Let me type a small explanation of why so much is going wrong in the last few versions.
Every filter in Stereo Tool (and a filter here is an internal Stereo Tool filter, for example Loudness consists of more than 20 different filters internally) needs some memory to store information: Filter parameters, data from the previous block of data for a smooth transition to the new block, volume levels, a Fourier-transformed (frequencies) version of the data, input data, output data etc.
For everything that needs to be stored, the software must request a block of memory to store the information in. So there are hundreds, probably even thousands of blocks of information. They are placed in memory in more or less random order, based on when I request them and where a big enough block of memory is available at that moment.
A few days ago I have reduced the memory usage of many of the filters, because most of them (but not all) were requesting twice as much memory than what is needed in the new setup.
Now here's the problem: If ANY of the blocks that I'm requesting isn't big enough, most of the time I don't get any warnings at all. I'm just writing outside of the block of memory that I requested. Sometimes that's unused memory - in that case either nothing goes wrong or Windows complains. But very often this means that I'm basically overwriting the data of one of the other filters.
If I'm overwriting data of another filter, for that other filter the data that it reads back will basically be random nonsense. And that can lead to all kinds of weird behavior. For example, I could have overwritten a large block of sample data from a previous step (which would lead to clicking etc.). Or I could be overwriting something simple like the lowpass frequency, resulting in very strange behavior.
What makes things even more problematic is that the order in memory is determined also by - for example - the Windows version. So what seems to work fine on one PC might crash or cause strange behavior on another. The Winamp plugin version will behave differently than the stand alone or VST version, and the SSE2 and non-SSE2 versions will also behave differently.
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- Will try to find out what's wrong tomorrow...
