Stereo Tool

At 0:14, there is no "woo", at least not for a vocal. What I hear at 0:14 is a percussion instrument.

Now, at 1:04, I do hear something like what you're describing, but if you two are able to pick out excess vibration, then I nominate both of you for some sort of "Golden Ears" award... As I listen to the track on bypass, I hear vibration. When I enable my preset, I hear the same vibration, but maybe only ever so slightly clearer. If this is the "vibration" you are talking about, in my opinion, it is present in the singer's voice, and so efforts to "fix" the "problem" are actually breaking the true sound of the track.

I agree with you Brian. I was listening to this track by-passing the plugin and I hear the vibrations very prominently. It only gets amplified with the processing. If I recall correct, the issue used to be severe with the old versions of ST having limiter based loudness.
So if someone is complaining about voice vibrations audible after the processing but absent in original in recording, the implications are:
1. Like you said, they have alien / golden ears
2. The sound-card / gear does not bring out details all that well with the processing disabled.

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I'm currently trying to reproduce this (it used to sound pretty horrible with older ST versions), but it's indeed not nearly as bad as it used to be.

I've made a change to the bass clipper in Loudness, will post it tonight and then wait for comments from you.

This change makes it easier to keep the bass at a specific frequency below a certain level, instead of (as before) keeping the total of all the low freqs below a certain level.

To clear what happens with that track:
There is some voice vibrations caused by production, but new and more voice vibrations/distortions starts to appear when you push loudness bit more. so, for example it will not be in Brian's and similar presets.

Also interesting thing is with no-phase-linear HPF, this much less occurs. Also other track with voices are better with phase-linear.
Also same thing make highs to be distorted.

I still think you're "hearing" something that really isn't there. I've cranked loudness up to x 3.0 (+9.50 dB), and yes, it does get amplified, but the amplification is in line with the source signal. The bass is indeed distorting somewhat at this higher loudness level, but I've yet to hear something that I'd consider abnormal with the vocals.
I stopped using the NPL version of the HPF some time ago. I don't do all this fancy scoping of stuff, so my opinion was that I'd stick with phase-linear to avoid adding phase distortion. For testing purposes, I did switch to NPL, and the typical distortion introduced by that filter comes in, but I still do not hear a true issue with the vocals on that track.

Edit: I cranked loudness to full (x4) and I'm hearing overdrive noise from the bass that sort of "vibrates", but the actual vocal still seems clean to me.

Edit 2: I put the track on bypass and then cranked my sound card volume controls as far as they would go. I guess I was listening at 100-110 dB. The vocal range became more defined with the louder volume. I think you're just hearing more clarity with the higher volume.

Trust the plastic:



Can you post a specific preset that you believe has this issue and I'll listen with that preset?

Ok, here is test_preset and recorded part de-emhasized from FM version of preset.
http://www39.zippyshare.com/v/46684703/file.html
Also Bass protection is low as -1.7dB .. and should be atleast -1.0

I have no idea where to even begin with a critique. I have to go out for a while, so I'll see if you're on and respond to what I'm about to say, and then I'll think more on this and your response (if any) when I get back (probably 2-3 hours).

If you overdrive the hell out of a signal, why is it that you think that nothing bad will happen?

Even despite the overdriving, the important part is what I made red. You're giving me a recorded portion of a different preset. This different preset contains the broadcaster portions, including composite limiter, additional preemphasis, and who knows what else, and, if I'm understanding you correctly, reception on a tuner or somehow otherwise de-emphasized.

The issue that I have is that I still do not hear what you're saying is an issue with it not going through the broadcasting chain. Even with the recorded sample, at most I'm hearing maybe a little fuzz/buzz, but I truly do not think that is actually the vocals, but the overdriven bass.

This keeps coming back to me as a broadcaster-only issue, and it may not really be an issue if some settings were altered.

Right off the top I see

- Too fast up speed in the AGC
- Lack of using the Bass AGC (the frequency range has been lowered, it doesn't go up to 800 Hz now, or so we're told)
- Still a lack of understanding about the percentages in the AGC (you should look at my AGC settings...I think you're still stuck in a in a "this is the way we've always done it" mode with the AGC)
- Too loose control of bass in multiband
- Too much signal clamping done by singleband.
- Not using multiple protective features in Loudness
- Highs are way, way, way too loud. Advanced Extreme Highs is kicking in constantly.

Like I said, where to start?

That said, maybe there are good reasons for doing some of what you're doing for broadcasting, but care needs to be taken to clearly state that this is a possible issue for broadcasters, but does not seem to be an issue for non-broadcasting.

What bothers me is I think this can be addressed by settings changes, and that could free up Hans to do the multiband redesign

@Brian, may i ask you where you use stereo tool for primarily? Do you have some stream? Or is it just for listening music? Or even something else.

In the mean time, here's BETA033.
- Changed the Loudness bass clipping behavior. (see below)
- I hope the BS412 sudden drops issue is fixed now.

Winamp/DSP: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... 22-033.exe
Stand alone: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 22-033.exe
VST: http://www.stereotool.com/download/vst_ ... 22-033.dll
Command line: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 22-033.exe

Before the bass clipper clipped the whole frequency range below the set frequencies below a certain level. The new implementation really attempts to clip each frequency at a specific level. This means that if there are multiple different low frequencies in the signal, the amount of clipping will be less than before. A frequency sweep is nearly identical though. This means that using the same settings, you'll probably get more vibrations - but you can now lower the bass clipping level further without loosing too much bass. It's probably also a good idea to lower the bass clipping frequency range (by default it's set to 0..150/250 Hz, I think 0..50/150 or maybe 200 would suffice.)

I think it's probably also better to use a somewhat different shape where between the 2 specified frequencies, but I'll leave that for a future update (otherwise it's impossible to know which change did what).

IMPORTANT: LOW LATENCY OUTPUT IN THE STAND ALONE VERSION IS BROKEN AND MIGHT EVEN CAUSE CRASHES. SO MAKE SURE TO TURN IT OFF BEFORE UPGRADING! The good news here is that with the new design it should be pretty simple to get a much better working low latency output which might even have a lower latency than before.