Stereo Tool

Hello,

I've created a nice sound for my transmitter. It's very loud and just like i want.
There is just one thing i miss a little bit, thats basses. I've putted some more bass in my sound by using the equalizer, but is there another way to put some (more) bass in my sound? (by using a plugin or something?)

Thanks in advance

Welcome honda mb,

If you are using Loudness (if not, you can increase the bass as much as you want using the equalizer, so I suppose you are), you can increase the "allow louder bass" slider a bit. This may however cause (some) distortion. Make sure that the clipping values for the multiband compressor are not set too high to reduce this distortion.

Using a plugin won't work - if you process the sound AFTER it leaves Stereo Tool it won't keep the same loudness. And if you do it BEFORE Stereo Tool the multiband compressor and Loudness filter will just remove it again.


Note: The bass level is relatively LOWER if you use very high Loudness values. So you might need to decrease the Loudness slider a bit (costs some volume, but the bass will be reduced less than the highs).

Hi Honda mb,

You could try the bass-efx and Impact/Clunk plugin made by Leif. Maybe these plugins will give your sound that extra 'punch'.

The plugins can be found here:
http://www.claessonedwards.com/index.ph ... icle&id=80

Good luck!

My loudness slider is at x 2.60 (enough loudness for my station I think)

I've done what hvz said, and i think i created a nice bass.
It's not like the big orban bass i like , but i think thats impossible for software sound processing.

And Marino would you explain where i should place the plugin so i can use it whit my stereotool 4.10 standalone? Or is this impossible? I think it's only for (expensive) breakaway (I like stereotools more ) Tell me.

I've uploaded my preset for so far now:

http://www.speedyshare.com/600227902.html

Maby hvz or someone else would take a look for me if i did a right job?
i'm playing rather soft and old music music like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx9qUR9P2ZQ or this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUjIA3Rt7gk and also this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6iOskgHfZ8

i use to play normally mp3's witch are at least 192 kpbs. I do play also a lot from vinyl.

Thanks in advance again!

greets karl

Hi Karl,
Leif created dsp plugins that can be used in programs with dsp support, these are not strictly for Breakaway. Leif created a framework so you can load these dsp plugins (or any other dsp) straight into Breakaway. Maybe Hans will do the same for Stereotool Standalone in the future? It should be great.

I'm using these plugins together with the Stereotool dsp in Stationplaylist (radio automation software). The Impact/Clunk plugin gives you a bit of that Optimod bass sound. In the audio chain of Stationplaylist I'm using first the Impact/clunk plugin, second the bass-efx plugin and third the Stereotool plugin.

Breakaway is a great tool but I share the same passion as you. I'm in love with Stereotool 4.10. The stereo enhancer and the sound is amazing

Yes,
that bass-efx good fits before stereotool..
and i hope Hans will include in near future some DSP support for stereotool, so we can beside sound plugins, we can put EdCast or others.

_________________
control point
control point2

I didn't know that the Orban had more bass than Stereo Tool... Lately I've noticed some annoying sounds when loud bass is present in certain songs (or actually, certain types of music), and I've been thinking about solutions for that. I might have an idea to increase the bass level by a few dB with little effect on the sound, ideally it should be done just before the Loudness filter. I'll do some quick manual tests to see if my idea works, if so I'll add it at a later moment.

About DSP plugins: I have looked into it in the past, and it seems pretty difficult (depending on how much of the DSP plugin interface I want to support). Even SAM doesn't fully support everything - I've had crashes in SAM with multiple versions of Stereo Tool that ran fine in Winamp, which were caused by the fact that SAM behaves differently. And they have been supporting Winamp DSP plugins for years already...

(It's easy to make something that will support plugins that I make myself, because I know which features I can use. Reliably supporting 3rd party plugins is a lot more difficult).

The first results sound promising: The bass level is up by a few dB (!!! - 2 dB on average, although it will be less on peaks) with - at least for the one song that I've tested with so far (which is a song that suffered from distortion in earlier versions of Stereo Tool) hardly any more distortion.

One quick tip to increase the bass level right now:
- Under Loudness, move the Clean/Punch slider all the way to Clean
- Now you can increase the "Allow louder lows" slider a few thousand without introducing distortion. That helps a lot.

Winamp plugin (DLL, save in C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins) : http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_rt4.dll

*UPDATE* I think the original version 4.10 sounds better than this update... But the settings described below DO give a lot more bass:

Change w.r.t. version 4.10: Loud bass now sounds out-of-tune, but does not distort highs anymore. Out-of-tune bass sounds should be less notable than distorted highs.

If this is what you mean, I'll make it configurable. Right now it's configured for Loudness values around 2.50.

For best results, in the Loudness panel set "Allow louder lows" to around 2000-3000. In the equalizer, make sure that "Before multiband" is disabled, and increase the bass sliders (the first 2) to about 1.50. This should give you some extra bass.

If you want the bass to be more punchy, instead of increasing the bass level using the equalizer, reduce the compression by increasing the maximum bass level. Reduce the "down speed (decay)" settings for the bass, and increase the clipper values.

I'm getting good results using the following settings:
Start by selecting preset "FM Loud". Then make the following changes:
1. Loudness: Set Loudness to 2.50
2. Loudness: Set "Allow louder lows" to 3333
3. Multiband: Enable the equalizer, set the first 3 bands to 1.24, 1.24 and 1.12. (Make sure "Before multiband" is disabled)
4. Multiband: Set the first 3 "down speed divider (decay)" sliders to .0001, .0002, .0003.
5. Multiband: Set the first 3 "soft limit" sliders to 7.29, 7.97, 7.63.
6. Multiband: Set the first 3 clipping sliders to 3.54, 3.54, 2.57.
7: Pre Limiter: Set the bass band soft limit (top left slider) to 43.22.

Note: These are just some values that I've tried quickly, and seem to give a good result (which has a lot more bass and sounds much warmer than the original FM Loud preset). I'm just not too sure yet what the difference with the original version 4.10 is - if I try this preset there it doesn't sound too bad either. (If I increase the bass a lot, the difference becomes much clearer).

I've tested bass-efx before Stereo Tool, but I didn't hear much difference... Did anyone here get different results? If I'm seeing things correctly this filter is very similar to some filtering that I've tried before I implemented the current Loudness filter to increase the volume - only I used it on all the frequencies, not just the bass. And back then I also didn't get too good results with it, which is why I stopped developing it further.

Actually I think I'll need to improve my distortion detection. If I can more reliably detect when high frequency distortion is caused by loud deep bass sounds, I don't need to limit those bass sounds as strongly as I do now anymore.

Causes of high frequency distortion
During peaks of loud bass sounds, there's no room left for other frequencies. This becomes noticable if:
* The bass level is really high.
* The bass level stays at a high position for a longer period of time.

Possible solutions
* Reduce the maximum bass level
That's what I'm doing now. And that's why the bass isn't as loud as it can be.
* Reduce the time the bass stays in "high position"
That seems to be what bass-efx tries to accomplish. Still, it doesn't work for all sounds and I still cannot increase the maximum bass level without getting distortion. May work very well for clicking beats in rap music.
* Use Loudness on pre-bass filter step instead of just clipping. Or lower the max frequency to get rid of off-tune sounds.
* Somehow detect whether noticable distortion occurs, and reduce the bass level just enough to avoid it.
* Add a bump if the bass stays high for a longer time. May cause the bass to get off-tune. Either reduce it in the middle, or on the right side of the graph if it stays high for too long.

I'll get back on this...