Stereo Tool

Hi Hans. Maybe a bit premature and not with the consensus. Re latest beta, your mod Big O preset test and new multiband. While there is a certain attractive smoothness about the new multiband, it seems to have a wandering/phasy type stereo sound field, and subdues the vocals. As an example; Billie Jean - Michael Jackson. A/B ing the compressors and listening on headphones & near field monitors, the main vocal and the backing vocals are not anywhere near as focused, natural and up front 'in centre' in the new compressor.

Also the new compressor seems to noticeably breathe (i.e. you can hear it 'working') compared to the old compressor, perhaps more evident on some other tracks than others.

Playing with the steepness control,while having a big effect, it still does not seem to produce the 'tonal correction' range as BBP. For example playing a 'thin' track (with little bottom end) and then a dull track, the BBP compressor seems able to produce a more consistent tonal output between those two tracks than ST does.

Subjective and early days yet though. Exciting time for ST with this new multiband your working on!

EDIT: Band 2 freq in that preset loads at 500 Hz, same as Band 3. Assume that's meant to be ~150 Hz?

No this is just me - I had to use some preset for comparison and I picked this one.

@Storm905: I did some tests with audio where I reduced the highs on the input (Bojcha described this yesterday), and indeed they aren't restored anywhere near as much as I had expected or hoped. So there's definitely more to be done here. In extreme cases the old compressor seems to do this slightly better even, although when testing with music without such extremes the new one seems better.
This stereo could be the stereo enhancer (Stereo Boost) that is normally combined with the old multiband compressor, it might be better to test with that turned off. Will check the voices - in the cases I tested so far I didn't notice much loss in them, and remember that the old compressor has a voice protection built in. The new one has nothing like that yet.
True. The old one sounds 'flatter' - could be because it has more bands, could also be because it behaves differently. I've used the gates in the preset to reduce this effect but I definitely hear something there that I don't like, which I also hear on some FM stations - but I never heard it in Stereo Tool.

It might also be caused by the "RMS" detection mode, will have to test if Smart Peak works better (it probably does; PhantomFM actually already confirmed that last night. But I wanted to do another test with RMS based, because that *should* actually sound more natural).
I'm using feedback compression, which means - among others - that differences are not corrected very strongly. Will have to play with it to see if it can be improved. Having said this, it DOES seem to outperform the old compressor in this regard (to my ears anyway).

Yes!

I will try to check the sound later in office, but i want to ask again... why 9 band and not 10?

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Sexy Girls in your city

The optimum - according to others - should be somewhere between 3 and 7. I could have used 10 or even more; 9 is the choice for now because otherwise the settings didn't fit on the screen properly. But, really, 7 should be more than sufficient already.

I imagine we can have the option to use up to 10.!
And i think Bojcha needs 10 or not?

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Sexy Girls in your city

No he definitely doesn't

Anyway, just summing up the differences:
- Old MB is peak based, new MB preset is RMS based
- Old MB is feed forward, new MB is preset is feedback
- Old MB behaves as 'Release to 0 dB' at 100%, new doesn't - the option isn't available (but I can easily add it, it does exist, just not visible).
- Old MB hass Limit/Compress slider, new MB has ratio which behaves differently (Limit/Compress goes to limit behavior if the input is really loud, ratio does not)
- Old MB band separation is insanely steep, new MB preset is not.

Yes Bojcha may not need 10 , but some others may.
So i proposed already to separate the window with the bands like the old multiband and then it will be space for all 10 bands !
I was thinking of that the old multiband will added only the "hold"/"gating" option and change to have an option for choosing ( RMS/Peak) metering of proccesing. But it is completely changed .....
Old one with only this option was the best idea i think . No Smart metering , no Knees , no anything .. but...

If someone tell me how to use very little speeds and very large "hold time" let me now .
I for now use the gating "to the limit" and the hold "to the limit" with 4-10 ms speeds. Thres is at -35db. And both options HOLD and GATE are not enough to hold levels from moving . At very fast speeds there is no respected hold time ... this may be insane from my side but time for holding is needed at every speeds, even small. I can`t use release speed below 100ms

I had Stereo Boost/Image off for the testing, and also turned off vocal protection on the old MB for A/B comparison, and experimented adjusting old multiband eq.

Now you mention it, the effect on new multiband though was kind of like Stereo boost was lightly on though - almost a reverb type effect to it in parts. Hard to describe. I used the term wandering (as if L/R were not fully coupled), but there is also a smearing/busy aspect to it. Very pronounced on that MJ track on backing vocals.

Yes, the new compressor may already well be better at tonal rebalancing than the old one, though BBP/Orban/Omnia typically does more in this respect. They can breathe life into older dull tracks, yet segue into a modern bright track without sounding unnatural. Great to hear you'd already flagged all that to develop further.

Reminds me a bit of the Sonos (MBL) product, in that' its multiband (when I last heard it some time ago) also had trouble broad range tonal re balancing, no matter how many compressor bands were enabled. Yet some early products such as Sound Solution, though not great by today's standards, if I recall correctly, its 5 band compressor could manage some respectable tonal rebalancing - though again was many years ago I heard it.

It's enjoyable being a small part of the ST beta testing and watching it evolve.

Small issue - text seems to alternate between 'Seperation' and 'Channel separation' when adjusting slider.