Stereo Tool

@Brian: Unsupported instructions would cause a crash, or no audio. Since you do get audio, I'm not using any.

About Task Manager: I've seen cases where the actual load was around 30% and it still reported 0. So it's extremely inaccurate. I'm writing to a .mp3 file, to avoid too much disk writes which can make the measurement unreliable. Yes, it does take some (but very little) time, but the measurements are consistent (typically if I run the same measurement multiple times I get the same results within a margin of about 1%). So any changes that I see, or differences between different latency settings, are reliable.

I thought that it should, but I also know that compilers generate a "default" code path, which is slower, but is more compatible. This is quite fuzzy for me, as this is outside of my experience, so I don't know if this is a plausible situation, particularly involving AMD processors, or, more accurately, any processor not sporting the "Genuine Intel" CPUID information.
This is again outside of my normal experience, so for the moment, I'll say that I'm going to research the claim about Task Manager. I think I had begun researching it before and didn't find any supporting information to the claim, much like I was unable to find supporting documentation about exception handling causing performance optimizations to go away. Maybe there is documentation of both things and I just haven't been able to find it...

@Brian: Code paths: Only if you instruct the compiler to do that. And I didn't. Instead, I instructed it to generate code that will run on any Intel *or* AMD system with SSE2 support. I did check if the performance would be better if I instructed it to produce Intel-specific code - it wasn't, not even if I let it optimize for CoreDuo etc. So there's no need for separate versions or code paths. (Well, there is the SSE version for Pentium 3 and older AMD's. And some people are still using those!)

I have never checked for documentation but these are things I have seen myself in the past. Simple test: Run a profiling program that takes - for example - 10000 snapshots per second. And look at TaskManager. I've seen cases where the profiling program reported that Stereo Tool was using 30% CPU (3000 of the 10000 snapshots resulted in an instruction pointer address inside Stereo Tool), and TaskManager reported 0. I must add that I haven't seen such extreme examples in Windows 7 yet (I saw it in XP).

Added a bunch of presets. And all versions are identical now (Limit slider fixed, colors for old compressors fixed).

Stand alone: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 04-048.exe
Winamp DSP: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... 04-048.exe
VST: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... 04-048.dll

Notes;
- There are still some smaller issues with the multiband compressor (among others stereo issues with fast attack/release settings); will check stuff like that soon.
- These presets: I'm still waiting for some more, some of them are VERY different from the ones that I just added.
- Questions to the preset makers: 1 - can I add these in the release version 2 - under which name?
- Question to both PhantomFM and DRZ: Highs Priority in the Advanced Clipper -> Distortion section is set VERY high, this causes other frequencies to drop if there are loud highs. In many other presets this value is set too low if you ask me (reduces the highs too much), but 30% is really really high - can this be set lower? (Note that they probably need to be set differently for 50 and 75 us preemphasis, and for no preemphasis it probably doesn't matter much).

1 - GAP Impact, go! <viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4686>
2 - Could be a category "New MultiBand Presets" (just an idea, not very original )
Just lower the value of Priority Highs will not solve the problem.
With the change of the MB to "True Compressor", the highs are more susceptible to "escape".
Consider precise times of attacks (not too high) in the MB for higs, use limitation for overshoots that may have and Look-Ahead helps. Verficar values ​​"Band Link" and times up and down the AGC and SingleBand can help too.
It's what I took control from the use of new MB, like not leaving the mids escape when there is absence of bass. So the "tips"

Be especially careful with the value of the "Drive" the MB, values ​​above +20 dB approx. can generate distortion.

Take this opportunity to ask, because it takes such large values ​​drive? The output of the previous filter is so low (20dB are 10 times of increase in signal)?
I think there might be some mistake here with levels.
I also think it would be appropriate to normalize levels 0dBFS, or any other scale in mind that value is the signal in each filter.

Edit: I forgot, beware Mix values ​​of MB.

_________________
by GAP
"Less is More" (Bob Katz)

I'll buy that, since you mentioning it knocked down a cobweb in my memory which made me remember a similar discussion we had in the past.
The thing about me is I worked for a Fortune 500 retailer. We had upwards of 30,000 end-users constantly reporting this, that, or the other as "the system" being broken. As such, we'd spin our wheels trying to test for something that ultimately ended up being something the end-user did incorrectly and / or neglected to mention. From this was born the "Can you document that?" mentality.

As for profiling tools vs. Task Manager, my assumption was you meant VTune. See the following link, which is the very first search entry in Google for "vtune task manager":

http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/281539

The response was:
***

In other words, what you saw, you did indeed see, but it may not have represented the same thing as what Task Manager was reporting. Both metrics were "accurate" and / or "correct", but they were looking at different things.

Beyond that though, in your example you mentioned 10000 shots per second, and then said that 3000 were attributed. This indicates that it was a 1 second sampling. Task Manager has four timing settings - 0.5s, 1.0s (default), 2.0s, 4.0s. Ironically, if you change away from the default, at least for XP, you have to edit the registry to get the default back, otherwise your actual choices are 0.5, 2.0, and 4.0. If you take the middle choice ("normal"), you don't have sufficient timer resolution (update frequency).

The bottom line is that I have never, ever seen the discrepancies that you're mentioning. Never. And I've seen quite a lot. Also, I use not only Task Manager, but also Process Explorer.

Process Explorer : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 96653.aspx

This utility is by Mark Russinovich, who is considered the foremost expert on the topic with respect to the Windows kernel.

Process Explorer *IS* more accurate than Task Manager, as it factors in things that TM does not.

See here: http://www.techspot.com/community/topic ... er.172232/

... and what is said here (although this is Wiki): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_Explorer
So, in conclusion, I'll buy the default code path discussion, but not about Task Manager. It's too easily explained by the profiling tool measuring different things or that Task Manager's update speed was longer than the sampling, so it showed "0" the whole time.

[quote="hvz"]Added a bunch of presets. And all versions are identical now (Limit slider fixed, colors for old compressors fixed).

Stand alone: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 04-048.exe
Winamp DSP: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... 04-048.exe
VST: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... 04-048.dll

Notes;

- These presets: I'm still waiting for some more, some of them are VERY different from the ones that I just added.



Feel free to add mine if you want to.
Thing is that there is little feedback in the ''preset forum'' so I don't know if it's liked or not

_________________
The Power of Sound

''Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.'' - Plato

Yeah, I noticed the same thing. I would welcome feedback, but generally none is provided.

That general situation may have been caused by a few individuals becoming extremely hostile when offered non-emotional criticism that was negative. Those individuals took things extremely personally and lashed out at those offering the criticisms. That in turn might have made people more hesitant to offer criticisms.

You didn't update mine, but I'm not sure what to tell you. I do have yet another update that I could post, but my plan was to simply offer it as a generic-only, classic-only preset. The primary purpose was continuing to address overshoots, but my effort has been half-hearted at best, meaning I've only marginally reduced overshoots beyond what I last posted.

Ah, so you agree on some kind of hardware requirement ???

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