Stereo Tool

Hi,

Was playing with different settings and I found that phase rotation had a big impact in dynamic range of the song, or at least it seems to. You can see it comparing the input bars with the output bars. Also, I processed the same song with and without phase rotator -and only a small amount of loudness-, and according to foobar's dynamic range meter plugin the dynamics of the song almost doubled: Without phase rotation the dynamics were 7.2, and with it it was 12.7 (settings of phase rotation were those of Lucidity fx5.8) Is this filter supposed to have this impact in the processing?

The whole point of it is to remove loud spikes. But the dynamic range or sound should not change (or at least, almost not change). Any tool that reports a doubling in dynamic range uses a bad metering for this.

However, if you're combining it with other filters, especially Loudness, then the loudest sounds can suddenly become much louder because there are much less peaks in the signal. There's more headroom left to increase the level.

But the bars in Sterotool also show the increase in the peaks. Here is an example. Only phase rotation, no loudness. Song: Bon Jovi, Story of My Life, very compressed (with replay gain, hence the low overall volume; settings are: 240, 1920, 4.00, 95.0%). You can clearly see the difference (I think I can hear it too, thought not very sure, I believe it is in the lows, like more punchy sound, which I like a lot).

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-covu ... xample.JPG

Stereo Tool's output bars show peak level, and that's indeed higher. But that's all - the sound did not (or just barely) change - and definitely not in level.

One thing that has not been said about "phase rotator" is that latest ST has two modes of it!
Actually mode 1 and mode 1+2....

Mode 1 is ON when you set "rotations" to 0. Other settings has no effect and in that mode it works like "Phase Scrambler", meaning .. it does not affect bass at all but still fixes sax, trumpets.. etc.. sounds!

Mode 1+2 is when you set "rotations" to some number (default 4) - In that mode happens all like in mode1 + bass and mids (voice) sounds are affected.

For not_so_loud presets i recommend "rotations" to 0 (mode 1) or max to x1