Stereo Tool

Hello everyone,

I would like to get some feedback on my **LOOM Radio V3.33 preset**.

I am not an audio or broadcast professional, just a long-time radio and sound enthusiast currently working on a personal web radio project called **LOOM Radio**.

This project is also a way for me to prepare an enjoyable retirement adventure around two lifelong passions: radio and sound.

My goal is to create an immersive, textured and elegant sound, with good precision, a wide but natural stereo image, and comfortable long-term listening. I am aiming for a dense yet lively sound, detailed, enveloping and non-fatiguing, with a pleasant texture and a natural sense of depth.

One unusual aspect of this project is that all the tuning work has been carried out deliberately using inexpensive TRUST multimedia speakers. My intention was to achieve a pleasing sound even on modest consumer playback systems, without relying on professional studio monitors.

At this stage, I am generally happy with the result, but I still feel that it could be slightly smoother, especially on certain vocals or busy musical passages.

If anyone has time to listen to the preset and suggest possible improvements or settings adjustments, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

Thank you in advance for your time and for any suggestions you may have.

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Patrice | LOOM Radio
Immersive • Elegant • Textured Sound

I'll be completely honest.. its really hard to listen to

You are squashing the life out of the audio.. it is fricken LOUD thou.

Hi Dale,

Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to my preset and for your honest feedback. I genuinely appreciate it, even when it's critical.

I'm just a passionate hobbyist and completely self-taught when it comes to audio processing, so I'm still learning and trying to improve this preset step by step.

If you have more specific advice about what sounds over-processed to you (compression, clipping, density, loudness, etc.), I would be very interested to hear it.

And if you would be willing to make adjustments to the preset yourself, or suggest settings that you think would work better, I would be more than happy to try them and compare the results with my current version.

I'm genuinely looking for constructive feedback and ideas to make it sound more natural and easier to listen to.

Thanks again for your help!

_________________
Patrice | LOOM Radio
Immersive • Elegant • Textured Sound

Hi Dale,

A few weeks ago, you took the time to listen to my LOOM Radio V3.33 preset and you honestly told me that I was squashing the life out of the audio. Your comment was a real wake-up call for me. I took your feedback very seriously and completely changed the way I approached the processing.

Since then, I have completely rebuilt the preset. I'm no longer working on V3.33 but on a new version (V3.36C), developed after many hours of listening, comparing and fine-tuning.

I also followed the advice I received about my monitoring equipment and bought a Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro. It allowed me to hear the flaws in my processing much more accurately and helped me make significant progress.

In the meantime, I also had several very interesting discussions with Dave (DVA) here on the forum. He even integrated my preset into his own broadcast processing chain and ran it for several hours under real broadcasting conditions. After testing it, he only suggested a few adjustments that were specific to his own setup (enabling the Declipper, reducing the AGC Drive and using "Limit instead of Clip"). That gave me confidence that the overall architecture of the preset was moving in the right direction.

To build this new version, I took a lot of inspiration from DUMAN's preset. I really admire his processing philosophy, and it is currently the closest sound to the sonic image I would like to create for LOOM Radio.

To give you a better idea of the sound I'm aiming for, here is an example of the classic Fun Radio sound that has always inspired me:

https://soundcloud.com/user-16944405/fu ... p-francais

I'm not trying to copy this processing. What inspires me is the sense of space, depth, precision, warmth and the immersive feeling it creates.

LOOM Radio won't be a typical Top 40 station. A large part of the playlist will consist of lounge, groove, soul, nu-disco, elegant funk and artists such as Stéphane Pompougnac, the DJ and music curator behind the famous Hôtel Costes in Paris. That musical universe is a major source of inspiration for the sound I want LOOM to have.

Today, I feel that I'm getting much closer to my goal, but there is still one challenge I haven't completely solved.

I'm looking for extremely natural and well-defined consonants, especially S, T and CH sounds. Despite all the improvements I've made, I can still hear a slight harshness or occasional splattering on some sibilants in certain tracks.

Do you think there are specific modules or settings in Stereo Tool that I should focus on to improve this without losing the openness, texture, warmth and musicality I've managed to achieve?

My goal is not to build the loudest preset. I want to create a real sonic identity: an immersive, airy, highly detailed and responsive sound, with deep sub-bass that gently stays in the background and adds subtle warmth to the music. More than anything, I want LOOM Radio to have a premium sound signature that people can instantly recognize—not because it's the loudest station, but because of its unique personality.

If you have some time to listen to this new version and let me know whether you think I'm moving in the right direction, I would really appreciate your opinion.

Thank you once again for taking the time to listen and for helping me improve.

Patrice

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Patrice | LOOM Radio
Immersive • Elegant • Textured Sound

The style you prefer is very similar to the preset "Dirty Dutch '24".