Stereo Tool
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Stereo Tool 3.23 (UPDATED August 3!)
https://forums.stereotool.com/viewtopic.php?t=58		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  hvz [ Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:40 am ]
Post subject:  Stereo Tool 3.23 (UPDATED August 3!)
UPDATE AUGUST 3. See the new post (viewtopic.php?f=14&t=59) for details.

I have redesigned the final limiter and loudness filters. This gives a better, more consistent, less jumpy sound. Also, the loudness filter has been smoothened a bit to remove some "edgy" sounds that could occur in some circumstances.

Unfortunately, in High quality mode, the new version consumes a lot more (+30%) CPU than the previous versions (Low and Normal quality mode are not affected). I don't know what's causing this - I cannot really explain it.

Because of this I won't officially release this version yet. But because the sound quality has clearly improved, I'm posting it here anyway. You will probably need to run it in Normal quality mode (but the difference between Normal and High quality is very small anyway - Normal Quality in 3.23 should give a better sound than previous versions in High Quality mode).

Version 3.23 can be found at:
Winamp plugin: http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_ ... r_BETA.exe
Stand alone version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... r_BETA.exe
Command line version: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... d_BETA.exe (not an installer)

HINT: In this version, you can set the Final Limiter time to 0.01 seconds. In previous versions that caused "cracking" sounds, but that's no longer the case. Higher values now cause more pumping than before. So 0.01 usually gives the best result.

Because the Final Limiter (not the final pre-limiter by the way) and Loudness filters are redesigned, comments on the changes are very welcome. Especially if you find sounds that sound worse with this new version (which is always possible), or if the output volume is lower than before.
Author:  hvz [ Wed Jul 30, 2008 1:56 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23
I just noticed that with the new filtering the difference between normal and high quality for the Loudness filter is gone completely. So I will switch the Loudness processing to always use Normal mode - that should lower the CPU usage quite a lot.
Author:  garfield [ Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23
hello hans , i have noticed than the sound is more clear and have more punch on "normal quality" than "high quality" ,with "post filter" and "hq " enable. Is it normal ?
Author:  hvz [ Wed Jul 30, 2008 6:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23
That _should_ not be the case, but if it is, it indicates that there's a bug in the High Quality mode. I'm going to remove it anyway, so I expect to have a version with the same "brightness" in High Quality soon. (I hope tonight).

Unfortunately I did notice a small quality difference between high and normal quality where high sounds (slightly) better. So I need to fix that one first.
Author:  hvz [ Thu Jul 31, 2008 1:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23
Ok, there was a bug in the processing which caused some cancellation on the high frequencies.

I've just uploaded an update where this is fixed, which also has a greatly reduced CPU usage when using Loudness in High quality mode.

Note: It's still called version 3.23 (because I've never officially released it anyway).

There are still some issues with it, especially note that Loudness doesn't seem to work properly in Low Latency mode. I'll look into that later.
Author:  SuperH [ Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23 (UPDATED July 31!)
So far so good - minor increase in CPU usage. So I wasn't nuts -- the occasional distortion was being caused by the operation of the final limiter itself -- not my settings?

Well - now to give my preset another whirl. After hearing a couple songs today, I was about to change my preset!

Thank you again!
Author:  hvz [ Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23 (UPDATED July 31!)
The current version pumps a bit when Loudness is set to a high value - I'll fix that and release a new version 3.24 tonight.
Author:  halfdead [ Thu Jul 31, 2008 10:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23 (UPDATED July 31!)
Great, I will hold to my current version/3.21 :oops: /, until 3.24 comes out ;)
Author:  hvz [ Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23 (UPDATED July 31!)
Due to some unforseen problems I'll have to postpone it for at least one day :o

It turned out that Garfield was right at the mark: The Low quality loudness filter had a lot of extra filters to remove any distortion - but they only made the sound less powerful.

So now I'm using the low quality Loudness filter also for high quality processing. That works fine, but I'm still working on some minor details (I do need to add ONE extra filter to get the best possible sound).

I have uploaded the latest version - it DOES sound better than yesterdays version.
Author:  hvz [ Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Stereo Tool 3.23 (UPDATED August 1!)
Ok, everything seems to be ok now. The same brightness and loudness of older versions is back, combined with the much better sound of version 3.22 and maximum strength of 2.0.

I think everything is fine now, but after all the things that went wrong with my previous attempts I'm releasing it as a beta for now.

You can download it from the Download page (or at the top of this page).

Please use the new thread for feedback.
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