Stereo Tool

I gave Purity Control a try but it's actually way too quiet for my taste so it's not really what I'm looking to achieve. Songs that are already recorded at a low volume stay as such whereas with the modified version of the Maximizer I have so far, they suddenly come to life and I can hear them really well. Trying playing Pink Floyd's "Drop the Bomb" with Purity Control and then load my fidelity Maximizer (removing stereo delay if you'd like) and you'll notice a HUGE difference.

The challenge is maintaining that without introducing clipping (which ironically happens more on slow songs than heavy bass fast ones) and not compromising the already loud tunes (e.g. dance, hip-hop, etc).


EDIT: I decided to drop the Normalizer. It would require re-constructing the entire preset to get it sounding decent again. The Maximizer is much closer to what I am aiming for (even despite its flaws). I will work with that from now on to get the idea sound of it. Everything in my introduction still holds true.

First, I have no idea what "Drop the Bomb" from Pink Floyd is. Are you actually meaning the track "Mother" from "The Wall"?

If you used the built-in version in the latest release of StereoTool, then if you chose the one under GENERIC PRESETS - USER PRESETS, then it will be "too quiet", because of the way that Hans treats presets in that section. What he does is he turns off loudness, so since I was adding 1.50 dB of loudness, then the preset will instantly be at least 1.50 dB quieter, if not more than that due to some other missing boosts as well.

If, however, you are talking about the preset under WEB RADIO STATIONS, then this discussion takes on an entirely different context. If that is the case, then what you are after is a very loud sound that has a significantly reduced dynamic range, which is what is referred to as being a sound product of "The Loudness War".

Having a squashed dynamic range is not my goal. That said though, given what I've realized about "GENERIC" vs. "WEB", I am in the process of making the "WEB" version louder, and then attempting to get Hans to understand that it is NOT my intention to have the "GENERIC" be that much softer than "WEB". For example, if I add 4 dB of loudness to "WEB", I do not want "GENERIC" to be 4 dB softer. I might only wish it to be 2-3 dB softer.

Yes, it's "Mother" from "The Wall". I just called it "Drop the Bomb" mistakenly. Anyway, I guess I find a smaller dyanmic range appealing because it means I don't have to adjust the volume to hear the really quiet recordings. It's understandable with songs that are super quiet but then go louder later on as part of the piece's progression. However, it's really annoying for other tunes that are just too quiet throughout the entire thing so I like having those boosted accordingly. I draw the line when a certain frequency range gets heavily suppressed (the big mistake made with the Fidelity Normalizer) so I made sure that didn't happen this time.

You seem to be going for a purer sound. What I'm aiming for here is "steady volume meaning you rarely have to adjust your volume if you want to hear everything".

Sorry for the delay on responding. I live in an area of the US that was hit by the strong winds last Friday. I just got my power back about 3 hours ago.

Anyway, yes, the preset is called "Purity Control" for a reason

I think the "too quiet" criticism is a little unfair though. I think it always needs to be said as "too quiet FOR ME", because the final RMS level that the preset has is nearly always (possibly actually always) higher than the RMS for the original source material. You did that, so that's cool, but I've received just "too quiet" or "not loud enough" statements in the past, and it confuses me that I've never seen an output to be a lower RMS than the original source. That also means that I'm reducing the dynamic range with what I'm doing, but not by as much as what it appears that some people like.

Also, it's going to be "worse" and "too quiet" if you're playing back on less expensive output equipment. If you want an iPod and cheap earbuds or cheap headphones ("walkman"-type) to crank out a really high SPL, then I think that's both an unrealistic expectation to have, and is a contributing factor towards the increase in early-onset hearing loss experienced around the world.

Hello Brian,

Yes, sorry about the "too quiet" criticism as I was making an "opinion" remark and not by any means stating a "fact" about your preset (I did not make this clear in my post). I didn't realize until later what you were truly going for. Some songs purposely have a large dynamic range (much like movies) where at one point it can be very very quiet and another extremely loud for the sake of emphasis (Classical is a big taker on that style). If a thunderclap has just as much impact as the crickets in a quiet forest, then that would sound ridiculous and unnatural.

In my case, given the type of music I listen to and the fact that some songs in my collection are way too quiet from start to finish, I really don't need nor want such a wide variance in volume. I end up manually adjusting anyway which is a pain after a while. Therefore, I created this preset with like-minded listeners in mind so that they can put any song in their collection and not have to worry about cranking up the volume because they can't hear or suddenly turning it back down because something got way too loud all of a sudden.

In terms of sound equipment, there's nothing special. Just my pair of SkullCandy Ink'd when at work (the only earbuds that seem to have both really deep bass and great noise isolation) and a pair of Tritton HDA510 surround sound headphones when at home (sounds better with movies and games than music mind you). Perhaps my perspective would change with really higher end equipment but I feel satisfied enough with what I use.


By the way, I heard about the power outage. Very widespread apparently and has caused a lot of grief for many (including yourself by what you described). I hope things are corrected soon if they haven't been already.

So it isnt very surprising that you chose my Wet-Maximizer preset, since what you describe is what music postprocessors of radio stations do: Take a lot of variation in music genres and quality of source mediums (based on the age of the producing or medium production), process it and generate an output, that makes all music equally sound exciting. Also of course with the goal in mind to make listeners stay at the radio station while switching through the channels, because the music sounds "fat" and "alive". The Wet-Maximizer setting is pretty much an emulation of the typical sound of a modern radio station (at least german radio stations), but you can use it for your private music collection (with good and bad MP3/Audio CD sources).

Spot on Maximizer! Couldn't have said it better myself. Anyway, I just discovered something REALLY neat. I installed the AudioBurst output plugin (no effects enabled mind you because that's overkill with Stereo Tool already on) and used that instead of the DirectSound one Winamp comes with. By increasing the output format to 32bit (which is just a fancy dithering effect) and using the Resampler, I managed to get even more audio bandwidth to work with and therefore songs that were distorting slightly were no longer doing so which was really nice.

Seems I can upload again which is good. Added v1.03 which some EQ adjustments.

One last update since I am finding very little to change in this preset in order to improve it further (I'm now quite happy with how it has been sounding). Anyway, I eased up the Noise gate because it was too aggressive and therefore cut into some of the treble without any real benefit of additional noise suppression. I have found a happy balance between eliminating unwanted noise while keeping those hi-hats crisp. Also, I turned off the declipper in my presets so that those who did not purchase it won't have to manually disable it. Also, it only benefited songs that had issues to begin with (in my collection that amounts to one midi conversion that I did not do correctly). Many other songs are negatively impacted by it. I have kept the settings in tact though for those that still want to use it (you did pay good money to buy it after all).

Anyway, like always, I hope you enjoy!

Well I found something to improve after all. Added some deep bass and without any negative side effects as a result of this change. I did test this quite a bit before deciding on this change. Also, I have:

1. Made the non-stereo delay the default since it sounds better now
2. Uploaded my presets as separate files rather than .zip since the forum now allows for this.
3. Removed the Fidelity Normalizer upload. It's old and honestly sounds horrendous by comparison at this point.

Also, all presets are saved with the latest version at this time (i.e v6.32).