Stereo Tool

I don't mean closing ST - just the Stereo window! Because that tells me if:
1. the drawing of this slider fails completely, or
2. the slider is still being drawn, but always with the same value, or
3. the slider is being drawn when the window is refreshed, with a new value, but the value is not updated until it's forced by re-creating the window (after closing/opening THAT SINGLE window again)

Update coming up with the following changes:
- Error in calculation pre-ringing removal level if pre-emphasis or multiband equalizer is used fixed
- Made performance more reliable (previously there was a 7% jump, now only 2-3% remains)

It turns out that the pre-ringing removal DID indeed remove part of the effect of the pre-emphasis!


Edit: Sound quality doesn't seem to have deteriorated (no distortion etc.) despite the increased highs level. So there's no need to change the settings as I wrote here earlier. Basically you'll get more highs almost for free!

Original text:
The bad news is that this means that the sound has changed now it fixed - and a lot too (for high Loudness values, the amount of highs is 2 dB higher, which must have an effect on the audio quality).

To get a similar output with this new version as before, set the equalizer slider of the last band to 80% of its original value (so if it's set to 1.00, set it to 0.80 with this new version to get - roughly - the same result).

I say 'roughly' because the effect is not identical; for some sounds this results in 1 dB softer highs, for others in 1 dB louder highs. But in general this should give - roughly - the same highs level.


Of course if you like the louder highs, just leave things as they are.


I'm building the new version again now (previously I made a small mistake) - there's already an improved version online now (BETA3A) but I'll post the real version in an hour.

Uploaded as BETA3A

Bojcha, some questions w.r.t. your request: "- Add "LINK" checkbox for "phase differences" in "Calibrate FM transmitter..." (20Hz-10240Hz), [someone call it TILT] "

- Do you really mean a constant phase for ALL frequencies??? When/why is that useful?
- Why only 20-10240 Hz? I would expect that you need it for ALL frequencies?

StereoBoost meter:
When meter stops .. nothing can make it to work again...
Only Restart of ST.

Good question, i suppose logicaly should be for all freq actually.
That should be for fixing output "tilt" from soundcard. So, i gues if 40Hz is not in phase from soundcard .. then 10kHz and 40kHz are not in phase too.

So, does it get displayed with the same value or do you see nothing if you close and open the window again?
I would find that very surprising. For example, a 'tilt' of 90 degrees would mean that all sounds start a bit later. For a 1000 Hz tone that would be 1/4000th of a second, for a 10 Hz tone that would be 1/40th of a second etc. And nothing should happen before that.

Now I know very little about electronics, but AFAIK most components are frequency dependent. For example a condenser (condensator?) would have a completely different effect on very low than on very high frequencies. The same is true for coils etc.

Now I can imagine that there is an "expected" form of the type of phase effects that occur, that can be corrected in software. But to implement that (instead of the huge array of separate sliders that I currently have) I would need to know the type of phase effect.

Bojcha, have you calibrated your sound card and found that you need to set all phase sliders to a similar value?

For precise tuning i can only set for tones from 0-500,600Hz .. till there i can see "squere tone" on scope...
for other (higher frequencies) i am not shure is this actually needed...
Lows are the most affected by this.

- 4096 mode is broken for me in the latest beta3a, have to go back to 2048 (or else the good old quick stutter problem occurs, no buffer issues).
- Also, RDS is not working. But not sure if that's a problem with my sound drivers. Either way i closed down stereo tool, installed beta3a, and fired it up again, and now there's no rds display.

hmm .. yes, RDS looks strange. i still don't know is it working, but it looks wrong in spectrum analyzer. (all modes)

edit:
FM transmitter calibration is broken, mostly ion 4096 mode.

Ok - I made a performance improvement by allocating memory differently. Apparently, differently = wrong.

Will fix it later tonight.


Edit: Found it. I'm working on a few other issues right now, when those are finished also I'll build a new version and post it.