Stereo Tool

Using FM professional with basically everything licensed except delossifier which I don’t need because 99% of my source material is lossless. Sound card for composite is a Trace Alpha. Input is -23 LUFS normalized, input gain is then added in ST. 150% audio quality, set to limitless.

Listening in 3.5mm Apple Earphones to get an idea of what the listener is hearing.

THINGS I'VE NOTICED:

- Other FMs on the dial have more a dynamic sound still. It could be faster attack/release, I honestly don’t know. When I listen I feel like I’m at a concert. Could be Omnia solar plexus I’m hearing. ST feels more flat and unrealistic when listening in headphones. Like everything is kind of centered and nothing really stand out. The other stations feel more alive, drums and cymbals have more of a realistic pump to them, where they don’t in ST if that even makes any sense.

- Other FMs also sound more polished if that makes sense, where ST sounds more raw.

- Electric guitars sometimes sound odd among other things, with the whine sound of the electric guitar sounding like it’s coming out of a cheap toy speaker. (Sometimes like a sample rate mismatch sound) Low intros with synthesizers also sound artifacty— sounds sometimes like something is missing, and is cloudy/unclear.

- During very dense parts of songs, ST sometimes sounds grainy.

- Modern music still sounds odd at times. The unrealistic sound comes out more on modern music. But old music also does sound flat and undynamic/unrealistic at times as well.

- My Sangean radio has one of those “bass boost” features. Every other station sounds better and more dynamic when I listen with this on, but I have to turn it off when listening to my station as it sounds muddy, strange and pumpy.

- New Compressor seems to respond interestingly to LUFS. It reacts to each song differently. Don’t know if this is normal or not.

Here’s some airchecks of other stations on the dial so maybe you can hear what I’m hearing in these that I don’t hear in ST.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19mUlvH ... p=drivesdk

- The first air check is a good sounding local FM.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U9Qk9N ... p=drivesdk

- Second station is another local FM. This station does go over board on the clipping, but the actual sound in headphones is still natural sounding…. Again, if you ignore the ridiculous amount of clipping.

you just missed to tell us what preset.

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control point
control point2

Pretty much all of them, just to different extents.

I use Analog Pleasure Deluxe, as that seems to work best for the market I’m in.

Hello! I admit that I really enjoy listening to the first aircheck from KLCI. It's really natural and pleasant, though I notice some speech parts that became mono, unlike other parts that are in stereo - could it be Omnia.9's Auto Pilot feature? For the KQRS recording, it sounds really squashed and too bright, especially on some commercials.

By the way, from my understanding, here are my answers to your questions:
- Regarding the "unrealistic" sound you might be feeling, I recommend trying the more "neutral" presets (or other presets) to see if you like it more - for my AC taste, I prefer StudioOne, StarGate, and BigFlex6, though some of these presets might be less loud than other stations in your market. You can also try adjusting bass, presence, highs, either in the "Processing" top menu (which has easier settings) or in other deeper menus (like Multiband band mix, equalizer, bass clipper, which should be more flexible but could be easier to make it sound worse).
- The "concert" feeling might be related to the stereo enhancement settings, which among one of these is Stereo Boost.
- "Electric guitars sometimes sound odd": I understand that some playout software, like SAM Broadcaster, plays tracks not saved as 44.1 kHz with weird artifacts before it reaches the audio processor. You can try playing the track directly without the audio processor to see if there's a problem, then try converting the track to 44.1 kHz and play to see if it's better. (It's also recommended to bypass or turn off all processing/DSP features in the playout software)
- "New Compressor seems to respond interestingly to LUFS": I think this should be normal, depending on how "dense" each track has been mastered/processed.

Feel free to ask if you have any further questions!

Try adjusting ratio for AGC (You'll then need to adjust volumes too) and compressor bands. I've noticed most presets usually use (close to) infinity ratios, especially on the AGC; and as a result sound is less dynamic and less realistic.

For bass, if you find the bass boost features too artificial, try tweaking the bass clipper instead (First with just raising the drive volume) and use AGC's side-chain to adjust response to bass frequencies.

I'd say you can get much better sound on Stereo tool, but it takes much more effort than it does on Omnia. It feels like it could take years and i'll still be improving my preset.