Stereo Tool

These are my personal settings I use to polish my private music collection and use to listen to it (usually with WinAmp):



General rules:
- Settings use only the freeware parts of StereoTool (with one exception)
- Clipping is prevented as much as possible (ideal is no clipping at all). I want to keep all the information of the original sound
- A slight stereo width enhancement.

Tipps:
- If you experience a strong "pumping" effect it might be the soundcard driver. Some have their own compressor processor active, especially if the equalizer of the soundcard driver is enhancing the bass frequencies. Try to disable the compressor and equalizer of the soundcard driver or reduce the bass enhancement in the active equalizer setting.

- "Wet" (for Radio/Streaming): Strong autogain and strong multiband compression, very wide stereo width[/b]
* designed to enhance the sound like the compressors/limiters do used for radio stations
* compresses the music, keeps it loud as possible without distorting, suitable for all kinds of music recordings/types (classic, jazz, pop, techno, rock, insturmental, live, speech)
* keeps the volume stable (no pumping)
* enhances the "room" of the sound (existing hall, environment sounds)
* enhances bass
* works with already compressed/postprocessed music files (mostly)

- "Dry" (for Radio/Streaming, ** recommended for freeware use **): Strong autogain and slight multiband compression, enhanced stereo width. Keeps more of the original music dynamics. Other than that most like "Wet".

- "Golden Punch" (for Radio/Streaming, ** recommended for licenced use **): Enhanced "Dry" setting including Declipper and Natural Dynamics. Keeps even more of the original dynamics but also restores distortions due to clipping.

Playlist with tracks/mixes using the "Golden Punch" preset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnzICJh ... 22&index=1

- "Remaster" (for Mastering before collecting/burning or cleaning older/bad recordings): Special setting for finalizing a music track for release as MP3 or burning on CD. This setting has no AGC auto gain but uses only the multiband compressor to create the final frequency set: A warm, smooth, clear and clean sound. Music which is already mixed like that won't change much. Music with a complete different frequency mix will sometimes change completly. Slight stereo width enhancement. Slight overal volume gain on sources with low volume. Tipp: Use the Pre-Amp-Slider to set the volume for each track individually, so it uses the complete range of the volume but doesnt compress too much - if the tracks appears to be too loud, even turn it down. To finetune the usage of the full volume range, use the "max amplification" slider of the single band processor.

- "Plain" (Experimental): Autogain and slight single band compression, enhanced stereo width. Pretty much makes the sound loud without changing much of the "flavour".

- "60s Stereo" (Experimental): Stereo enhancement of the old stereo recordings with 100% channel separation. Mixes the channels, so the instruments don't appear disconnected from each other and the sound uses the whole stereo width. Bass is centered.

Illustration before/after:


Recommended tracks to check out the "60s Stereo" preset:
* Frank Sinatra - For Once In My Life
* Frank Sinatra - They Can't Take That Away From Me
* The Beatles - Day Tripper
* The Beatles - Paperback Writer
* The Beatles - Drive My Car
* The Beach Boys - Little Deuce Coupe
* The Beach Boys - Surfer Girl
* Kool and the Gang - Jungle Boogie
* Dusty Springfield - Son of a Preacher Man
* The Statler Brothers - Flowers on the Wall

- "Mono2Stereo" (Experimental): Virtual stereo for mono recordings by diffusing the frequencies across the left/right channels. Does only work on pure mono recordings! Stereo recordings will sound weird.

- "Oldtimer Radio" (Experimental/Fun): These settings try to recreate the warm, dry sound of a vintage radio from the 1930s/40s with its limits in the upper frequencies.

- "Talk Podcasts" (preparation for portable players): Special setting for preparing Talk Podcasts (usually badly encoded MP3 with a low volume) for using on a MP3 player. Helps saving energy (low volume setting on the MP3 player) and protecting from environment sounds around headphones by pushing the speaker sounds to the loudest level. Simple settings for fast processing of long podcast MP3s (30-60 minutes) before putting them on the MP3 player. DO NOT USE FOR MUSIC!



- "Cleaned Talk Podcast": Preset for a clean Talk Podcast sound (needs license). Declips, derumbles, denoises, reduces room reverb (results in a dry sound), adds volume to voices, removes "P" popping, steady aligned loudness for all voices. DO NOT USE FOR MUSIC!



- "Voice Extraction" (preparation for portable players): Quite similar to the "Talk Podcasts" setting, but it tries additionally to filter the voices out of a stereo image and place it in a mono center. Usefull for bad recordings of interview panels with a lot of environment sounds which distract from the voices.

