Stereo Tool

I am not professing some far fetched imagination nor am I trying to advocate a theory, corollary, assertion or hypothesis.

I merely represented facts of my observation that I've done on numerous web-streams, on-air transmissions.

The best sounding web-cast that I've heard thus far is Armin Van Buuren's ASOT. Having analysed its spectrum content, I put forth this view.
Also analyse Bojcha's Neodymium and Achez's Lucidity presets. They are more linear than other posted presets - especially the latter.

No matter how intricate/complex the intrinsics of the DSP be, it will try to achive something which is fundamental.
Lemme reach home and I will post screenshots of what exactly I mean. Coincidentally these screenshots also seem to support anything more than 6-7 bands is a superfluous approach.
In case you're really ardent, for argument sake, to have more number of bands, then there should be individual calibration for Q(slope) per band, else the very objective - to get linear output gets defeated.

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Parametric EQ...

Anyway, while I realize this discussion isn't with me, I don't know if I'm aiming for pure linear stuff. I'm aiming for a good bass kick with enough mids and highs to go along with the bass.

IMO (again I am representing facts from my observation), AGC + MB (sans equalizer) should be as much linear as possible, assuming aggregate compression is also symmetric across all the bands. Honestly more the number of bands more difficult it becomes if you just have provision for setting global steepness of the slope.

But once that's in place, you can provide any amount of coloration, punch to the signature using Bass Boost and Equalizer post MB.

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Beta 4 - Return of the AGC

Right now, the AGC is 1-band only. Preamp increased to x4 (+12.00dB). Other changes here and there. Still a bit too hot for me, but that could be because of only 1-band AGC instead of 2-band.

Will start working on Beta 5, which I expect to be the last beta. Goals are to get the AGC to work in at least 2-band mode, if not 3-band.

Tricky, ha?
Now you have voices but unecessery higher mids where it should not be ?

Not sure. Deep bass is sometimes still an issue too. Might be because of extra mids / highs...

I haven't really done anything with this today, and probably won't until tomorrow sometime.

What high frequency decay slope for the mix do you want to create with your preset(s) ?

6 dB ?

3 dB ?

Or what ?

I just heard the beta 4

Very nicely balanced and smooth to the ear. It is cool to see all that processing going on while the sound stays transparent -and true to the original.

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Marc M. Clausen - Born 1991. Audio Enthusiast Ever Since

I'm still slowly working on this. The problem I've run into is getting bass to stay strong. What happens when I get the bass, and particularly sub-bass, to stay as strong as it is on the track, it muffles the vocals for other tracks. The other tracks that the vocal muffling is noticed on are tracks with a lot of guitar, like The Pretender, or many other grinding metal tracks.

I think this is going to end up still needing a multiband redesign, specifically allowing compression or limiting on a per-band basis.

Beta 5 - Explore the Space, Baby

I've been doing some serious exploring of the options, and have come up with this...

The major changes are:

- Center frequency changes (seems several of us had the same idea at the same time)

- Significant braking applied to the AGC in the form of significantly higher gating and lowered upspeeds. Helps address volume spikes.

- Bass AGC.

- Inverting the line of thinking about Startup Input Level. Instead of thinking it needed to be towards the left ("lower"), I moved it over to the right. This impacts tracks like "Time" and "Still Loving You"...basically anything quiet at the start. May still need adjusting or adjusting for your specific input level for the tracks you have.

- Disabled Azimuth correction.

- Singleband limiter set for 1.50 max amp. This helps with spikes and with pumping up vocals some.

Tracks that are still problematic are anything with heavy amounts of electric guitar and vocals at the same time, like "The Pretender" (vocals still get muffled a bit), and some types of metal music. It's also louder than I'd like. Still waiting for multiband redesign or compression/limit per-band.