Stereo Tool

hey hans, thanks for providing such a great audio plugin for free!
i just found a bug with stereo tool v4.04 and winamp v5.56:

when starting winamp (stereo tool is my default DSP plugin and us running minimized in systray) the upper visualization of the systray icon doesn't show up at first and then after approx. 7 seconds it suddenly works.

same thing happens when bypassing stereo tool for certain songs by right-clicking the systray icon. after i have enbaled it again the upper visualization shows the volume levels of the previous song for 7 seconds and then shows the proper volume levels of the current song.

so i guess it seems to be some kind of buffer problem?!? btw it doesn't matter what preset and CPU/latency setting i use!
maybe you need this information: i'm using kernel streaming output but this bug also appears with directsound. my output buffer for kernel streaming is 62ms, clear buffer value in stereo tool is 0,1s, synchronizing value 0,06s.

hope you can resolve this

elena

So you always see a 7 second delay?

There was a problem with the tray bar icon in version 4.02 and 4.03, but I though I had solved it... Apparently not. I'll look into it.

Ok, I see it happening here too now. Will fix it asap.

Problem seems to be solved, I'll do some more testing tomorrow and then I'll release a new version (4.05).

wow, you're really fast
btw i love the idea of the DIFF buttons to hear what stereo tool is actually enhancing. do you think it's possible to build a DIFF button that lets us hear the diffeence between Hi, Mid, Lo quality, maybe Latency and multiband compressor HQ? i'm at 0% CPU usage anyway (with highest settings) but if there was no audible difference then i could minimze the delay even further

Version 4.05 is available now!

About that DIFF button: That won't work because different delays among others cause the audio to be different, without sounding better or worse.

What you can do is listen to recordings with very deep bass sounds. Those sounds are most affected by the quality and latency settings.

If you are NOT using Loudness, the difference between different quality and latency settings is not so big. If you want to reduce the latency, turn Low Latency on - but keep the quality on High. Alternatively, you can keep Low Latency off and reduce the quality to Normal.

The quality difference between Normal and High is small, but the CPU usage difference is big.
The quality difference between Low and Normal is big, but the CPU usage difference is small.
So I wouldn't use Low quality unless it's really necessary.

very good explanation, thank you for that maybe you should put it in the 'CPU usage settings' section of your Help, then people like me have some orientation what combination of settings really makes sense.

btw v4.05 works fine for me too, that bug is gone!
but why have you limited the clear buffer setting to a minimum of 0,5s? and i really don't wanna bother you but is it much work to change the scale of the synchronizing setting to msec instead of sec? that would allow more precise adjustments to the actual output buffer, in my case 62ms instead of 0,06s, or sometimes 186ms instead of 0,19sec. but it's really no big deal..

Do you want to use a lower value than 0.5 seconds there? I can change the value a bit if 0.5 is too high...

sorry for my late reply, i've been on vacation in amsterdam
yeah, please change the slider back to the full range (beginning with 0.00 sec). i used to have values like 70-100ms and that was high enough to not get sound blackouts when the CPU was under heavy load and it was low enough to not hear old buffer sounds when skipping tracks thank you!

Ok, this took a bit longer than I had planned. But version 4.10 is available now, and you can set the slider to very low values again. (There's also a new stereo widener that sounds much better, which you might want to give a try).