Stereo Tool

1. At the Multiband Compressor when i set the soft limit on band 1. It also effects band 2 and when i set it on band 2, it also effects band 1.
2. When i set the clipper on band 1, it isn't working.
3. The Equalizer is also behaving strange on these bands.
Are these bugs? Or is the filtering different on this bands?

Hi EldoradoFM,

For very low frequencies, I cannot separate them properly without getting artifacts. That gets worse when you select a lower latency. To avoid getting pretty bad artifacts, I have weakened the separation between the bands.

Because of that, I´m not allowing very big differences in amplifications between neighbouring low bands. So, if you set ´soft limit´close to 0 for any of these bands, they´ll all drop in volume.

This isn´t really a bug, it´s intentional, but it might (again) require some explaination.

EldoradoFM: After thinking about things a bit more I agree now that the way the soft limit sliders currently work is confusing. Better: I know a solution that will both protect against artifacts AND make things work as expected.

I have collected all the feature requests (including yours) in a new thread here: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2061


Don't expect them to be solved very quickly - it took 6 months to get version 5.00 ready and I need some time for other things right now. And I *think* none of the issues is very important at this moment.

Ok, good luck with all the ideas if i stumble up on more things i'll add it to that topic.

Here we go:
Background information:
viewtopic.php?p=5105#p5105
VLevel emulation preset:
viewtopic.php?p=5107#p5107

Question.

I burned some tracks - processed with Stereo Tool, FM Loud Bass Boost Europe preset with Loudness set to 4.00 - on a CD and listened to it in my car.

My impression is that the highs are too loud, and the sound lacks some 'warmth'. This might be due to the settings in this preset - the sound IS clean and there are no pumping or other effects when loud highs are present.

Also, I just received an email with the following text: "The sound of version did not please me 5.0 Many
high-frequencies sssss and sharps shi shi."

Any feedback on this? I was thinking about lowering the highest few bands in the equalizer in the multiband compressor (probably with 'before multiband' enabled to keep the same peak level, but reduce in-between levels). Maybe only the highest band.

Sorry to say Hans, but that is not really a nice setting.
The loudness volume and the 'clean-punch' causes it to distort major time.
If you look at the output everything is clipped to the max.
And to be really honest I do not really like the 'clean - punch' thing since it only seems to introduce distortion when you slide it towards 'punch'

strange...
I've always had the feeling lack of highs a bit.

Check how looks Pink Noise thru ST on some analyzer.

What maybe might be a problem is Loudness. (?)
Once i was thinking to request "minus" feature for "allow louder Highs"

I would say that is right if you look at the 'soft limit' in this preset.

On a transmitter it is normal that highs are not the same as the ones you hear from the source. First you have the 15KHz filter and next preemphasis, available bandwith and deemphasis in the tuner that makes highs not to sound the same. This is especially the case when you have very loud processing.

I know that
I'm just using this setting because it's pretty extreme - and hence very suitable to hear problems in the processing.
Well, 'clean' reduces the bass level a bit and may cause the bass to distort a little (without effect on the highs though).


After thinking about this a bit more I might have a different solution than increasing 'allow louder highs'.

To me it seems that short high bursts sound good, but in many recent tracks there are continuous loud highs. And if that's the case it starts to sound bad.

Then I realized that in version 4.22, the Pre Limiter filter used very different frequency bands than the new AGC filter: Basically the 2nd band of that filter was for highs only. And in most of the presets I had lowered that setting to improve the sound.

In version 5.00, this isn't possible anymore - so if the input sound has loud highs, they will still be loud when they enter the multiband compressor. And so, depending on the input sound, this issue can be much worse than it was in version 4.22.

Possible solutions:
1. Add the old pre limiter filter, only for highs, after the AGC again
2. Lower the highs frequencies in the presets using the equalizer and/or soft limit values.
3. Lower the 'allow louder highs' setting / allow negative values or move the base level

I think '1' is the way to go, '3' might also help (but not so much against continuous loud highs.). '2' would work, but might reduce the highs too much in cases where the input signal didn't have too much highs.


Edit: Ok, now I found out at least why the sound isn't 'warm'. There are 2 sliders in the equalizer that I've set to 0.88 instead of 1.00. That was necessary for earlier versions of Loudness, but it's not needed anymore - and now it just makes the sound weird. Will fix that in the next version.