Stereo Tool

Update: New settings are now also loaded and saved in the VST plugin version (no further changes).

Luke: I'll look into it. I can do that, but chances are that widgets that I make myself will be less easy to control than the standard Windows ones. For example: The current sliders can be moved using the mouse by clicking, by moving the mouse wheel, by using the keyboard left/right arrows etc. If you compare that to the "Display refresh speed" slider at the right, you'll see that that slider doesn't work that well...

I do agree that a more uniform look would be better. So I'll think about it...

Update:
- Added a few presets (SuperH's aacPlus preset, and 2 presets from Vamprecords). If you have any good presets that differ from the ones already available in Stereo Tool, please post them here and I'll consider them for inclusion.. If you check the new presets, you can hear that Vamprecords' presets sound really different, and SuperH's has a different purpose. That's the type of presets I'm looking for... Please include a name that I can use for it!
- Moved some buttons around a bit to make things less "crowded".
- Added FM RDS TA button on the main window, so you don't need to have the FM window open to indicate that you're doing a traffic announcement.
- Improved indication in output bars of which filters are enabled and disabled, and when something is changed in another window, everything is updated immediately now.

I still need to update my own presets, after that I think I'm ready to release this new version.


By the way, I have noticed that the "limit" function (by default set to 180 degrees) of the stereo filter is working much better now that it did before.
To get a good and almost constant stereo separation, try this:
- Phase to 8.00
- Max phase to 40%
- Limit to 70 degrees.

With the tracks that I tested it with so far this sounds really good, so I'm planning to change my presets to use this instead of the current settings (phase 2.00, max phase 40%).

Update:
- Presets reorganized, last 10 preset files are also included in the presets window now (under RECENT PRESET FILES).

Looking good Hans, stereotool is running great here.

Thx,

Martijn

hi,
After unseccesful instaling MAYA44 sound card and killing my windows, i sit and make preset for FM.
preset Good trick .. testing it.

Hans, can you fix another slider "max phase" to be controled by mouse wheel and tastature arrows.
btw, nice looking preset menu now.

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control point
control point2

hi Hans,
i am curious did you look at cpu usage for AMD CPUs (dual and quad core) and Stereo Tool, and can that be fixed?

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control point
control point2

Hi Bojcha,

I kinda forgot about that one... Just to be sure: When you install it, do you get a message that a slower (non SSE2) version will be installed?

If not, can you give some more details about the two systems? I'm especially interested in differences in:
- Memory speed
- CPU cache sizes
If you could run some benchmark on both systems to see if there are any differences (especially w.r.t. these two subjects) that would also be interesting. I have checked my compilation settings, and both CPU's will run exactly the same code (assuming that you didn't get the aforementioned installation message).

Important: CPU speed is NOT a very good indication of how fast a system runs. For example, my previous PC had an Intel 4 at 2.40 GHz. My current PC has an Intel Quad core at 2.66 GHz. Now based on those numbers, when running a 32 bit OS and using only 1 core, the speeds should be roughly similar. In fact, a single core on my new PC is running at least 4 times as efficient as my previous pc - even though the numbers don't show that. This also makes it very difficult to compare your two CPU's without any further information. The most important reason for the difference are: Memory speed, and more efficient CPU (even though the clock speed didn't go up, it has become "smarter" and it executes more instructions per clock cycle). And even if the memory speed is similar: If you have 2 banks containing 2 GB each, the memory works almost twice as fast as when you have one bank containing 4 GB.

I wasn't planning to do this, but this weekend I've upgraded my PC from xp32 to Vista64 and now this part of the window looked really ugly. So...

Winamp DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... r_BETA.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... r_BETA.exe
Command line: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... d_BETA.exe
VST version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... l_BETA.dll

Because I had to implement my own sliders, they work somewhat differently from the Windows sliders. So I'm curious if the way they work is intuitive. (And that's why I'm not going to explain anything about it).

Notes:
- Not yet finished: The values are not displayed properly, and they are only displayed when the values are changed. It's past 4 AM so I didn't want to fix that anymore today...
- I think I'll make the Presets panel a bit bigger and the volume panel a bit smaller.

about CPUs.

Both CPUs are SSE and SSE2 (amd 5200+ dual core and Intel E5200 Core2duo)
on all other stuff i work .. i am in pc repair job.
i'll compare these two PCs.
For start:
- Both CPUs are SSE and SSE2 (amd 5200+ dual core and Intel E5200 Core2duo)
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Windsor 2.7GHz (OCed 3Ghz) 2 x 1MB L2 Cache
- Intel E5200 2.5Ghz (OCed 3Ghz) L2 cache 2MB
- on AMD PC there is 2 memory modules 2x1GB in Dual Channel mode work at 900MHz cl4
- Intel PC have 1 memory module 800MHz CL4

i got only this problem on AMD PC .. intel works with stereo tool on both cores.

edit:
oopss, huh new sliders controled only by mouse.

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control point
control point2

I know... For some reason I cannot capture the keyboard input in my main window - Winamp is getting it instead. I know I could make it work for the stand alone version, but I'm trying to find a more generic solution...

I have just found a (dirty - but working) trick to solve this - will upload a new version in about 30 minutes.