Stereo Tool

Hello everyone. I made some changes to the latest weskeene preset. I did the settings in the broadcasting/hd section. First, I turned on the option Reduce brightness to protect codec (de-emphasis) and raised the slider to 15. Then I turned on the option Pre-emphasized clipping/limiting to reduce codec overshoots. There the slider was already set to 15. And finally I turned on the Optimize audio for lossy compression (clean) option and now I'm much more satisfied with the sound.

All those options are new for Hd-stream? Are they always useful to activate or how to know when to use them? Reduce brightness doesn’t really sound as a good thing or? and what is a good value?

Specifically for MB1 with the new Adaptive mode a much bigger range is needed; the reason why we didn't yet put that in is that the next release won't have the new compressor yet (we need to test more with it, there are also some things that we want to improve - nothing major but we really need to do that before releasing it, to prevent having to add compatibiility modes later). But we definitely will do that when we officially add the new compressor mode.

18 might be a bit low though, even for the old compressors, for some insane presets. I'll raise it to 30 (which is pretty high, but we need to go higher in the future anyway).

I like the idea of not doing bounds checks if you enter numbers directly; that's also how loading presets works. So you can set out-of-bounds values by editing preset files, but I think it would be good if it's also possible if you enter a value. But, we do need some sort of sanity check on the input.
I just went through all the setings and found about a dozen that had defaults that were out of the new ranges. They are all fixed now (next build); in many cases the defaults were nonsensical but in some the new ranges were wrong.
MB1: Confirmed, but after the next release.
SBB: Which ranges do you need extended, and why? Why do you want a lower loudness detection (at least I assume that's what you meant) threshold than -30 dB?
I'm not sure where this might be coming from, the bypass mode is read at the start of the chain. But some filters delay samples, which might be causing this.
No, SBB is basically a separate filter; we put them together because they have similar effects and you typically want them to work together.

Thanks for clarifying all that! I forgot about the next proper release not having the Adaptive compressor mode. That makes sense as to why the range hasn't been expanded yet.
Yes, that's what I meant. Really, this was more of an issue when I was using just the MBAGC to maintain loudness, and no MB1 for loudness or WB for attenuation. I would push the drive of the AGC and lower the target level to -24 (as low as it would go) and it would still come into TrueBass much louder than I wanted. Now I just process TrueBass loud and use the Speech mode, without detection, to scale its intensity at a greater range than the Deep Bass Synthesis slider, and attenuate the signal with the wideband before the clipper(s).

Audio processors are essentially subjective logic puzzles and I'm feeling my way around. I think I like the sound I have (Thanks Wes Keene too!). It just feels like the software wants me to work a certain way. I either can't figure it out and am doing it wrong, or I'm trying to make it sound like it wasn't designed to sound (doubtful). I know my speakers aren't monitors, and my ears are autistic, and that affects how much I need to compensate using the signal... but ST is ro-freakin-bust.

Oh! Also if boosted with the Deep Bass Synthesis, 6db for example, the Effect Strength of SBB will show +6db (200%) even if its slider is at 0% (off). This doesn't seem right number-wise. If it's all the way to the left, it should either not show 6db, OR If it does show 6db, the effect should not be silent.
Ah, hm. It doesn't always happen, but when it does, it's jarring. Is there a processing sample delay for the preamp? I'm pretty sure this is the culprit, but heck... maybe it's the other filters releasing. Now I need to test more.

It's a matter of taste. To me, the sound from stereo tool and radioboss always sounded kind of hissy. Only with these settings did I get a sound close to what I want. Somewhere on the previous pages I left a link to my stream so you can hear how it sounds.

Not for preamp. Mainly for things like phase delay. And it's only a few hundred samples at most, typically.

But if it doesn't always happen it must be something else. That delay is constant.

Did you also change the default band frequencies? The reason I ask is because that kept bothering me.

After the changes I made to my preset and also the bug that was fixed due to RMS set to 0, I do feel I have a LOT better sound.

My friend did still complain about a "weird sound." I ended up fixing that... I had to mess with Stereo Delay's "lowpass to"

I again will propose my previous idea, bands slopes ( i use Digital MB) to be at least up to 48db/oct), not 32 like it`s now.
Some old versions were to 64, but i think it`s a bit "too much", so 48 is a great goal.
For the "allowing" enter values outside range. I think yes, it`s fair enough. At least it may be a limit. Let`s say twice the range, so no one can make a "mess". Is it good as an idea?

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4SIId ... bf03d8413a

Off topic: Thought I would share this here. This is my list of songs that give audio processing a good work out. For those who create presets, it might be good to have these songs on file to make sure your audio processing is working correctly and doing what it should be doing.

Posting from the sidelines here, any opportunity for me to make a mess of things would be appreciated!

Might need a new Forum Topic: "Yes, I made a Mess of Things - Now how do I Get Myself out of This?"