Stereo Tool

Hi SuperH,
i never ask you ..i'll do it now .. what you actually want to accomplish with preset like this last.?
i check it fast .. an first song i put (Abba- Gimme, Gimme) sounds bad.. volume non-stop goes up and down.

Hallo,
Perhaps I am wrong, but I think there is a bug in the VST version since beta7. When I activate the 2nd AGC then the first stop to work.

oops, there is something wrong with the picture, here again

Not necessarily. The two AGC's combined will try to reach the target level. The 2nd is set to VERY strongly affect the audio level, which means that the 1st will do less.

Try lowering "2nd AGC Gain control strength" - default value is 1.00 (2.4 dB instead of 39.89 dB as you have now!)

Thank you Hans for your fast answer.
With your suggested setting of the second AGC to 1.00 it works well.
I use now Botcha's Clubber, but with a slower speed for AGC1 and a faster speed for AGC2 and with this settings the sound is more or less what I would like to have.
Thank you again, my next step will be the donate tab.

I'm not too concerned with volume going up and down, as long as it doesn't occur too quickly (too quickly down, up is less perceivable to standard listeners).

There's a "window" where HE-AAC will encode optimally at reduced bitrates; I'm trying to use HVZ's latest AGC implementation to keep within this window. I've successfully proven this in my hardware solution, and have seen it proven with a hardware solution of a commercial vendor (Neural Audio). I have to keep in that window, plus I have to ensure I'm not clipping any high frequency peaks at certain times, or the CODEC squeaks at reduced bitrates such as 32kbps.

I did notice, however, listening throughout the day - that this version of my preset does occasionally sharply drop. I noticed it on Simple Plan's "Welcome to My Life". Most other songs, however, have not had a huge impact. This is most likely due to the level they present at the input. "Welcome to My Life" plays all red. Most of my tracks are normalized to -89 (ReplayGain). These tracks all work very well with this preset.

Admittedly, I worked with the updated AGC algorithm in a pinch. Literally, over a matter of a few minutes with a few songs that I know have soft sections. I determined it to be good, and I posted it.

I'll do some more work with the updated AGC when I get home.

The thing with HE-AAC is that you CANNOT do aggressive multiband compression, or you will have aliasing, which will cause a lot of intermodulation distortion from the spectral band replication (SBR) algorithm. As far as sound quality through the CODEC - it sounds good (as far as artifacts) - now I just have to work on levels.

heh ..
There is slang n00b, newbie or bot .. i'll change my nick to Bot-cha .. tnx bacclux

Anyway .. I have to say something about this two AGCs.
Firstly i don't like it, then all accept it like good direction .. and me, now .. i am almost absolutely shure that it's not good!

I played last few days with it and usually what happens with AGCs processing...

- If i set lower down-speed, almost always i get slower reaction to loud bursts and that's not good. Even if we forget this, when finally the AGC is "down" again 2nd AGC it going up to correct level because two AGC are pushing down level and it's overall done more then it should, so secong agc goes UP to correct this.

If i correct this by faster Up speed .. (tryed on each AGC), but i must set up speed very fast then should .. things again get worst.

in Short, overall feelling is that this two AGCs are chase each other, and it's needed to set it very carefully.
I done that, and when i load my preset for ST_beta .. i again have better controll in AGC!

So, i am back to my statement from erlier ...
2 AGC's are not good - like you have two limiters and should always be one.
Instead of 2nd AGC should be Compressor! - but real one, with attack, release, ratio, threshold, makeup and/or Output gain.
Even with EQ reaction. And, with current StereoTool case, is needed Input Gain.
Compressor gives much better controll and much more room for smal mistake settings in AGC. This compressor is not working always! Actually almost never. It removes peeks (depend on attack and release), removes loud burst very good (again depent on settings), atleast much better then AGC which always must be slower, and works only when nessesery.

What is better. To have few milliseconds/seconds of compressed sound (when level need to go down) and have stable AGC output , or few seconds to this two AGCs founds each other.

here is only AGC settings i can best set for all type of songs i found.

Bojcha, your preset does use both AGC's! So I should load it in BETA?

If so, if you load it in BETA8 (the latest version) and turn the 2nd AGC off, the sound should be equal or better... Have you tried that?

The good thing about BETA8 is that the volume doesn't go down much if the sound doesn't change much. So already compressed tracks get a nearly completely stable output volume.

Yes preset is for 2 AGCs. but i'll never use 2nd one.
i din't try beta8's 1st AGC only, but i hope it's same as in beta.

It should be better - it behaves differently!

In BETA, there was a difference in behavior between soft and loud tracks.

In BETA8, that difference is no longer there. And for smaller volume differences within a track, the volume doesn't go up that much.

And: In BETA, the bass in the Beyonce track causes a bigger volume drop than in BETA8.

That's why I said that BETA8 _should_ be better.


In total, in BETA8 the volume should stay much more constant. Which is good

And at the end of a track when the volume fades out, the output level is much lower (better dynamics).

Also, even with the default up and down speeds, I can now set "remove remaining peaks" to 140% - so much more peaks are removed.