Stereo Tool

Hello there, I was wondering whether some of the knowledgeable people on this forum might be able to help me?

Many years ago, I bought a license for Perfect Declipper and used to use the VST Plugin on Audacity to try and get some dynamics back from some of the more compressed CDs in my collection (unfortunately, I'm into Heavy Metal, which is a genre with some very compressed modern releases). As I use Linux, I ran the Windows version of Audacity through Wine, as it seemed a simple, if time intensive way, of getting the plugin to work. Unfortunately, recent versions of Audacity running through Wine seem to forget the license key every time they close and, even when re-entering it, I sometimes get the watermark over the top of the processed audio.

I have played around a little with the SteroTool command line tool on Linux, but it does far more than I need it to do at the moment and, to a layman like myself, the number of settings is rather overwhelming. Therefore, I was wondering whether anyone might know the settings I'd need to get Stereo Tool to act more or less like Perfect Declipper with the default settings? I've seen quite a number of threads on here with people's settings, but most of them seem to be doing a lot more than just declipping, or omit adjusting the input levels etc.

If I can get some settings down in an .sts file, I can write a simple batch script to automate the task of processing tracks and, hopefully, avoid accidentally watermarking the output.

Thank you in advance, and apologies for yet another question about settings!

Hi! I too came to Stereo Tool via repairing metal in Audacity with Perfect Declipper. Since then Hans and team have developed a batch processor for this called WatchCat. Sadly, WatchCat is not a native Linux software, nor does it work fully in Wine. There has been some interest in it being ported to Linux, but this hasn't happened yet. I'll consider this another vote for WatchCat Linux.

As far as enabling only the simple repair functions (namely the Declipper), you first want to click the reset button (looks like a refresh icon) and do all settings. Next you'll want to click the preset button, navigate to the Repair tab, then look for one called Modern Recordings (or Modern Recordings, Low Bitrate MP3/AAC input if your source files are of poor quality) and choose it. Make sure Repair is checked, then Load Selected Settings.

After this, you'll probably want to enable one of the clippers (I don't know if the Advanced clipper comes with a PD license, but it comes with ST Basic) and reduce its drive. This lowers the output level to make room for your new peaks and keeps them from clipping. 50% on the Simple Clipper is equal to -6db on the Advanced Clipper, and IIRC that's the default headroom setting PD offers.

From here you can export the sts file in the preset manager.

Let me know if you need any more assistance.

edit: Here's the Modern Recordings repair preset with -6dB drive on the Simple Clipper. This is as close to the default settings for Perfect Declipper as I could find without enabling any processing (no Natural Dynamics). It also uses the Simple Clipper instead of the Advanced Clipper, since PD never had the AC, despite it sounding much better -- so enable the Advanced Clipper if you own ST Basic as well as a Declipper license.

That's fantastic. Thank you, MrKlorox, for such a detailed explanation, and the preset too. I'll have a play around with this and maybe try switching in the advanced clipper as I get more confident. Would you recommend trying Natural Dynamics as well?

Perfect Declipper really was a revelation and made the difference between me being able to listen to some tracks without getting ear fatigue and me ignoring large parts of my collection. Not quite as good as original masters, but brilliant when an album has never had a decent release. WatchCat looks interesting too, but (as a programmer) I should be fine writing my own bash scrip for automating albums; it's the audio processing side that is currently beyond me.

Thanks again!

So, my understanding is that it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. The detection needs to be tweaked per song/album, I believe. Better detection algorithms are on Hans' to-do list, but not very high up. It does make metal sound more aggressive though.

However, I recommend TrueBass on its default setting for repairing music. It tries to read and synthesize bass below the detected harmonics to restore high-pass filtered sub-bass. For metal, the sub-end is mostly wasted on the kick drum, sadly. But it does make the music feel heavier or more solid.

Thanks again for the advice. I've got a lot to play around with now.