Stereo Tool

2 more small updates in BETA3A, available now:
- Bug fix: Bad sound when FM pre-emphasis was enabled without Multiband
- Added a checkbox to Loudness to force DC to 0 (don't use it unless you really need to get rid of the DC - it reduces the sound quality!)

Singleband Compressor/Limiter works again

Working on dualband AGC now, and I think it's really an improvement. Volume control is very similar, except that highs are no longer lowered by loud lows.

Building version with dual band AGC now, should be available in an hour.

Dualband AGC is available now.

Winamp DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... BETA3A.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... BETA3A.exe
VST version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... BETA3A.dll

In the AGC (Pre Limiter) window you can switch between 1 or 2 bands (2 uses a bit more CPU power).

If 2 bands are used, for the first band the total signal is used (equal to the 1-band processing)
For band 2 the frequencies above 200 Hz are used. If there are no lows in the signal, the two are identical.

My experience so far is that in general, to get similar high frequency levels as when using a single band, the maximum value for band 2 must be set to about 70% of that of band 1. This leads to about 3 dB LOWER volume levels if there are no lows, but slightly higher levels when there are a lot of lows. Overall it sounds far more constant.


I've also added a slider to control the maximum volume before remaining peaks are removed, it's set to 200% by default, but for more aggressive up/down speed settings you might need higher values.

If you want:
- Natural, constant sound: Use 2 bands
- Pumping bass: Use 1 band, set up/down speed a lot higher, increase "Remove peaks above" so there's (almost) no black parts in the output bars. (Black parts = 'remove remaining peaks' is active. This is bad because it drops the volume already _before_ a loud peaks starts, which can sound really annoying. So it should only occur occasionally, for example at the start of a new track after silence.)


Edit: Just noticed: Under certain conditions, the highs can get really a lot louder than the lows. That sounds really bad. So just like for the old dualband pre-limiter, I'll have to lock the maximum amplification of the highs to that of the lows to make sure it doesn't get too much higher.

Hi,
This is little complicated ..
Maybe old 2-band PreLimiter will just work as should with new RMS detecting, or .. maybe gate thrashold should be added first ?

Eh... Gate threshold? Can you tell me what's currently wrong/missing? It should be very close to the previous AGC version - just with more constant highs...

Potentially better idea: Annoying sound is caused by the fact that I'm only using very high frequencies from the 200 Hz + channel. Maybe I should just take 200- from channel 1 and 200+ from channel 2. That should solve the "thin" sound, but it might reduce the bass level too much. To be tested...

hi hans i'm alexander from argentina, my question is, you can put agc with 3 bands, bass, mid, hf ??


Good Job!!
Greetings

Well, I'm first going to try this one.

Result is what I expected: If there's very loud bass in the sound, the rest of the sound is much louder than before. For most tracks, the sound is nearly the same as in the previous version. (Note: Actually, this might be a good thing. Because a sound with much more bass _should_ not keep that much higher bass level if we're using 2 bands... The only disadvantage is that the total sound is louder, which may hurt the sound quality)

Even though the higher output level with (relatively) lower bass level isn't really great, this version sounds far more natural than the previous one. I'm building it now, should be available here in about an hour again.