Quote:
I did RTFM Hans...

I specifically said that I completely disabled bandpass to test this.

There is no highpass or lowpass involved at all.
Yes, the distortion is there due to overdriving, and I have the correct file. The only way I get an appreciable improvement is NOT with the first slider, but with the tilted values slider. I've tested with everything disabled too. It's the same way. The only way it works for me is with the titled values. It's still set for 0 degrees on the tilt.
Also, your nag message kicking in every 60 seconds pushes the dB value through the roof, so the filter disables when that kicks in, and I think it takes a few moments to stabilize under the significant CPU load, so between the lack of it doing much of anything good and the high cpu load, it's not impressive in the slightest.
I really don't have a clue what's wrong here. Just some questions to check:
1. If you check both the input level meters and the waveform display, do you see that the input signal is perfectly clipped to a completely constant level? If not, there's something BEFORE Stereo Tool (eg. Winamp equalizer settings etc.) that are doing something to the audio.
2. As Bojcha said: If you use BETA020 (registered!) you won't get the nag message anymore. And in that version the top slider should work. If you don't have a registered version you would indeed get the behavior that you're describing. (I still need to decide what to do with this filter, because I also want to sell it as a separate application).
No idea what else could be wrong...
Just to be clear: If everything works correctly, the output should be as in the 2nd file (nearly completely cleaned up) - in fact slightly better because the filter has been slightly improved since I uploaded that file.