Stereo Tool

1. No, you really should use the Stereo Image filter with both Phase and Width set to 0%. That will merge the audio to mono without audio cancellation effects in case of phase differences, which gives a much better effect than normal stereo to mono conversion.

2. That pipeline is Virtual Audio Cable (VAC), so you can install that if you want. Your automation doesn't support DSP or VST plugins? Because that would be the easiest solution...

STAND ALONE: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 43-012.exe

CHANGED:
- C-QUAM: Adjust HARD LIMIT. C-QUAM signal is ok now!

TO DO:
- Add more logging in case of crashes.
- On top of this, make a built-in continue-on-crash behavior which logs the error and just resumes processing. If more crashes occur in a short amount of time (I'm setting it at 10 per 10 minutes), go to the restart behavior.
- Fix crash sometimes followed by hangup reported by bhelbush (it's in the AddNextBuffer function when called in the AudioRecorder thread) - seems to occur only when switching from VLC to a sound card. Should be fixed, waiting for feedback
- Fix crash reported by bojcha. I might already have fixed it, not sure...
- Show Lowpass filter freq in AM panel? Same for stereo to mono conversion?
- Show popup window if sound card cannot be opened.

OLDER CHANGES:
- Added C-QUAM clipper; HARD LIMIT still needs to be adjusted to remove some peaks that are left in L and R (to the negative side). Should be usable for small scale tests now.
- Added Event FM License (lower price, works 3 days at a time)
- Added auto-start with Windows option
- Added tests for exception handling
Improved limiter behavior. The limiter (in all compressors) now works much tighter so it causes less pumping and at the same time it causes less distortion.
- Support ASIO as well in the watchdog
- Improve restart behavior (make sure that the old instance is really closed).
- Memory usage of stand alone version reduced.
- Merged in older changes in a separate branch. should not have any noticeable effects.
- Lower CPU load when using streaming with low pre-emphasis values. "Hole protection" must be set to LQ mode if it's disabled for non-preemphasized audio.
- Make SCA frequencies configurable for HAM radio
- Real watchdog behavior: Regularly check for sound card input & output
- Added restart-on-crash behavior (enable 'Watchdog' in the Configuration panel).
- Fixed one weird hangup in VLC output when passing bad parameters
- Added option to pass extra parameters to input VLC (just type them after the URL).
- Carrier at +/- 19khz on the AM band. Just turning the FM off doesn't kill the stereo pilot. (fixed in 004)
- I again will say here that there is something wrong with Calibration section . Three options are identical with what they do : Test right silence , Test SSB lower and Test SSB higher. Nevermind what option you check, they causes same display behavour and same result as audio. --> NO, they are very different if you look at the actual output. Display is generated before calibration. Actual output does contain SSB or LSB audio.
- At the new Normal output settings there is a problem with "Input without processing" option . Sound is gagged/strange / I'm not at my Stereotool pc at the moment but when using a pipeline input and normal & fm output (192 kHz) , I noticed a strange effect when switching the normal output to bypass. Sounded like it could be a sampling rate thing? - Worked fine in some cases but not in others. I think it's fixed now.
- I think I also noticed a small typo - check the AM transmitter window.
- On the thorium preset it plays fine and then gets garbled and sounding like a 45rpm song playing on 33 rpm. cpu load is just 26% the rest of the presets work fine. (waiting for feedback, unable to reproduce it). --> Multipath Clipper is enabled in this preset. That explains the higher CPU load.
- VLC output still hangs on outputs that don't work (for example an invalid ShoutCast address). Probably because no data is sent through the output path, which causes the same stop hangup again. --> If Status is STOPPED, ERROR or NOTHINGSPECIAL, I don't call STOP or RELEASE. This seems to cause a small memory leak (a few kB probably) every time it happens, so it's not ideal. But better than a complete hangup. Still waiting for feedback on a question in VLC's forum.
- Add VLC output error detection & re-connect behavior (if possible without resetting the other inputs/outputs).
- VLC input: But something is strange sometimes plays like 1 or more samples delay between channels, occurs highs cancelation when switch to mono. I checked everything including exact mono sound input. -> Output was already running before connection was established. That's ok, but the start sample must be left channel -> fixed.
- VLC input with Low Quality Low Latency output hangs -> Solved by disabling LQLL output when VLC is used for input (which makes it impossible to reach low latencies anyway)
- VLC MP3 output. No room in current settings window... -> You can now add more options in the SOUT string (space separated)
4. Turn AM stuff off if FM is enabled (?) but what about asymmetrical clipping/limiting for FM? -> Extra switch in Expert mode
5. Add pre-emphasize output button for AM pre-emphasis
Fixed the mentioned and some other bugs in the previous beta. All combinations of settings seem to work now.
- Normal Output can now be partially separately processed for FM output. So you can generate, for example, a composite clipped 75 us pre-emphasized FM signal and a not or far less pre-emphasized signal for streaming, or a separate FM signal without composite clipping to feed remote transmitters, in the same Stereo Tool instance - no more need to run a separate copy for the stream! Only the clipping and limiting is done separately, so the CPU load does not go up much. Note that the lowpass filter can not be specified separately (lowpass filtering happens much earlier in the sequence and using different values would require doing almost all the processing twice).
- AM section now contains an 'AM Transmitter' Enabled switch.
- Headroom slider added to the AM section. No more need to abuse the Post Amp slider to create headroom for asymmetrical output. (Note: It's also not possible anymore, so you need to update your settings if you use AM).
- AM pre-emphasis checkbox added in the AM section, so you don't have to abuse the FM pre-emphasis anymore.
- AM pre-emphasis curve (which is slightly different from the FM curve) is now correctly implemented.
- AM signal can now go through the FM sound card output (it's now basically an FM/AM sound card), including tilt correction etc.

This watchdog behavior works as follows: If you enable the check, it will act if no audio passes through an enabled audio input or output for more than 1 minute. If so, it will trigger a 'RESTART SOUND CARDS' button click. It will attempt this 4 times, if NO DATA passes through the sound card AT ALL during all these attempts, if the 'Restart' watchdog setting is enabled Stereo Tool will close and a new instance will be started.

It does support DSP. So I'd install the DSP version of ST and then what? Will ST show up like it does in the standalone version and I'll select sound mapper (that seems to be how the on board card is listed) as my input and output?

ST will show up as a selection somewhere in your automation program (here's an old page that describes how it works in SAM: http://help.stereotool.com/stereo_tool_and_sam3.shtml ). Now, if you need 44 or 48 kHz output you don't need to select any sound cards (the automation program will handle that), if you want to generate FM output at 176.4 or 192 kHz, you need to configure the FM output sound card in Stereo Tool; non-FM output (for example for streaming) will still go to the automation software.

43-012 can't get link to open.anyone else having this issue?

Weird it opens fine here. Maybe a caching issue (the link wasn't there yet when I posted the message) - can you try putting a ? at the end of the link, that should force your browser to download it regardless of what's in cache.

got it. wish I still had my AM stereo radio.

What is the idea of this new feature. What event is added? And what means "3 days at a time"
- Added Event FM License (lower price, works 3 days at a time)

License for short events - think of pirate radio stations that broadcast only a few days in a row or festivals with a license for a few days. This license will work for 3 days at a time, then it switches back to unregistered mode until you restart it.

I got the .dll version to work with Station Playlist using the on board sound card. With the standalone version (a few betas ago), the composite display window showed the hard negative limiting and the relatively unlimited positive peaks. How do I get that to display on the current AM .dll version?