).


I can improve the sound a bit by adding a phase shift (You can test this as follows: In the Stereo filter, disable the "Stereo Boost" filter and instead enable "Stereo Image" at the bottom. Then set to "angle" slider to 90 degrees. Now the right channel sounds a bit better (don't expect anything spectacular).

Ok, basically what would be needed is something like this:
http://www.aphex.com/pdf/230/Aphex_230_ ... 0Paper.pdf

(The "before" images at the bottom look exactly like what I'm seeing in your recordings)


BUT: That has a big disadvantage:
http://www.soundprocessing.nl/what.html
(Read the section about "phase rotator")


The bad news: The already clipped portions of the music will end up around the 0-crossing and hence be amplified a lot, and new peaks may arise that in turn also get clipped.


So, basically, what you need is a phase rotator on the microphone, but NOT on the music...

Assuming that you're using SAM or something like that: There are probably phase rotation plugins available that you can put on the microphone mixer path. That way the music will remain clean, and the microphone sound will improve.

owh ..
Things are now more clearer.

In PC I don't use SAM. Only two Winamp's For now best players for live program.

About record "53532" it's full dry recording .. other two are with Sony Noise reduction, so this smal reverb is actually room. But that is minor.

About Phase Rotator ... now i must setup one pc with some Phase rotator DSP and put that on mic... to test it.

edit:
Will one from thistwo plugins do the job?
http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.ph ... icle&id=80
Phase Rotator (a' la Leif) version 1.01 and Phase Tornado version 1.01
?

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Phase Rotator should do the job.

Ideally there should be a phase rotator that dynamically determines whether rotation is needed or not. Then it could be built into Stereo Tool.

Dynamically determining whether phase rotation improves things would be easy enough, the difficult part however would be to change the rotation depending on the sound without getting weird artifacts when the settings change.

(While typing this, I think I just got an idea how I can do it... Will get back on this!)