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Any tips on auto-correcting stereo imbalance?
https://forums.stereotool.com/viewtopic.php?t=6134
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Author:  hightype [ Sun Aug 02, 2015 2:32 am ]
Post subject:  Any tips on auto-correcting stereo imbalance?

I have several DJ mixes that are mixed from vinyl. In the mixes, most of the tracks have some stereo imbalance, that is, either the left or the right channel is louder than the other (sometimes the difference between the channels is about 1 dB, this is due to the nature of vinyl pressing).

Fixing this manually would take days. Compressing the left and right channel separately does improve things but is far from being the ultimate solution.

I have tried on Winamp forums and Hydrogenaudio and was referred to Stereo Tool. I have tried to fiddle with the Stereo settings but it would take quite some trial-and-error to get the proper result.

As far as I know, there is a (for-pay) Goldwave plugin called "Max/Match" that does the trick (takes one channel and matches the volume of the other channel to that, with adjustable attack/decay).
I wonder if this could be done in Stereo Tool?

Any help would be kindly appreciated!

Author:  Bojcha [ Sun Aug 02, 2015 6:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Any tips on auto-correcting stereo imbalance?

Does you only need that From Stereo Tool or more other processing? You can set channel separation to 100% in AGC but that's not great idea if you only need that - to fix levels in channels.

I done more then 600 vinyls and i was fixing all that manually. Also some eq and bit of limiter..etc. So best would be to do manually.

Author:  hightype [ Mon Aug 03, 2015 10:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Any tips on auto-correcting stereo imbalance?

(Sorry for the late reply)

Well, if some other plugin or solution can do this (preferably free), then to me it's okay...

I also correct the stereo imbalance of vinyls manually. However, in the case of remastering let's say, a house mix from 1990 recorded to tape, pre-processing the tracks isn't an option. Some tracks are louder on the left, others are louder on the right, and the amount of the indifference varies from track to track.

Sure, the best would be to do this manually but I have many mixes, each with 10-20 tracks, it's just not feasible in a reasonable amount of time.

Here's an example, I extracted some few-second samples from a techno mix - each has some stereo imbalance (and several other issues but let's focus on the stereo imbalance now).
https://www.sendspace.com/file/41lotf
stereo-imbalance.flac (7.92MB)

I wonder if imbalanced audio like seen in this sample can be corrected automatically?

Author:  Bojcha [ Mon Aug 03, 2015 11:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Any tips on auto-correcting stereo imbalance?

Try this.
Attachment:
dsp_autobalance.zip [67.58 KiB]
Downloaded 624 times
5 sec settings should be good ;)

Author:  hightype [ Tue Aug 04, 2015 2:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Any tips on auto-correcting stereo imbalance?

Wow... thanks a million! :!: I've done some tests and it seems to do the job brilliantly!

(In fact, I was directed here from the Winamp forums - where I wrote I remembered seeing a DSP/Winamp plugin for
this but didn't download it as I didn't need it back then... turns out that this was it, and I probably saw it on the ClaessonEdwards site as as I use many of his plugins to great satisfaction. How I wasn't able to find this again via Google is beyond me. :oops:)

While we're at mastering mixes (this might be a bit offtopic though)... I wonder if there is a similar plugin to auto-correct stereo width (mid/side level) as in the mix some tracks are almost mono while others have wide stereo image?
Or can that be done with StereoTool? (The Azimuth option does stereo phase correction if I'm right, which isn't for stereo width)...

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