Stereo Tool

In the Stereo Tool 5.00 thread, a lot of comments were made and I tried to make some improvements.

However, some things turned out to be harder than I expected. Some others are clearly improvements.

Because I didn't want to wait any longer before releasing ANY of those improvements, I've only taken the parts that are clearly improvements, and put them in a separate BETA (5.01 instead of 5.10)

Winamp DSP plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... A501-1.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... A501-1.exe
VST version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... A501-1.dll
VST version (No SSE2): http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... A501-1.dll
Command line version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... A501-1.exe

Sound should be nearly identical to that of version 5.00, except for the following changes:
- AGC behaves better around sudden spikes
- AGC better controls the output level (closer to the same level for songs with very big differences in dynamics) (dynamic hold time adjustment for short sound bursts)
- AGC 'remove remaining peaks' gives far less artifacts.
- AGC: Bug fixed that could cause weird sounds for absolute silence.
- AGC: Channels can be configured to work as separate channels, but also as a single channel (gives less difference between channels)
- AGC: Gating added
- AGC: 3rd band added for better highs control
- Multiband: Very steep equalizer/soft limit settings in the lowest bands are now handled correctly.

Notes:
- ITU-1770 (including less bass effects, see 5.00 thread) has explicitly NOT been included in this release, because it increased annoying volume effects when loud voices were present. I do think that I have a solution for that now, which I will include in version 5.10 when it's ready.
- Constant 'up speed' behavior regardless of input level has also not been included. I think it does improve the sound, but it also behaves completely different. This version is very close in behavior to version 5.00.

I can tell a huge difference on the song changes between loud and quieter songs. So much smoother in volume changes. Thanks again Hans!

Hi Hans,
I can tell, after whole day testing, that this is best AGC for now. Like is't slower but it's not, better workd is "smarter"

I have question .. There is 'hold' for AGC up-speed, on what is based hold speed? By peek level, or fixed time ?

@ All (experts)

Sorry, another request for explicit presets (focusing the enhanced AGC), please.
Or what of the internal presets is the best choice to hear the enhanced AGC behaviour ?

Thank you in advance !

I think it's best to make comparison between this 5.01 and 5.00 at official download page.

Michi95: You don't need different presets than for version 5.00, the improvements come from smarter peak handling inside the AGC algorithm. Except for the shorter hold times, the behavior over time hasn't changed, only the behavior inside every 4096 samples block has changed.

Bojcha: My impression is that the biggest improvement compared to 5.10 BETA's comes from the fact that I'm not using ITU-1770 now - especially the lowering of the effect of deep bass. At first I copied the ITU-1770 behavior to this new version as well, but I couldn't get the loud voices (Celine Dion song) as good as it was in version 5.00. When I turned it off I could.

I still think that there are some more improvements possible by smartly combining this version (5.01, it's released now!) with the processing in 5.10 BETA versions. For example, I can restore the ITU-1770 bass behavior, but for high frequencies (band 2), use the non-ITU1770 (at least for bass) behavior to get rid of the loud voices effect. (Basically this would mean calculating band 1 twice: Once with ITU-1770 bass, and once without (RMS), then use the sound from the first but lock band 2 to the second).

Also, I still think the fix that makes the up speed independent from the input volume can improve things (but it does require some more configuration options, I recently realized that some things were missing which made it impossible to configure it properly).

thanks for the update Hans its working well on my system (under windows 7) sounds good to ....my small transmitter will be pleased.
( 2nd i got vac working on windows 7 yay)