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Stereo Tool V.7.03

I'm Hans van Zutphen, the author of Stereo Tool. Here are some replies and answers:

First, about audio quality. Most parts of Stereo Tool work very well, the big weak spot at the moment is the multiband compressor. I'm currently working on a complete redesign of it, once that's finished it should be much easier to get a good sound out of it.

Second, CPU load. Yes, Stereo Tool requires more CPU power than Breakaway - but on modern systems it really doesn't use much (on my 2-year-old laptop it uses 9% with everything enabled, GUI full-screen). I could have chosen to remove a lot of things from the processing to gain some performance, but since most people use faster pc's anyway I'm trying to compromise as little as possible on audio quality. But if you really have a performance problem, here's what you can do:
  • If you use Stereo Tool for streaming, turn off oversampling for the clipper and Hard Limit. This has a large effect on the performance, and for streaming it's not really necessary. (Processing -> Limiting & Clipping). As far as I know, Breakaway doesn't use oversampling for streaming either. This will reduce the total CPU load by 10-20%.
  • Reduce clipper strictness (Processing -> Limiting & Clipping -> Advanced Clipper -> CPU). This will lead to some (small) loss in loudness.
  • Lower the Quality setting in the main window. At the highest latency setting (4096), a reduction down to about 50% will be nearly unnoticeable, and reduce the CPU load by 1/3rd.
  • If this is still not enough, disable the declipper.

Older parts of the processing don't yet have multicore support, that's why on a dualcore system you may start to get hiccups if the CPU load gets above about 60-70%.

About the large number of settings: I'm planning to create different GUI modes (something like simple/basic/advanced/expert). But there are other things that are higher on my priority list.. So don't expect this too soon.


@Robert Bass: About the SSE2 warning: That means that your system is even older than a Pentium 4, it's a Pentium 3 or compatible system. Pentium 3's were made from 1999-2003.....
 
With the low price of a PC that would blow away something from 10 years ago, I truly don't understand running such an old machine. At MicroCenter for $150 you can get a refurbished dual core machine that will run circles around a PIII.

There are some places that I contract for that are like that. Computers are not the most expensive item in the radio station anymore. Quite the opposite, unless you're talking about enterprise level servers or an automation machine. Even that automation machine isn't that expensive. Chances are the sound card(s) in it cost more than the actual computer.
 
hvz said:
@Robert Bass: About the SSE2 warning: That means that your system is even older than a Pentium 4, it's a Pentium 3 or compatible system. Pentium 3's were made from 1999-2003.....
Click to expand...

Ahh, thanks for the info! Yeah it was a donated machine from my folks when I had another PC crash a couple of years ago. It has been suggested to me to add a second sound card to my current (newer) streaming PC and run ST on that. I'm currently considering it.

However, if there's a way to do this without even going through a sound card to being with, that would be nice as well. If there's a way to output OtsAV directly into Stereo Tool, then directly from Stereo Tool to EdCast, that would be great!

R
 
WNTIRadio said:
With the low price of a PC that would blow away something from 10 years ago, I truly don't understand running such an old machine. At MicroCenter for $150 you can get a refurbished dual core machine that will run circles around a PIII.

There are some places that I contract for that are like that. Computers are not the most expensive item in the radio station anymore. Quite the opposite, unless you're talking about enterprise level servers or an automation machine. Even that automation machine isn't that expensive. Chances are the sound card(s) in it cost more than the actual computer.
Click to expand...

You are absolutely correct. My Digigram Cards in my Flex workstations are 2200 each. The rest of the quad core machine, including SSD ran around $550.
 
Robert Bass said:
However, if there's a way to do this without even going through a sound card to being with, that would be nice as well. If there's a way to output OtsAV directly into Stereo Tool, then directly from Stereo Tool to EdCast, that would be great!
Click to expand...
Ofc, using VAC.
---
However, it's interestings to read some comments (last few years) when it comes to BBP and ST.
Usually all BBP users are asking about "full version" of BBP, and when they try ST, all suddenly starts to be complicated.
 
