Stereo Tool

Back to the AM...found that just turning off the FM is not good enough. I found a carrier at +/- 19khz on the AM band. Just turning the FM off doesn't kill the stereo pilot. That will violate the NRSC mask. Turning Stereo Off got rid of the extra carriers.

Ow. That's a bug. --> found it (i think), should be fixed in the next beta.

Ah, VLC hangups appear to have been caused by the fact that I stopped sending audio to VLC when I was closing it. Apparently, it deadlocks unless you keep sending audio (which is weird, but easy enough to do).

This version is similar to the previous (BETA743-003), but the VLC hangups should be fixed (so far I haven't seen any with this version) and the AM problem that bob53bob reported is fixed. And VLC output streaming is now also available for FM output.

I have not yet added the MP3 output setting for MP3 Shoutcast streaming (it's easy enough to do), so for now you can only use OGG for Shoutcast.

http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 43-004.exe

Bugs reported and some todo's:
- Carrier at +/- 19khz on the AM band. Just turning the FM off doesn't kill the stereo pilot. (fixed in 004)
- I again will say here that there is something wrong with Calibration section . Three options are identical with what they do : Test right silence , Test SSB lower and Test SSB higher. Nevermind what option you check, they causes same display behavour and same result as audio. --> NO, they are very different if you look at the actual output. Display is generated before calibration. Actual output does contain SSB or LSB audio.
- At the new Normal output settings there is a problem with "Input without processing" option . Sound is gagged/strange / I'm not at my Stereotool pc at the moment but when using a pipeline input and normal & fm output (192 kHz) , I noticed a strange effect when switching the normal output to bypass. Sounded like it could be a sampling rate thing? - Worked fine in some cases but not in others. I think it's fixed now.
- I think I also noticed a small typo - check the AM transmitter window.
- On the thorium preset it plays fine and then gets garbled and sounding like a 45rpm song playing on 33 rpm. cpu load is just 26% the rest of the presets work fine. (waiting for feedback, unable to reproduce it). --> Multipath Clipper is enabled in this preset. That explains the higher CPU load.
- VLC output still hangs on outputs that don't work (for example an invalid ShoutCast address). Probably because no data is sent through the output path, which causes the same stop hangup again. --> If Status is STOPPED, ERROR or NOTHINGSPECIAL, I don't call STOP or RELEASE. This seems to cause a small memory leak (a few kB probably) every time it happens, so it's not ideal. But better than a complete hangup. Still waiting for feedback on a question in VLC's forum.
- Add VLC output error detection & re-connect behavior (if possible without resetting the other inputs/outputs).
- VLC input: But something is strange sometimes plays like 1 or more samples delay between channels, occurs highs cancelation when switch to mono. I checked everything including exact mono sound input. -> Output was already running before connection was established. That's ok, but the start sample must be left channel -> fixed.
- VLC input with Low Quality Low Latency output hangs -> Solved by disabling LQLL output when VLC is used for input (which makes it impossible to reach low latencies anyway)
- VLC MP3 output. No room in current settings window...
- Show Lowpass filter freq in AM panel?
- C-QUAM?

This is on Normal Output? Or (also) FM? And when does it happen?

Edit: Never mind. I see it happen now. And it happens on INPUT (!).
EDIT 2: Only with VLC input. dj_szpajda, were you using VLC input? If not, please tell me how to reproduce it...

I still have problem with the Normal output/Input without processing option - but now looks like sound is not only gagged but also pitched up like profi turntables have a slider for pitching up/down
I see when choose the "Separately processed streaming output" there is a part of a checkbox that is enabled during that option but i cannot press it or see for what is it.

Yes it was VLC input and normal output with pre-emphais, I can't check normal out and fm out together in same time.
BTW: I spent some time teeth is to find what's going on

_________________
Urban Junglist

Thanks! Well, based on what I saw, the outputs should be ok (and it doesn't make sense that a 1-sample delay could be caused there anymore since I've rewritten most of the code that worked on per-sample to per block-of-samples-per-channel).

So, it looks like VLC sometimes starts with a left channel sample and sometimes with a right channel sample. If you enable AZIMUTH correction that should fix it (channels would be swapped though)... Well, either VLC or my own code. Will look into this.

Please for some explanation of this one:

When listen to the Normal output and enable/disable the pre-emphasis i can definitely hear that parallel with the emphasis is activated some real hard limiter only for the highs . We now have a free button called "Pre-emphasis output" - it`s now diasbled. Is there any way to assign that button to enable/disable this "limiter" for the highs called something like "Limit before emphasis" ? Or the whole emphasis must have this all in one ? I think that this can be separated only for enabling/disabling from the emphasis . Hans ?

I`m saying this because that "limit" makes the highs sounds different - like loosing a quality. May be the limiting must handled with the advanced clipper at the end of processing. But let the whole thing stay like is now , only this "limit" in the pre-emphasis to be able for disabling if user wants ?

@DJ_DOGGY: I think you have Hard Limit enabled. There is no other limiter there.