Stereo Tool

playing some music with the latest beta... and the latest Minnesota Twin Cities, which i'll release soon. Absolute Highs is enabled, as it will be in Minnesota by default now. I've also changed from the Simple Clipper, to the Advanced Clipper.
http://stream.masterfulaudio.com:7911/listen.pls

I haven't played with the "Pass squeeks" setting yet, but otherwise I've found the following settings to be ideal for set & forget:

For an oldies station, you might want to drop the two frequency sliders, but *never* drop the lower frequency slider below 5kHz at the extreme, 7kHz is a better idea. And *never* put the two sliders closer than 300Hz at 5kHz. At 7kHz they should probably be around 450Hz apart or a bit more. There could probably be an "Auto" button for the higher frequency slider.

Also... "squeeks" is spelled wrong. It should be "squeaks".

Hans, a feature request, that the Simple Clipper can be set to be enabled, but that it'll automatically disable if the Advanced Clipper is enabled. That way I can have Advanced Clipper enabled in the preset, and if someone disables Advanced Clipper, they won't have to know to enable the Simple Clipper.

Is there any use scenarios where someone would want both?

Something seems to have gone wrong in the stand alone build. I've just restarted it. Sorry!

@Jesse: Hm, does it sound good if you always enable it? I'll run some more tests, it might be. Anyway I am planning to add a 'Volume' slider that reduces the effect (and, if there's already stuff there, it doesn't do anthing in the first place, so lowering the effect just a bit can have a big effect on what comes out). With the recent changes the amount of highs that get added have increased by several dB's (mainly because I made the filtering out of unwanted sounds smarter), that's why I'm not sure if it still always sounds good.

I will remove the Squeaks setting. (Behavior will be as if it's set to 100%, not 200%!)

About simple clipper: If you enable both, only Advanced Clipper is used, but the volume difference that's set in Simple Clipper is still used. So, you can do what you want already!

030 stand alone has been re-uploaded!

Hi Jesse.

You could include better true bass?

_________________
Pretty Girls in your city

Yes, the latest Minnesota has different True Bass settings.

Wooh! It looks like I compiled Absolute Highs with a wrong flag set in the last beta. Which means that it didn't act as it should have!

Will run a new build asap.

So as it turns out I had a big bug in it. Let me know what you think of BETA031 (will post it in a few minutes).

7.85 BETA031

Windows 32 bit:
Windows stand alone: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 85-031.exe
Winamp DSP: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... 85-031.exe
Windows VST 32 bit: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... 85-031.dll

CHANGED:
- Woops, wrong flag set for Exciter, dynamic Squeak mode didn't work. It does now.
- "Input without processing" doesn't work in stand alone version.
- Exciter: Add Volume slider
- Exciter: Add DIFF mode

