Stereo Tool

To those who are considering this card... Download the documentation for the card! I was stymied by the lack of output level and found that the output level had to be changed to +18 instead of +8. So far, it is performing well in tests. I'll try the Three Dog Night test today.

Tried "Black and White" and much to my surprise the overshoots with the Marian were identical to the M-Audio. Nothing I can not live with but surprising based on comments elsewhere about the MT card.

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Did you calibrate it? Or better, did you remove the calibration settings from your old card?

Is it worse than this video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMzMBUDBSX8

I looked at the tones the processing software generates on the Stereo Tool screen and the outputs matched the inputs on the few frequencies I tried. The M-Audio settings were deleted when I installed the MT card. I am a couple of personalized presets away from the M-Audio card's settings and I'm pretty sure I did not see any need to calibrate that card either.

My overshoots are about 3+ dB as measured on an Inovonics 531 Modulation analyzer. This was using my Elettronica 1kw backup transmitter which has a built-in exciter. I don't have the luxury of testing through the actual setup, which is Stereo Tool-STL-Modulation Sciences Composite Clipper-Harris Digit exciter-Harris Transmitter.

What is the preferred method of calibrating a given sound card?

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3 db!? That's insane! Even with my laptop headphone output I have never seen spikes over 0.5 dB (Pira Analyser, with a DEVA 4004 I measure only 0.15 dB; the 76 kHz LED occasionally lights up briefly).

I must say that I'm also a bit surprised by this. Maybe you can give more details?

Is it possible that the overshoots are from the transmitter?

How is the analyzer being fed? If you are monitoring off-air, would it be possible to feed it the mpx to test?

I also suspect the transmitter - I've never seen such huge values on any somewhat decent sound card even without calibration.

How to calibrate - but if it's the transmitter I don't know how much it helps (depends on how much the transmitter behavior resembles an RC highpass filter):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeJ5Xq5EEEU

Some things to check:
- You have the highpass filter enabled in your preset? (Not set too close to 0 Hz)
- In the Advanced Clipper section, there's a setting called something "Forcibly remove DC caused by Advanced Clipper (reduces quality)". Please try what happens if you enable that!

Never had overshoots using the Marian card verified by 2 very reliable sources. Could be an exciter issue or a setting in ST.

Holy S.... I said 3dB... I meant 3%, as in if I'm set to 105%, I'll occasionally see 108%.

Sorry. I was apparently not in the room when I typed that previous comment...

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Please try the calibration video, and tell us which values you see with that. Even with ~ 10 Hz square wave you should not see overshoots.

That may have to wait until Sunday night-Monday morning. I have to come in at midnight to "babysit" a tower crew at one of our TV sites. I'll be able to put the station on the backup audio chain and calibrate the ST processor. I'll also be able to tweak ST into the Elettronica transmitter.

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We improve things by making them worse.