Stereo Tool 7.20

Currently, Stereo Tool Offers The Following Sound Processing Options:

* 10-band multiband compressor / limiter / clipper
If one song contains a lot of bass, and the next contains a lot of treble, this filter can make them sound equal. The volume is also kept at the same level. Many people have reported that music sounds better on their equipment when using the multiband compressor. The clippers reduce sudden bursts of loud sounds, without causing pumping or other artifacts.

* Stereo channel separation widening / narrowing
With this you can move the instruments to the center, or further away from each other. This can be used among others to let both speakers play all the sounds at the same level (so if you only hear one speaker, you don`t miss any sounds), and still keep a part of the stereo effect.

* Stereo phase shift widening / narrowing
Phase shift widening makes the stereo stand out more, which can make music sound more powerful. The instruments do not change position though.
Phase shift narrowing can be useful if you have a mono output channel: Sounds converted to mono using this filter sound just as full and powerful as the original stereo recording. This enables transforming any recording to mono without audiable artifacts, and achieving better quality encoding for low bitrate MP3 files.

* Phasing error (AZIMUTH) correction filter.
Old tape recordings and many cheap CDs often suffer from severe phasing errors. These phasing errors can make listening very unpleasant, and when the phasing error changes over time the sound can seem to "float" around you. It can also cause severe artifacts when converting the sound to mono or when playing it on a surround system. This filter automatically detects and repairs such errors.

* Center bass speaker filter
In some very rare circumstances, playing sounds using a single (center) bass speaker can result in less powerful and deformed bass sounds. This filter optimizes the bass for playback on a single bass speaker.

* Hiss reduction filter
Stereo Tool contains a powerful hiss reduction filter that has almost no effect on the rest of the sound. Especially useful when playing older songs or when a lot of volume compression is used.

* 3-level overshoot protection
If your goal is to make the sound loud, the 3-level overshoot protection filter can remove the remaining peaks after all the other processing has ended. By using 3 levels, any pumping artifacts that would normally be caused by such a filter are reduced as much as possible.

* Loudness filter
This filter can make sounds up to 5 dB louder, without causing higher amplitude peaks in the signal, with very little effect on the sound. Especially useful for radio stations that want to sound loud.

* Lowpass filter
Useful if you want to feed the Winamp output into an FM transmitter. This filter can completely remove any FM pilot tone interference. Also useful to hear how a recording would sound on an AM station etc.

* FM transmitter support
The following options can be used to prepare sounds for broadcasting on an FM transmitter.

o FM pre-emphasis filter
Prepares the sound to be sent through an FM transmitter, such that the pre-emphasis step in the transmitter does not cause clipping. The multiband compressor and overshoot filters take into account that the FM transmitter will pre-emphasize the sound.
For FM transmitters that do not contain a pre-emphasis filter, Stereo Tool can also output the pre-emphasized sounds.

o FM stereo encoder
The software FM stereo encoder enables broadcasting in stereo using a simple mono FM transmitter.

o FM RDS encoder
The software RDS encoder enables broadcasting RDS texts without using a hardware RDS encoder.

The last two steps don`t work on every sound card (details).

FM transmitter support have been tested with a very cheap (€ 15,= / $ 20,=) mono FM transmitter. When enabling Stereo Tool, the orignal mono, dull, soft and sometimes clipped sound becomes stereo and as clear and loud as that of the big commercial stations.
More sophisticated FM transmitters may contain filters that disrupt the signal generated by Stereo Tool (details).

* Channel delay filter
Play back one channel with a small delay to create a fake stereo effect.

Software OS: Windows 98/Me

Distribution:Free to try

Download size:0.67MB

Instant FileName:stereo_tool_standalone_installer.exe

Renewed:May 13, 2013

Statistics counter:615 / 12 / 4 - DoDownload made 8.04 MB download traffic in the current month and 412.05 MB overall

Cost: free

System specs:Winamp

stereo_tool_standalone_installer.exe file was thoroughly tested by our system on Nov 11, 2012 by the three antivirus programs and passed. Is absolutely clean, enjoy!
This archive is 100% safe to download and install.
Have a look at the full Stereo Tool 7.20 antivirus scan reports.

User's rating:

Currently 3.20/5
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History updates (Complete changelogs since the listing on this site)

7.20 [05-13-13]

FM: Added composite clipper!

FM: Added SSB (Single Side Band) mode. (Requires composite clipper.)