Good point Bojcha!

I think most BBP users would agree there may be just one or two things they would like to be able to adjust further under the hood. For instance, I wish I could have greater control over the HF in BBP...but it's really a minor complaint in the greater scheme of things.

To expect SSB and Undo to be included in an existing release of BBP is a lot ridiculous, IMHO.
 
And while not quite 'Undo', if you have a problem format... You can do as I did and buy Perfect Declipper and preprocess your wav files. Just adds a small step to adding music.
 
Chris,

I've done this with mixed results depending on the source material. Not all heavily clipped music is created equal, I've learned.
 
That's why I actually like doing it cut by cut... You can see if it makes a positive difference. If it does, I keep it. If not, I use the original.
 
hvz said:
Older parts of the processing don't yet have multicore support, that's why on a dualcore system you may start to get hiccups if the CPU load gets above about 60-70%.
Click to expand...
Thought that was my answer...went to a 3.2GHZ single core machine and set ST to Single Core. That was worse. What specs do I need to meet to be 100% certain that I can run ST 7.03? I'm definitely above 60-70% on the dual core so if that's my bottleneck, I have no problem with shopping for a beefier computer...I just need to know what I need to remove all doubt.
 
@ Bob
I am running ST on 4 PCs, all of them are core2duo E5200 2x E5400 and E5700. Two of them for stream and 2 for FM. All with De-Clipper ON and 100% quality. All are with 2x1GB memory.
Cpu usage on slowest CPU is ~60% for one FM PC (asio win 30ms buffer) and no single problem with it.
 
Bojcha said:
@ Bob
I am running ST on 4 PCs, all of them are core2duo E5200 2x E5400 and E5700. Two of them for stream and 2 for FM. All with De-Clipper ON and 100% quality. All are with 2x1GB memory.
Cpu usage on slowest CPU is ~60% for one FM PC (asio win 30ms buffer) and no single problem with it.
Click to expand...
What are the processor speeds of your core2duos? And if it says it's 3.4ghz Dual Core, does that mean a pair of 3.4's or a pair of 1.7's that equal 3.4?
 
Processors are not rated via 'teaming'. The quoted speed is per core.

Keep in mind, unless you disable power management in the BIOS, the core will fluctuate up and down based on load. I prefer to run my processors at full throttle all the time, so I disable all of the power management features.
 
If you're "on the edge", the latest beta runs faster (see http://forums.stereotool.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4448&start=256 ). Please be careful with this version, I've enabled some very aggressive and potentially risky compiler optimizations which can cause 'undefined' behavior, it seems to work now but that may also depend on the settings that you use.

More testing is needed to determine if this version is stable so I can release it. But for the presets that I tested so far the output is identical to that of earlier versions, with a few % less CPU usage (biggest difference is in the clipper, where the CPU load dropped more than 10%).


About processor speeds: The clock speed doesn't tell you much about how fast the CPU really is - even a single i7 core at 1 GHz beats any Pentium 4. Please check this site: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php . Divide the measured speed by the number of cores to get an impression of how fast each core is.

To avoid hiccups it may help to turn hyperthreading off! Hyperthreading causes each core to behave as if it is in fact 2 cores, which if multiple threads or processes are running allows you to run at about 130% of the normal speed because some parts of the core are shared. This means however that each thread will run at about 65% of the speed without hyperthreading - and the core doesn't distinguish between high and low priority threads.
 
I have 7.03 working & even at this early point in the tweaking stage, this is a serious challenger to BBP. Good work Hans...please, carry on.
 
I asked this question on their forum and no one acknowledged it. Using the Marian Trace Alpha sound card in ASIO mode, the highest sample rate that works is 128K...if I go above that rate, the audio input and output both stop working. I'm getting good stereo at 128 and have used this card at 192K with BBP. Anyone have any ideas?
 
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