Stereo Tool

BETA011 is posted. Reported crashes (streaming, processing) and VST3 minimal size GUI issue should be fixed.

No settings were missing and no error message. Interface looked normal but no sound to FM sound card.
e: With Beta 11 it works again, tested with both VST2 or VST3.

Wait... really? I'm having all sorts of issues as soon as I try to test the VST2 in Virtual DJ. Namely, everything is set to 0 (-100db etc), most obviously seen with skin colors. This then affects the VST3 once I try to load it again and it never recovers. I have to do a reset each time I launch it then load a preset.

I'm running version 7831 64bit. About to update to the latest beta (7885). Which version are you on?

It appears that the target file names for this beta are using -13 and should be using -12

Beta 10.22-012 (Feb 13 2024)

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Oh, you're right. Feb 13 - I looked at the date when I edited the opening post. Fixed.

I am running the Adaptive compressor and Intellilimiter in MB1. I am also using light, peak compression, and standard limiting, in MB2.

I'm curious how people adjust their Intellilimiter action. I've tweaked mine by ear. Is there a better way to know how much the Intellilimiter is doing?

https://streaming.live365.com/a61726

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BETA017 posted.

BETA018 will have a few important changes in Bass intermodulation distortion protection (formerly ABDP), which greatly reduces the effect that it has on bass. As usual, almost all the changes need to be enabled by changing the settings, so here's a description of what's new.

• Delayed bass clipping had a bug in its code, which could lead to negative values, which caused more clipping instead of less. This mainly happened if the static bass clipping threshold is set much higher than the dynamic threshold. This is solved now; no new setting added for this, it was just really really broken. (But worked more or less fine for most settings)
• Highs priority now has a "threshold" slider. I discovered that it was basically active almost all the time. The goal of this setting was to make highs stand out more in the end result at the cost of bass, which is especially useful on FM with pre-emphasis. However, the way it worked, it was active almost constantly, at a low level but still. I think that it's safe to do nothing if there are no extreme situations, so there's now a new slider that turns it off if the highs aren't being reduced a lot by the bass. Suggested value: At least 5%.
• "Reduce bass to avoid highs distortion" has the same issue, it's active way too often. It's probably safe to set the threshold here higher as well. 5% seems to make it do very little most of the time at typical input levels.

Some notes:

• Changing the thresholds may reduce the amount of highs that gets through or increase distortion. This needs to be tested better. But I'm pretty sure that values higher than 0 are worth it.
• Since Highs priority has far less impact on the audio now, it might be possible to run it at much higher levels to make the highs stronger.
• With the new compressor, the bass control is typically much tighter, which kinda removes the need for ABDP in many cases. But if it does what it does without causing havoc on the bass, it might still improve the end result slightly, so that also makes it worth turning it on. With high enough thresholds it will only kick in when needed.
• You can easily hear what ABDP does by enabling its "Diff" mode. If you compare the old version with this new one with these new settings, you'll likely hear it do much less mainly in the bass. This is also how you can hear what it does when you're setting it up. If there are no problematic sounds, it should basically do nothing.

In short:
If you want to hear the difference, then, after updating to BETA018 (which I expect to post tomorrow morning), set both "Highs priority threshold" and "Reduce bass to avoid highs distortion" to 5%.

And who tested all that and how? There is so many different type of music wich can cause holes and punch distortions and who knows what else at higher levels.
You say on diff do much less mainly in the bass. but in same time you also say to run it at much higher levels, that cant be right. I am expecting far more distortion caused by mostly bass and bass kick/punch.
Will all previous preset be compatible or all of them will be broken if delay clipping is used?
Those possible settings around delay clipping, like many other, are unlogical, like, how is allowed to have "protection treshold" higher then "delayed clipping"? Even in default settings it's 3dB difference, but yet 1st one is allowed to be +6.

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My values are suggested values; I only briefly tested it in a debug build which doesn't run in real-time, so tests have been very limited. Having said that, those filters have specific goals, and they were doing way more than they were intended to. But of course this will need to be tested and good values will need to be determined. When there are no problems in the audio without ABDP, then ABDP shouldn't be reducing the amount of bass, but it did.

The reason to give numbers is that we always lean towards not changing the audio, so the values that you get when upgrading are 0 for both of those two. Which won't be any different from how it was.

The build tests just finished, they did show that a lot of presets have changed due to the fix in the delayed clipping. I had not expected that, and I will look at this in more detail tomorrow. I *think* that what happened before was that the levels were only reduced part of the time; if that's the case then the change should always be an improvement. But if levels were always too low (which is also a possibility), then it could be that some existing presets will distort more now; in that case I need to add a compatibility flag. I hope to avoid that.

More loudness before was killing the bass, that's what I meant with that you can go loader now. The bass should survive much better now. Distortion protection will be less if you set the 2 sliders higher, but I expect only marginally. Again, I couldn't really test it with a debug build, but the filters were doing things that they weren't supposed to do. ABDP should reduce the bass to protect against extreme situations, not 90% of the time, which is what it was doing.


BETA018 is available now!