FM: Added Multipath clipper. (Experimental! Requires composite clipper.)

Loudness: Improved Airy Highs. Highs now sound crisper and less 'tonal'.

Loudness: Rewrite clipper to reduce CPU load (Strictness can be set lower to give similar results).

Added Phase equalizer.

Updated and added many presets.

2013/03/25 v7.10

User interface: 5 modes ranging from "Simple" to "Extreme Tweaker". "Basic" should be good for most people.

Greatly reduced CPU load of almost all filters. With identical settings, the CPU load is typically 12% reduced.

Singleband compressor completely redesigned.
Keywords: Attack, release, release hold, ratio, feed forward vs feedback, lookahead, burst protection.

Multiband compressor completely redesigned: Configurable number of bands; monitoring individual bands, median display.

Added 'graphics' equalizer.

AGC: Added side chain.

AGC: Added singleband compressor after AGC.

AGC: Smoothed Band 1 to band 2 coupling.

AGC should work better if declipper or noise gate is activated.

Extra lowpass filter before processing to fix problems with songs with excessive very high frequency content.
Set 0.25 kHz above actual LPF freq, but never below 16 kHz.

Loudness: Improved delayed bass clipping protection to cause less distortion.

Provision to discard buffer after a certain period of inactivity added for VST plugin.

FM: SCA was missing since version 7.00, added again.

Declipper: Reduced artifacts when using declipper in combination with non-phase linear highpass filter.

Declipper: Changed default settings based on input from Jesse Graham.

Sound cards: 'Synchronize to output' now also works with Normal output.

User interface: Made 6 dB lines in meters more prominent.

Bug fix: Disabled mouse hold behavior for all widgets except sliders.

Updated and added many presets.

2013/01/08 v7.03

Loudness: Added delayed bass clipping for better punch.

Loudness: Fixed Bass Shape artifacts, and now also works on higher frequencies.

Loudness: Added option to dynamically switch off distorted mids/highs for tones.

RDS: Better special character display in GUI.

Updated presets.

2013/01/03 v7.02

Added 5.1 and 7.1 audio support (channels are declipped, highpass and lowpass filtered and clipped, nothing else yet).

Loudness: Improved bass clipper, better punch and warmer sound with more mid-bass. (old vs new)

Loudness: Removed volume drop between 2.8 and 3 kHz.

RDS: Added convertor from Windows-1252 to RDS characters to support special characters.

Installer made smaller by moving non-SSE2 version to a separate installer. Now below 1 MB again :)

Bug fix: Drawing issue in 7.00 and 7.01 pull-down menu's without scroll bar when using mouse wheel.

Bug fix: Left and right channels were sometimes swapped when loading a preset in 7.01.

Bug fix: Stokkemask clipper was broken in 7.01.

Carbon Coder plugin now supports R128 normalization for 5.1 and 7.1 audio.

Added some presets.

2012/12/17 v7.01

Solved several VST GUI issues in several VST hosts.

Made VST window a bit bigger.

On loading built-in presets, most FM and sound card settings are no longer reset.

Volume increase on preset reload should not occur anymore, although I'm still getting reports that it does. But at least one cause is solved.

Added sound card restart button, was missing in version 7.00.

Bug fix: GUI unresponsive at very high CPU loads when you click right of text in text box.

Bug fix: BS412 acted weird with FM sound card enabled, pre-emphasize output disabled at low input sample rates.

Updated presets.

2012/12/12 v7.00

Total GUI redesign. Interface dynamically adapts to screen size and is nearly touch screen ready (keyboard needed).

Added new version alerts and specific warnings which unregistered functions are in use.

Last selected preset name visible after restart.

Added web interface (no access protections yet).

Completely rewritten parameter handling code; solved bugs and reduced the chance of introducing new ones.

Added ability to reset, load and save parts of presets.

Added input sound card Gain control.

FM transmitter audio synchronization added to synchronize streaming audio at multiple transmnitter sites (experimental).

Loudness: Changed bass clipper behavior, flatter frequency response; sounds a bit warmer.

Loudness: Bass clipping filter bug fixes: Whistle artifacts gone, 'knock-on-wood' artifacts reduced.

Loudness: Airy Highs turned off if there are very little highs (reduces crackling sound that sometimes occurs).

Declipper: Reduced 'clicking' artifact in reconstructed audio.