OLD CHANGES:
- Exciter: Try to improve tone behavior (should also reduce whole area around a spike I think - maybe configurable?)
- Add another AM test tone, sawtooth with cut off bottom
- Add 'Forcibly remove' to AM settings? Or is this a problem with the transmitter that the tester on Radioforum uses? -> Regardless, I've added it now.
- Fixed AM sawtooth test tone, adjusted level of other test tones when using AM.
- Fixed bug in HARD LIMIT introduced in BETA027 (caused crashes).
- Added slider to Exciter to choose between a more natural spectrum which however sounds more distorted, vs a very clean sound but with shrill tones in it. Will try to get rid of this slider and automatically choose the correct setting soon!
- Polar stereo: K filter added, but output is not strictly clipped anymore. Waiting for feedback.
- Add AM test tone: Sawtooth with pause at 0, asymmetrical. LPF needed?
- Fixed crackle at startup caused by Ignore high frequencies (even if it was disabled!)
- Loading old preset from before Analog mode was added apparently loads in Analog mode! -> Works now, just no idea why??
- Exciter: Crash should be fixed.
- Exciter: Sometimes you see darker bars in the spectrum, changing the overlap back and forth removes those, so somehow some levels aren't always calculated when a setting is changed.
- Fixed crash when closing
- Exciter: Moved to separate page, for now called Absolute Highs.
- Exciter: Added GUI element to show Absolute Highs effect.
- Exciter: Broken at latency 512
- GUI: Fixed hangups caused by tooltips.
- GUI: Remove dots in changed settings for some buttons on top of the screen.
- Exciter: Made frequency range configurable!!! (Old default numbers were 8000-9000 Hz)
- Blog post pre-processing, MP3 and declipping
- GUI: Added tooltips!
- Added exciter (rest of list removed)
- Added (not yet fully ok) Polar Stereo support for OIRT FM stations.
- Error (crash) on some systems should be solved
- Show something in settings that have been changed (for example a dot next to the name of the setting).
- Add license check function: extern "C" bool stereoTool_IsLicenseValid(gStereoTool* st_instance);
- Make scope skinnable
- Bug: i found one malfunction in the BS412 Section: If your switch off the FM Option and leave the BS412 Limiter in On-Position the Advanced Clipper only works in a reduced way: You can´t change the Clipper drive even if you pull the handle. The BS412 Limiter is greyed out instead so maybe someone doesn´t find the failure. If You switch the BS412 to off everything works fine again! Just a small detail, but maybe someone will have problems… -> I think I have fixed it (but there are a lot of different combinations of settings that can impact the result, I hope I haven't missed any). The next version shouldn't have this problem anymore, also, when BS412 is used I have now disabled the Advanced Clipper Drive slider.
I've been busy hiding a lot more deprecated features (if they are set to their default value). This should make the GUI a bit simpler. Stuff that's now hidden (still there and still functional if you really want to use it):
- "Bass AGC (Old)" panel
- "Classic Multiband Compressor" panel
- "Classic Singleband" panel
- "Pre-limiter" panel (in Advanced Clipper)
- "Leif's clipper efficiency modification" checkbox
- "Composite clipping Strictness (CPU)" checkbox
- Phase rotation: ""At start of processing" checkbox
- AGC "Compatibility & behavior" header
- All Singleband and Multiband "Compressor type" (Analog/Digital) pull-downs
- Multiband and Natural Dynamics "Compatibility mode (bad)" for Flat Frequency Response checkbox
- "Bass protection (Deprecated)" header in Advanced Clipper -> Bass
- "Highs gap protection: *" in Advanced Clipper -> Highs
- "Smooth slope" in Advanced Clipper -> Distortion
- "Upsampled highs clipping (useless)" in Advanced Clipper -> Distortion
- Stokkemask: "Force Stokkemask even if not using Composite Clipping (bad for audio)"
- BS412: ""De-basser non-ITU.1770 compatibility mode (bad)"
- Right clicking now restores default again, mid or double right clicking restores last loaded preset (or startup) value.
Bug: If you use FM and Normal output, with separately processed audio for streaming for Normal output, and for FM output enable pre-emphasis but *not* pre-emphasize output, then Normal output is not processed separately!
- What is the pink line in the BS412 display? Maybe remove it. http://i.imgur.com/70mWvqp.png -> Ah no, it's the adjustment of the compressor thresholds. Needs to be added to Help page.
- BS412 has VERY narrow jump on de-basser from 240 to 250 Hz. (Jump of multiple dB's). -> No, brown line jumps but actual output is smooth, so no problem.
- BS412 bass filter doesn't use ITU1770 as it should but some weird other shape that goes up to about 250 Hz.
- Need to support 2 default values and a RESET TO LAST LOADED VALUE reset option.
- Hide not selected deprecated stuff - partially working!
- Move Copyright stuff etc. also to command line version (maybe just copy it?)

TODO:
- Exciter: Optimize for LPF setting
- Exciter: Make 2 kHz block size configurable, or automatic, or combination. Might work best if it's constant??
- Plugin -> Output level doesn't work in VST version
- MB2: Make Overview window for new Multiband! For main settings.
- Voice protection in classic MB is broken. Check what changed. (Code should not have changed at all). - Hm, more has changed. Check in which version! -> Waiting for reply to question
- MB: Make Overview window for new Multiband! For main settings. Hide other windows when possible, and also make it for MB1
- Exciter: Add auto-adjust frequency
- Exciter: Make it possible to choose where in the chain to run it
- Exciter: Improve further, and make it configurable.
- Add Polar stereo viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6233&p=33031#p33031
- MP3?

LATER:
- Try adding phase delay compensation
- Also show tooltips for blocks of parameters.
- RDS encoder: Use Mathijs' method with interpolated 0's. Should give a nicer signal! Also I saw a weird jump bug in the raw (unfiltered) RDS output. Shouldn't matter (it gets filtered out) but still better to fix it.
- MB: Add voice volume protection, don't allow mid bands to drop below surrounding (to some extent), protectes voices and it might help to replicate the sound of certain other processors
- Continue with finding parameters to hide
- O skin

I tried the latest version now. In the example, from the very beginning of development, I now get but a few very shrill sounds. That hurts when listening a bit. I send you via PM once the file and my settings used, so you can adjust it.