Stereo Tool

It seems to me that currently, there's alot of garbage in the differences between the left and right channels, even with wave files ripped straight from CDs. A mode that didn't allow for this would be helpful. Like a Stereo lock on both channels would help when it's running through all the parts of the program.

Hi Chibisteven,

Could you please clarify what you mean? Are the CD's themselves already problematic when playing them through Prologic 2? Or do you get issues when you feed them through Stereo Tool? And if so, which filters are causing issues?

Or do you mean: Is it possible to clean up CD's such that the - already present - issues with Prologic 2 are fixed?


I have no experience with Prologic, so I don't know...

The CDs are fine playing through a Prologic II decoder. Running through Stereo Tool with the loudness filter, final limiter, hard limiter create static like artifacts and localization problems. The AGC can be fixed easily by adjusting the seperation characteristics. The multi-band doesn't cause too many problems. Prologic II creates a Stereo rear by +90 -90°. The original prologic has a mono rear.

I guess I know now what's going on.

The clipper removes distortion that can be heard, but leaves the rest there. But it does that for each channel separately. Now if you take the DIFFERENCE between two channels, it could happen that the sounds that originally masked the distortion are gone, but the distortion itself is not. Hence you get all kinds of weird and ugly artifacts.

This can be fixed. But it requires a (partial) redesign of the clipper code. So I won't be able to fix this quickly.


Question: Do you also get this issue when you're listening to FM radio stations? Especially of they sound really loud? (My guess: No. I wonder what Breakaway and the Omnia 9 would do though, I expect the exact same issues there).

I just talked to some people at Dolby, if you can send me a sample (before and after processing) they promised to take a look into it.

There is clipping in the original, but doesn't line up in a program like audacity where I'm hearing distortion when the preset is switched on (Normal Compression (Pop & Rock) - Louder preset was used).

http://www.mediafire.com/?hj1xinu7cw8j4bm