Stereo Tool

And a few more updates.

1. "Pre Clip bass to protect against highs IMD" was affecting all frequencies up to 1-2 kHz. That didn't protect against any issues, but did reduce mids unnecessarily and potentially caused mids IMD.

2. "Pre Limit bass" just below that doesn't appear to help above 100%, but it does reduce bass and mids. So leave it at or below 100%.

3. Interesting observation: It appears that using "Highs vs rest threshold" at 100% with a higher value for "Highs clipping threshold" actually sounds better, up to a point. (Too high causes all the highs to be reduced, surprisingly; around +2-+2.5 dB seems to be a good range).

4. At such high highs clipping values, "curve" didn't do enough to protect against the highest highs pushing lower highs down. I've added an extra checkbox for that.

These 3 changes combined make the audio about 0.14 dB louder, with the same clipper input. That may not seem like much, but any improvement means that we're throwing away less audio, so (if we don't introduce extra IMD - I don't *think* that we do with these changes) a cleaner, more dynamic, more open and more stable sound.

(Measurement, Adaptive Bass Monster with 3 dB stronger clipping at 75 us pre-emphasis, original vs new settings: +0.15 dB up to about 3000 Hz, -0.2 dB between 4500 and 6000 Hz, same as before between 9 and 10 kHz, +0.3 dB louder from 11 to 14 kHz)

Two more updates.

• "Carve size" of 30 Hz is too low, it causes artifacts. 100 Hz seems to be safe, so I've set that as the new default, and I'm planning to remove this setting as well.
• I've measured what happens with "Conservative" mode, and I see no benefits! That is, once it's necessary, "Aggressive" mode always seems to take over. But Conservative mode does reduce the amount of highs overall. I have tested with higher threshold values (up to 12 dB); the higher I set the threshold the better the end result looks. And I see no negatives. So I think that this filter needs to go completely.
  
  What surprises me about that 2nd thing is that everyone who tested so far found that it was useful. But my measurements say otherwise. So either I'm overlooking something, or the earliertests were wrong (and it could be that "Aggressive" mode didnt work as well before).
  
  I found "S" sounds that are reduced by a dB, mainly in the "nice" area of 8-12 kHz, with no benefit to anything else. So it's probably worth revisiting this one.

Hello! Is it just me who has the problem, or is the 1.76 Beta dsp plugin not working for others as well? The 10.75 dsp is fine!