Stereo Tool

BETA751-028

Windows 32 bit:
Windows stand alone: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 51-028.exe
Winamp/DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... 51-028.exe
VST plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... 51-028.dll


CHANGES:
- Add separate volume for 1st and 2nd MPX output.
- Added CPU load display (as text) to the CPU load sliders.
- Fixed broken GUI display in AM mode when in full-screen
- Solved distortion in limiter in lowest multiband bands. Increased range of Limiter distortion slider downwards to 0.2% and filling in default values for them now.
- Added a bunch of new presets and removed a few old ones (not yet finished).


TO DO:
- Exception in: GUI Event Handler (Exception 0xc0000005 at address 0xf5f5b8, read/write=1, r/w location=0x0). Offset-info: 0xeb0c84. Reported by Fario and 2Sense. Unfortunately the crash occurs in a function called __intel_memset and I cannot see where it's called from. (Well, the GUI obviously...)
- Add presets, and remove a lot of older ones
- Improve web interface further. -> Postpone, can be done together with hardware GUI development. (very soon, among others preset selection)

OLDER:
- Different lowpass frequency for Stream than for FM/AM.
- Simplify tilt correction
- Declipper --> input --> lowest tilt slider is behaving akward when holding and sliding (could be there for a while, I just noticed) --> See it here as well but I don't see any reason in the code. Not important enough to spend a lot of time on... So I'll keep it as it is for now.
- Disable Delossifier at lower latencies
- Optimize Delossifier
- Add Bass Boost reference level (boost at input, reduction at output) "Drive"
- Make DIFF work for all pre-limiter settings.
- Assigned unique ID's to built-in presets, to make it much easier to add, remove and shuffle presets (which used to be tedious and error prone).
- Exception when switching between built-in or external presets. To be tested with DEBUG version. Hm... not reproduced anymore.
- Added warning about that it's better to use ASIO, plus that if you don't you need to set the sample rate correctly in Windows.
- Pre-limiter behavior redesigned. Sliders added and visual added.
- Audio drop in FM output with Tilt correction enabled (which was caused by the clipper!) solved.
Latency 4096 + 1024 bands in pre-limiter sounds good again.
- Fix RDS clock on 64 bit
- Add visual to show Pre-limiter effect.
- Check Pre-limiter to see if I can improve how it works, or make it more logical / easier to setup.
- Stokkemask in strict mode (checkboxes for 'skip smoothing' and 'sloppy smoothing' disabled) is *slightly* less strict than before, but the sound quality is improved a lot (effect on the audio of the Stokkemask filter is reduced by more than half).
- You can set Strictness (CPU) to 3 instead of 2 as maximum. 2 should normally be sufficient though, and it's the default setting.
Stokkemask CPU load optimized for all settings.
Bug in Stokkemask and Multipath Clipper fixed that makes it work better.
- Added faster processing paths for SSE3, SSE4.1/2, AXV and AVX2.
- Optimized Stokkemask filter (so far only in Faster mode, will optimize the other modes later). Filtering is slightly less good, although I don't see it in the measurement results.
- Changed band steepness minimum values for multiband from 6 to 3 dB/octave. (Ooh. I hope i changed MB and not ND...).
- Added a bunch of new presets. Some need to be updated again. And the Jeroen Platenkamp HvZ mod version is currently identical to the original.
- Web interface drawing of equalizer fixed
- Crash when loading some presets fixed
- Bug fix: Prelimiter acted up at certain latency settings.
- Web interface dragging fixed.
- Bug that caused sliders and top menu to stop working fixed.
- Calculation of FM MPX left/right peaks was wrong when using Composite LIMITER, fixed.
- Made left/right display green (with above 100% yellow) as suggested by mpex2006km.
- Improved web interface a lot more ("1000" is gone, more displays are working, right part of display auto-scales to device width)
- Fix MPX Power calculator
- Fix resetting of tilt calibration when loading a preset
- Add volume meters which show > 100% modulation for IBC demo
- Bug fix: Single-channel file in plugin version caused crashes when using the composite clipper.
- Compressor/limiters: Moved limiter before compressor. This slows down the attack speed when limiting occurs, which gives a more stable sound.
- Improved web interface. (Not yet finished).
- There's some weird sound audible when you enable 'DIFFERENCE' mode. Even if nothing happens. This means that the audio is somehow damaged. It's worse at lower latency settings. FIXED
- Make highs clipping level configurable. DONE
- Fix composite clipper mode. DONE
- See a few posts up. I've now added 2 sliders that can be used to reduce the effect when there's not clearly a tone present. Tones only reduces the effect when there isn't a single tone that clearly sticks out - basically it checks how loud the strongest band is vs. the total of all bands, and adjusts the effect based on the result of that calculation. Since there are almost always also other tones present, setting this too high will even reduce tones that do clearly stick out. Tones threshold can be used to turn the filter off completely if there isn't a single tone that clearly sticks out (it makes the slope of the Tones only effect steeper).
- Changed some things back to how they were in version 005 - Bojcha reported (and I confirmed) some weird artifacts in version 006. If you enable METHOD2 you get the 006 behavior, that's for my own tests and I will remove METHOD2 later.
- Added Smother filter. The higher you set it, the more it will ONLY affect the loudest sounds. If you have multiple loud tones (for example a bass and a loud voice), setting this very high might cause only one of the two to be effected - setting it very low will affect everything though.
- Added multiband pre-limiter/phase optimizer to the Advanced Clipper.
- Trying a different multiband limiter in the Advanced Clipper. This time without phase optimizer. I'm very curious which version you guys prefer!

Between beta 24 and 28, CPU usage has shot way up on my old Xeon. No affinity settings are in use. It used to run maybe 10-15%, and now it's a constant 45-50%. StereoTool reports 94.2% time in processing. No other changes happened. I just shut Winamp down and installed 28, and fired it back up.

Hi Hans,

dsp 028 crashed on the preset, after reset it runs, loaded my preset witch ran ok in Beta 025, crashed again..

Win 7-64, AMD A8-3870, MMX (+), 3DNow! (+), SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, AMD 64

That's an insane jump. Can you send me your settings? All seems normal here...

Sure, here's what I was working on when I made the jump.

Ok confirmed. I'm jumping from 3 to 9% which is quite extreme.

Edit: Found it. And fixed it. Will upload a new version asap (but that will probably be tomorrow). 027 should still be ok I think. Note: Only the Winamp/DSP version is affected.

Doesn't reproduce here, I'll check it tomorrow (debugging and matching error addresses is more difficult in the DSP version with the new compiler, it would have been easier if I could reproduce it - but it loads without any issues here).

Edit: Something VERY strange is going on. I see the old preset list in the DSP version of 028. Which should not even be possible...

May be a 0.5-1% CPU load is presented more than previous beta.
Hans , did you make some changes to the window text "Percentage of time in processing" . Did you move it left or right ? Because the red bar is about 0.5-0.7% up, as i see the numbers now, i think it should be around 21.6-21.7. Now is 22.3-22.4. I`m talking for Stand alone .

Will wait for the next beta to see if it`s from what you fixed for the user reported a big jump of CPU load .

DSP version is fixed - old performance is back.

Definitelly there is some increase of the load in Stand alone . about a 0.5-0.6% .