Stereo Tool

Right Hans and Bochja, now it is time to stop for atleast a week. That is exactly what I was talking about before.
You get so motivated to get it right that you loose all sense of reality.
You'll see, or hear, that everything will sound different after a week when you have a go at it again.

I think it's time to do the final testing and release 4.0.. also keep in mind that there is no perfect "processing software" also breakaway has i'ts problems and that's ok.

I really like the way stereotool has developed and i think it's sounding great now.. and you can alway's optimize version along the way.
Anyway thank you Hans for all your time you put in Stereotool.. it's great..


Just my 2cent's...

/Martijn

All very very very true. The reason for the last change what that for certain sounds - at Loudness setting 4.0 - the sound seemed to have deteriorated slightly when comparing to the released 3.55 version. Which would be bad. That is no longer the case now - the sound is now both (a lot) cleaner and (a bit) louder than that of 3.55, as it should be.

So this really should be the last version. I just wanted to be sure that I didn't miss any degradations compared to the previous version - and find a good value for the clean highs/deep bass slider.

Hi Hans,
I noticed a good deal of improvement from previous beta versions. People must know that stereo tool is a great audio processing program, not only for its high quality sound reproduction but also for its unique feature by allowing users to customize and use various adjustments and presets to suite their need and taste, this is unlike most other audio processing programs with their limited features. Stereo tool is great tool and by the time you release version 4, I am going to call it "Super Stereo Tool".
Good luck and go a head with the release of version 4.
Abdul

Status...
- Add "warm and smooth" preset DONE
- Go through the presets and see if I should make any changes
- Check if I can improve the performance of Normal and Low quality mode if both Loudness and Pre Limiter are turned on by ALWAYS bypassing the final limiter in that case. Partially done, reduced the Loudness CPU load and latency.
- Fill in a default value for the "clean highs/deep bass" slider. DONE, slightly reduced the bass (less than 0.1 dB) with a clearly audible effect on the distortion. Should now be identical or less than before the deep bass level was increased...
- Check how the RMS-based pre limiter handles deep bass sounds: It seems to respond too strong on very low frequencies. NO

Not yet available online...

in this i am sure...
on mid quality low bass is distorting a lot. low quality i never turn on.

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It's not really distorting, but it does sound bad. The handling of the bass sounds is the main difference between the quality settings.

If you're not using Loudness and only use moderate compression, using Mid or even Low quality is not that bad. The more aggressive the processing gets, the more (mostly bass related) problems occur in low/mid quality modes.

Selecting the Multiband compressor "HQ" setting helps - a bit.

The good news is that the performance improvement that I found only affects Quality Hi. So you should see a somewhat reduced CPU load if you download the "BETA" version again now (which may help on your AMD PC).

Actualy ... no.. in last 5-6 betas i can't use final-limiter anymore, + i won't to set fm volume to 101.
but... to the and of the week it will be replaced with intel pc.

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control point
control point2

Status:
- OK Add "warm and smooth" preset DONE
- Go through the presets and see if I should make any changes
- OK Check if I can improve the performance of Normal and Low quality mode if both Loudness and Pre Limiter are turned on by ALWAYS bypassing the final limiter in that case. NO (doesn't work that well in Normal quality mode, should be a manual action), but: Reduced the Loudness CPU load and latency instead.
- OK Fill in a default value for the "clean highs/deep bass" slider. DONE, slightly reduced the bass (less than 0.1 dB) with a clearly audible effect on the distortion. Should now be identical or less than before the deep bass level was increased...
- OK Check how the RMS-based pre limiter handles deep bass sounds: It seems to respond too strong on very low frequencies. NO

If I have enough time left today (I *AM* going to release today no matter what...): Add RDS clock stuff.


Bojcha, I'm surprised about your CPU load problems... Did you download the latest BETA (which I uploaded here about an hour ago)? I had expected that the performance gain would be bigger - or at least equal to - what I lost in performance due to the extra distortion filtering.

I have just compared the latest 4.0 BETA with the released 3.55 version, my results are (FM Loud Europe preset):
Hi mode: 6.7% more CPU load
Mid mode: 2.1% more CPU load
Bypassing the pre limiter reduces the CPU load greatly (for Mid mode with about 21%!).

i told erlier...
on AMD dualcore CPUs, stereotool behave strange...
curently on that pc both cores are at 50% .. but if i turn on finallimiter or fm volume at 101... output starts to droping.
like the cpu cores are at 95-100%.
on my intel dualcore and any other intel dualcore pc it's not like that. works perfectly.

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control point
control point2