Stereo Tool

This is my 12ms CHR preset designed to sound like a typical hypercompressed CHR station, but perhaps slightly more dynamic. The preset uses over 9000% of dirty bass (this is not a joke. you can do it by editing the preset files.) in place of the advanced bass protection clipper for maximum bass output. Dirty bass also diverts bass-induced IMD away from the highs, allowing dirty highs to be enabled with little audible bass-induced IMD in the highs.

Some background:
This project started when I loaded Bojcha - Crucial and found it so "swishy" and smeary that it's practically unusable for me. I thought "if O6 can do it in the same delay why can't ST?", and the preset was born. The original goal was to create a reasonably-clean and punchy sounding low delay preset that works well on my music collection (mostly 80s and 90s). The dirty bass trick was inspired by the BBC Radio One preset and upon trying it on the preset I found that it sounded just like one of the local CHR stations and decided to move in that direction. I will still try to make 80s and 90s music sound acceptable but the primary focus will be CHR. V4 is the first version that I consider mature enough to be released so the first version poster here is V4.

The preset is tuned for 75us FM but it should do just fine with 50us or no preemphasis. I set the multiband section to act like a multiband AGC because I find heavy multiband compression unnecessary and fatiguing since most CHR material is already "radio-ready". Tweak it as you see fit.

Note: if you touch anything in the limiter menu the dirty bass will reset to 500%. To make it 9001% again, save your changes and open the preset file in a text editor and change the "Dirty Bass" parameter to 90.01.No longer true with ST v7.00, but make sure you set delay to 512 in the new version because the new version no longer loads the delay settings unless you choose "LOAD ALL SETTINGS"

>>Newest Version<<

slightly changed the AGC and multiband a bit to reduce pumping.

V5 had too much clipping distortion with tracks that have very dynamic bass. (example: one direction - what makes you beautiful, kelly clarkson - a moment like this)

• RMS-based single band compressor - less pumping, more consistent protection against excess clipping, smoother sound . I had to boost the level in Final Clipper to avoid going over the free Loudness limit (+1.5dB).

A lot of changes this time because V6 sounded too distorted (once again) on Taylor Swift's latest track.

• Completely redid the AGC and multiband. Multiband is switched to Limit mode for better source-to-source consistency. Bass control is now done with the Bass AGC in combination with fast bass limiting in the multiband instead of slow multiband compression alone. Dual band AGC is now required because with a single band AGC bassy material will sound quieter because of the addition of the bass AGC. This gives a bass sound similar to that of processors with 2 stages of multiband processing and provides even better protection against excess bass peaks. I didn't think this would work in low delay at first but it turned out to be pretty good.
• No more dirty mids. Dirty mids was enabled for consistency sake but since the multiband is now consistent enough there's no need to add consistency by adding distortion to everything anymore.

BTW, V6 was probably more of a dance radio preset than a CHR preset.

Oh, and i gave up on the One Direction track. The problem turned out to be crappy CD mastering. Most of the annoying clipping distortion goes away when you turn on the declipper. No wonder it always sounded like crap on radio.

V7.1 minor update: Boost highs in the pre-multiband EQ to improve consistency with sources with low HF energy. Raised midrange to better match the spectral profile of the local CHR stations.

V7.2 minor update: Changed highpass filter to reduce tilting and overshoot and reduce unnecessary clipping.

• Thickened the bass a little with Bass Boost in upward compression mode.
• Raised the de-ess threshold.

V8.1 minor update: the Bass Boost was a bad idea. It sounded good on headphones but on speakers (especially those with subwoofers) it sounds too boomy. I tried to make the preset a little more like the commercial stations with their heavily limited and clipped bass by using the Bass Boost filter but it just doesn't work that well. The increased bass causes the single-band compressor (an essential peak-control component of this preset) to pump and push the mids and highs down. Advanced bass protection is probably a better way to do it but since advanced bass protection produces artifacts in low delay, I can't use that either so I'll have to accept the old (V7.2-ish) sound as the "low delay sound". It's not bad, just different. ST is completely different from O11 (the processor I was trying to emulate with V8) and it would be very hard to make ST sound like O11 because ST is incapable of trashing the high frequencies.

V8.1 is basically V8 without Bass Boost (or V7.2 with a higher de-ess threshold).

V8.2: It turned out that it was the combination of high band 4 level and Bass Boost that caused the boomy sound. This version lowered the band 4 level and switched Bass Boost to downward compression mode (unchecked "preserve louder peaks") to increase the average bass level and decrease the peak bass level at the same time. (In upward compression mode, the bass level only increases and never decreases) The result is that the boominess is now moved to the sub-bass band (which is just like one of the stations I was trying to emulate). The highs is still not as strong (and dirty) as the station that I think is using an O11.

V8.3: raised de-ess threshold and multiband clipping threshold to get a little more highs. I didn't expect to have to set it this high.

Tweaked multiband to make the sound less hollow. Lowered the LPF cutoff to block the CRT noise present on some very poorly mastered sources (like Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come radio mix). I hope this is the last version I have to make because I'm getting tired of hearing the same songs over and over again lol.

The increased HF capability of the new (7.x) versions made the old HF processing strategy and EQ curve sound annoying in the long term. I didn't recognize the negative effects when i made the last version.

- moved band 10 almost completely out of the audio range to effectively merge the top 2 bands and make the HF equalization less extreme. older sources with less energy above 10kHz now sound more natural.

- reduced average HF level but increased peak HF level. (increased dynamics) also lowered dirty highs slightly as the effect seems stronger than before.

- more dynamic and less distorted overall and slightly less loud.

Sounds good here on a mid range earphones - will test it on good headphones tonight.