Stereo Tool

Need a bit of help lads , Not sure Which one is rite for our FM station.

Need it to run with Zara radio our long play and with your mixer/decks when a Dj is doing a set . Computer wise we are using a laptop no sound card . Is it still possible for us to have Stereo Tool . Read a few other posts but still not 100%.

Thanks
Brain

What are you refering to? The version of Stereotool or a sound card or a preset?
If you want to use Stereotool for FM broadcast you will need a sound card that is capable of 192 KHz sample rate if you want to use it to create an MPX stereo and RDS analog signal to feed to the transmitter. I use Zara Radio fed into Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) then into Stereotool Standalone and the output of Stereotool goes to my sound card and from there into the transmitter.

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J0HN II

Have installed standalone ,i think the problem im having now is the way its ran thru the mixer etc, there is a 4 sec delay from when you press play & stop and the sound is doubling when i change the presets, if any one can help please do . Im used to the old school & wouldnt be so up to date so take it easy

Welcome brain,

I'm a bit confused here, since you write that you don't have a sound card? Or do you mean that you use the on-board sound card?

A delay of 4 seconds is really a lot. Stereo Tool by itself should (when set to the highest quality) cause a delay of about 93 ms (can be lowered down to 12 ms at the expense of reducing the quality), with some extra sound card latency (which can be as little as 2 or 3 ms). FM (MPX) output currently causes some extra delay - solving that is on my todo list. But not by far as much as what you're experiencing.

Unfortunately, if you use VAC, you'll get some extra delays: One to get the audio from Zara to VAC, one to get the audio from VAC into Stereo Tool, and one to get the output of Stereo Tool to the sound card - in this case NOT using ASIO.

To reduce it, try reducing buffer sizes (in Stereo Tool in the sound cards window, go as low as you can without getting hiccups - there's probably something similar in ZaraRadio etc.).


I don't understand what you mean by 'double audio'?

Bit of an update,

Using ST winamp plugin at the moment just to get by and working fine.Very happy with the sound.

But need to use the Standalone one , Im having problems with VAC not working ,

Is there any other way to run standalone with out having to use VAC , Again im using Zara radio and need to hook up the decks aswell.

Thanks lads

That's going to be a bit difficult then. Why doesn't VAC work?

The only alternatives I know are:
- Sound card driver support for VAC-like behavior. The only sound cards I know that supports this are the ESI cards.
- Encoding Zara output to a webradio stream, connect to that from Winamp, and load Stereo Tool as Winamp plugin. Unless you can find a way to stream without compression, this will always cause (some) quality loss. And of course a lot of extra latency.

Having a problem with setting the ins and outs with VAC etc,

Is run like - Zara output Vac line 1
Audio repeater - wave in - Virtaul cable 1
Audio repeater - wave out -Virtaul cable 2

St input Virtaul cable 2
Audio repeater - wave in - Virtaul cable 2
Audio repeater - wave out -sound card.
Than to the station mixer

Sorry lads im not uptodate with these things So if any one can make sence of what i just wrote lol and can answer it in layman's terms i be over the moon.

Anyone

My set up is like this;
ZaraRadio Air Output: Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable)
StereoTool Standalone (in Sound Card Configuration Window) Sound Input: Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable)
In the Processed Output Section:
Enable normal output is unchecked
In the FM Stereo/RDS Sound Card Section:
Enable FM Transmitter output is checked
Sound card selected is my Realtek High Definition Sound Card
and the sound card output(which is a full MPX stereo composite signal) is connected to my transmitter.

You mention a station mixer. You would not want to feed the composite signal to anything but the transmitter. Any audio to be mixed with the program audio from ZaraRadio must be done before the Stereotool input. I have a fully automated station so I don't use any other audio sources than ZaraRadio and its Satellite input from another sound card.

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J0HN II

John2 is right - you should NOT mix any audio into the MPX signal that's going to the transmitter or you'll get really weird effects, and might even start disturbing other stations (!!!).

What are all the audio repeaters for? The setup should really be as simple as John described. I hope Zara has support for microphone input (assuming that that's what your mixer is for).