Stereo Tool

New BETA3 is coming up in an hour. At 68 ms latency, I think it is now more or less identical to v4.22. At 17 ms latency, it should also sound better than the previous BETA3.

CPU load is a bit higher than before though.

My own impression:
At 68 ms, quality is not a reason anymore to use the much larger latency of v4.22. (CPU load might be though).

At 17ms latency, the quality should also be a lot better than before.

Note: If you're only using the singleband limiter, you should indeed use the BETA(1) version - that will give you a latency of about 2 ms, clearly less than 17... BETA3 will -currently- ALWAYS give you the same latency, regardless of what's turned on or off.

Actualy for MIC only i will use NoiseGate and Single Copressor/Limiter and maybe multiband .. but in beta1 noise gate is not so good.
So, When final version come out, will the latency be same as at beta1 ?

Probably 17 ms as in BETA3 - although if Loudness is not used, 8 ms should be possible as well (and maybe even 4 ms, but I doubt that...)

So it might get close to BETA1, with the quality close to that of the current BETA3.


New BETA3 is online. Note: Only the Loudness quality is improved (quite a lot), no further changes (so the 2nd audio channel is still there, final limiter 'protect against loud peaks' still cracks, etc.)

I'll post a new version tonight where, for NORMAL latency, the CPU load will be divided by 1.75

And there'll be a new Low Latency version with a much better bass quality - unfortunately also with a twice as high CPU load, which means that current CPU's won't be able to handle it in real-time if you turn all the filters on. It does show that the potential is there though - I "just" need to find another way to reach the same quality without doubling the CPU load.

Updated BETA3 is available now.

Changes:
NORMAL latency mode:
- High Quality mode is identical to previous version
- Medium Quality mode uses about 40% less CPU processing power, and sounds nearly identical.

LOW latency mode:
- Medium Quality mode is identical to previous version
- High Quality mode sounds better (bass sounds), but uses TWICE as much CPU processing power, and probably won't run on any but the latest and fastest CPU's (it can only use 1 core, so having multiple cores doesn't help.) If some filters are turned off, the CPU load is of course lower. I'm currently thinking trying to think of a method to get this quality without having the greatly increased CPU load.

So, basically, you should probably use MEDIUM QUALITY regardless of the latency setting.

Note: If you change the latency OR the quality, restart Stereo Tool - otherwise strange artifacts occur!

Expected behavior:
- NORMAL latency in both Medium and High Quality mode should sound the same as version 4.22 in High Quality mode. (Set the Loudness slider 6% lower to get the same output volume and quality).
- LOW latency sounds best in High Quality mode, but most CPU's won't be able to handle it.

The links again:
Winamp DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... _BETA3.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... _BETA3.exe
VST version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... _BETA3.dll

Hans, nice work. Compared to which version?

cpu usage: Standalone (mpx out + volume overdrive)

Lowlatency mid/hi, Normal Mode mid/hi .. all uses 30-37% of my cpu and both cores (intel c2d e8400) working always.
(?)

As sound input i use VAC1 for test.. and only 48kHz works good.. if i set it to 192kHz mpx out starts to sounds very bad.
with same setup default 4.22 works just good with any sample rate on input.

"Normal" uses 40% less than "Hi" in this BETA3. Which should be slightly less than what version 4.22 uses in "Hi" quality mode.

OOPS! I just checked and apparently something went wrong when I uploaded the new version. The old version was still on the site, instead of the update! I've uploaded it again (?) now, so please download it again. Sorry!

About the quality issue with higher sampling rates: I'll check what's wrong there.

beta3_latest

LowLatency (Hi) - mpx out all ON ...
Cpu usage 36-45%

LowLatency (Mid) - mpx out all ON ...
Cpu usage 23-27%

NormalLatency (Hi) - mpx out all ON ..
Cpu usage 30-35%

NormalLatency (Mid) - mpx out all ON ..
Cpu usage 17-23%
----------------------------------------

Default v4.22

NormalLatency (Hi) - mpx out all ON ..
Cpu usage 22-34%

NormalLatency (Mid) - mpx out all ON ..
Cpu usage 19-23%

In all cases both cores are used, but

LowLatency (Hi) is like that and sometimes cores is using same amount