- "MOD Files (ProTracker)" (Experimental): Special setting for music sources coming from the Amiga ProTracker MOD file format. Strong multiband compression, simulated stereo from 4 channel sound (2 channels left, 2 channels right). DO NOT USE FOR NORMAL MUSIC!

- "Offset Fix": Fixes DC offset.
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/dc_offset.html


- "Shellac" (Experimental/Fun): New experimental preset to emulate the sound of 1920-30s shellacs.

Best used with 7.40:
DSP: https://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp ... er_740.exe
Standalone Installer: https://www.stereotool.com/download/ste ... er_740.exe
Standalone Installer 64-Bit: https://www.stereotool.com/download/ste ... 64_740.exe
Command line: https://www.stereotool.com/download/ste ... md_740.exe
VST DLL: https://www.stereotool.com/download/vst ... ol_740.dll
VST DLL 64-Bit: https://www.stereotool.com/download/vst ... 64_740.dll
VST NoSSE2 DLL: https://www.stereotool.com/download/vst ... E2_740.dll

Versions after 7.40 might produce distortions/clipping due to the usage of the classic multiband compressor/limiter in most of the presets. There seems to be a bug in the voice protection routine of the old multiband processor after 7.40. All versions of Stereotool after this are causing little clipping distortions, especially with piano music. 7.70 has the least clipping distortions, after that it becomes even more prominent.

Several requests to fix this were unsuccessfull, so these settings will be only compatible until 7.40.

To use new features you have to set up an effect chain, where the current version of Stereotool comes first (to use the repair options for example) and then Stereotool 7.40 with one of the Maximizer presets comes next:

Some tweaking to make bass drums clearer and reduce hissing/distortions. Added three settings: Soft, For All, Extreme.

Yes.
Sorry, but I can't stand to listen to it (monster-compressor preset) for more than 10 seconds.
This preset squishes almost all kind of music to a very fatigueing mud.

People grown up with radio stations only (being so conditioned) may like it.
But for musicians (like me) this preset kills all the energy of the music.

That's my intention: A preset that emulates the sound of most radio stations. Their settings have the intention to make music sound good on every device used.

I tweaked the settings a bit more, to make the sound more smooth and warm. I removed a little of the compression for more dynamics, enhanced bass and reduced the frequencies from 960 to 10k.

In my opinion, it might make a viable AM radio preset if tweaked further, but the subdued nature with the lack of dynamics / punch limits the usefulness for FM, web, and audiophile-type listening.

And that is big mistake by about 90% of people who makes presets.
"Most stations" ? They use orbans and omnias compressed to death, just to get more loudness, which does not mean it's good, No it's just loud and other descriptions are questionable.

Guys, let's just say we have different taste. I had a look at your presets and I can't say I am impressed much. The difference is I hold myself back with talking down to others that don't share my taste. Please do so too. If you cannot, I have to use the board filter to keep things clean here. Thanks.

While I agree that tastes are different, I provided you with an unemotional assessment.

One has to be open to criticism to be able to accept any, even the most constructive.

I've attached a very quick modification of the "For All" preset. It follows what you did generally, but adds a bit of punch.

Talking down ?
No, you have asked what we think and we wrote what we think !
It was not my intention to be rude (if you think I was, then this is a misunderstanding).
Your preset does not match my taste.

But besides different tastes exist a natural concept of how music (and other audio phenomenons) have to sound.
Dynamics and transients exist in the real world of sounds (listening to musical instruments in the real world, etc.).
And that is the way the human hearing system is conditioned from the day of our birth.
And for my ears your preset produces a too artificial sound characteristic by removing too much dynamics and transients.
If you have tried to mimic a typical characteristic of many radio stations today then you have done a good job.
But to do this you do not need Stereotool !
Many people here want overcome this (wellknown) artificial radio sound characteristic.
The goal is to have same loudness for all kind of different sources, but it should sound as natural as possible (with dynamics and transients).

Okay, here the next version of my presets. As I also was missing the "punch" in bass drums (especially in pop and dancefloor music) I altered the attack values. I also tried to further smoothen and clear the sound.

Guys, use stereotool for your ideas of how music should sound, I use it for my ideas. In the end I create a preset which renders the music the way I want to hear it. And there is a reason why the radio sound is so popular: It makes music sound "larger than life", and that's what most people like to hear - and I am in this way mainstream. I want to have a preset which I can feed my various MP3 files to and that makes them all sound nice and loud - like a normal radio station does with the different music tracks, from whatever source and recording quality.

I layed out, what I want to accomplish with my preset. If you are able to offer help to get to that goal best, then please comment and I listen. If you only have to say: "I dont like", pls don't expect me to care about that, as tastes differs. If you don't like to hear music that way: No one forces you to use my presets, have a nice day.

Here we go: