Stereo Tool

Could anyone confirm this problem? I still haven't heard it, and haven't heard back from the 2 people who reported it in the first place.

Note: This is with traditional clipping!!! I *did* change something at that time that might have an effect on voices (I actually would expect them to sound better, not worse though).

Also ran some tests with several tracks and the voices didn't change at all. So a sample track where this happens would really help.

I don't hear any "shrill" sounds, so, like you said, a sample track would help.

As for the oversampling, I tested that, and yes, that causes a 0 dB limit. Oversampling is too CPU intensive for me though, so I think I'm just going to go with strictness 7 (or 8) with stronger at 5%.

How about the decoupling of the spike protection in the AGC?

Stand alone: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 20-013.exe
Winamp DSP: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... 20-013.exe
VST: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... 20-013.dll

IMPORTANT: To get a good sound from the composite clipper:
1. Enable it It's an option under Advanced Clipper
2. Under Advanced Clipper -> CPU, set 'Strictness' at 11 or higher (higher is better; there's probably not much gain above 15 anymore though; 11 looks pretty good already so a bit lower values should still be ok).

Warning:
You will need a license update to use this! Otherwise the 'unregistered options in use' thingy will pop up, and you'll get messages through the music (every 4 hours).

DONE:
11. Red output bars
12. SSB mode: Red output --> Not yet thoroughly tested, but should be fixed now. Added 0.01% headroom. Twice that for SSB mode. 1% for Hilbert mode (and that's still not enough - but you shouldn't use it anyway).
13. SSB mode: Check difference multicore/single core. --> Was pretty bad, now ok.
14. Fix behavior: When Composite Clipping enabled use normal clipping if FM or FM stereo coding is not enabled.

TODO:
2. There was a complaint in the beginning of this thread that there were 'shrill' sounds heard due to the changes in highs clipping. That's still not resolved.
9. Update settings (default strictness values etc.) Jeroen Platenkamp's presets strictness can be lowered from 13 to 8 and it's still stricter than before
15. Maybe make separate Strictness slider for Composite??? And also Loudness? And Highs Gap Protection? (Which might be less needed now since there are no highs gaps anymore - CPU effect is big!)
16. GUI crashes. This is new... Needs to be fixed.
17. "Performance: Not low freqs" and "Traditional bass/mids clipping" have a very similar effect, and I should probably remove one of them.

REMOVED:
8. Interesting observation: For Strictness settings below 7 (9 internally), the old clipping method works better than the new. So, it might be interesting to try to combine the two - that would again result in less steps. Not sure though what will happen to quality (I think the new clipping method is slightly better than the old one for that). --> Oddly, combining the 2 methods causes bigger spikes (overall the level seems slightly lower, as expected). Giving up on this one...
10. Since the old method works better for traditional clipping in low Strictness modes, is that also the case for composite clipping? --> Unlikely. And I implemented the new method because the old one didn't work well.

DONE IN PREVIOUS BETA'S:
1. Move or copy (same as Stokkemask filter) composite clipping and SSB settings to FM section.
3. Perform same performance optimizations in traditional clipper; remove 'Stronger clipping' slider once that's finished.
6. Replace DIV_PS by RCP_PS + MUL_PS in new clipper
4. Check bass and mid clipping issues reported by Bojcha.
5. Check clipping bug when clipping a 20 Hz bass tone and set bass clipping (in code) from traditional to MPX clipping. Why is the output level higher??
Ad. 4: Clipping is set to 'traditional' clipping for both bass and midbass. But levels are not adjusted to make room for the pilot and RDS signals. Also, potentially stereo bass will not be clipped optimally. However, if I want to use composite clipping for the (mid)bass as well, I need to fix a bug (currently multi-threading gives different output levels, I don't know yet why), and bass clipping strictness must be greatly increased, leading to a much higher CPU load - so this is probably not a very good idea. The simple solution is to adjust the clipping level to make room for the MPX signal. (Stereo pilot 9% + RDS 4.5% means that there's 13.5% headroom needed, so for default settings that means the clipping level must be multiplied by 86.5%.)
7. Check holes in center of bass -> might be better with new clipper --> Checked, little difference (some are better, some are worse).

Ouch!

I just installed this beta and found that when starting ST standalone and trying to 'maximize' the application from the notifications area, I get an unresponsive blank white/grey screen with no GUI visible at all.

When trying to exit, it seems that the application stops responding?!

What that should do? If that will control amount of de-emphasised level, then sure!

No, reason is that different strictness levels are needed in both modes. For the normal clipper, there seems to be very little reason to go above 8, for the composite clipper you want to go higher (at least 11).

Hm I haven't seen that happen yet. It happens here - often - when I flip between menu's. No idea why yet - I've attached a debugger but there are no exceptions. Something must be hanging somewhere... Fortunately it seems to be very easy to reproduce (which is bad for you but good for me if I want to find the cause).

I am seeing GUI crashing first time with this beta!
(standalone)

edit:
- reset all settings
- load any FM preset
- click on clipper bar
- crash!

Ha ha! Bad indeed for me as I couldn't even get to see the menus! Something is surely up?!

Cause of crashes found (I removed the Hilbert parameter, but I have a copy of the composite clipping parameters elsewhere and there I hadn't removed the copy - which referred to a non-existing original.

I'll add an assert to immediately detect this type of issues in the future during startup.


Edit: Done.