Declipper: Improved splitting load over 2 cores.

FM test tones: Added Bessel null frequencies and "smooth square wave" (sounds less loud) test tone mode.

Removed a number of memory allocations/frees that occurred during processing.

Added a lot of presets.

Natural Dynamics is available in the GUI again, if you enable it explicitly in the INI file.

2012/08/02 v6.32

Added sound card input and output tilt adjustment (2nd order).

Loudness: Changed clipper distortion masking model, giving less distortion at nearly the same highs level.

Loudness: Added "Airy highs", makes highs sound both louder and more natural (less restrained).

Loudness: Removed bugs that caused hole punching by loud highs.

Loudness: Highs Priority no longer causes volume drops caused by loud highs.

Loudness: Redesigned de-esser for pre-emphasized sound.

Bass sensitivity: If there are both mids and highs, the drop is a bit less strong than before.

Bass sensitivity: Determining more precisely when the clip is needed.

BS412: Added max deviation (+/- 75 kHz) display.

BS412: Added headroom slider. Determines margin for error to avoid sudden volume drops.

BS412: Max deviation can be lowered to create denser sound and protect against sound card problems.

BS412: Faster rise after fast drop for louder end result.

GUI: Added displays so you can see what is being sent out to the sound card (including calibrations).

GUI: Cleaned up Loudness panel (removed some things that are no longer needed).

Bug fix: Latency 512 didn't work properly.

Bug fix: Fixed GUI issue where singleband compressor settings were not always correctly loaded.

Bug fix: AXIA input sound card loading issue.

Added Carbon Coder plugin with multi-pass R128 support.

2012/06/10 v6.31

AGC: Added a slider to protect against volume drops for loud voices.

Loudness: Improved overall filtering (removed post ringing) at latency 4096, sound is cleaner in many ways (especially bass). Added some new controls for configuring it ("Time Spread")

Loudness: Advanced Bass Distortion Protection: Improved bass clipper. Bass is now louder and clipped tighter

Loudness: Added bass shaping. Adds harmonics to very low frequencies to make them sound louder

Loudness: Allow turning highs intermodulation distortion off

Loudness: Added "highs priority" slider, increasing this reduces high frequency intermodulation distortion but may cause some drops in other frequencies

Loudness: Asymmetric bass reduction should not go below dynamic threshold

Loudness: Reduced strictness, the high precision wasn't really useful

Loudness: Split 'sensitivity' for bass clipper: Can now be configured separately for mids and highs. Result: more constant and higher bass level

Loudness: Turned off old bass protection mechanisms in default settings. Caused artifacts, no longer needed

Loudness: Reduced clipping strictness for mid-bass frequencies (lower CPU load)

Loudness: Increased de-esser range, and it can be turned off now

Loudness: Simplified clipping algorithm

Stereo Boost disabled for lowest frequencies (below approx. 140 Hz)

BS412 limiter: Show a warning and info when BS412 is enabled

BS412 limiter: Fixed drops issue. Very brief drops can still occur but they are usually hardly noticeable

BS412 limiter: Changed default values for more constant sound level

Added and updated many presets

Split values for Singleband, Singleband AGC style and BS412

Bug fix: Stereo Image was broken for latency 512

Bug fix: Icon now visible in stand alone version

Bug fix: Stokkemask clipper didn't work at latency 512.

2012/04/11 v6.30

Major code cleanup and restructuring

Added BS412 limiter

Added Stokkemask clipper

Improved scope display (triggered)

Improved low latency (6 ms) monitoring output in Stand Alone version

Improved overall quality by changing the processing window shape for ALL filters

Added support for cheaper limited Winamp/DSP declipper license

Reduced CPU load when playing pure silence

AGC: Improved handling of sudden loud bursts

Loudness: Improved protection of mids against loud highs, which were causing drops ("holes") in the sound.

Loudness: Changed the bass protection shape

Loudness: Added protection against distortion caused by asymmetric bass sounds

Loudness: Slightly better protection of frequencies below 700 Hz against very loud bass

Loudness: Bass protection and de-esser levels were calculated incorrectly if Final Clipper was enabled with a volume other than 1.00

BS412 limiter now also works with 'Pre-emphasize output' disabled.

Phase rotator: Improved behavior and display

Bass AGC: Now works on a much smaller frequency range so it only affects really deep bass sounds

Bug fix: Changed default values for the "Allow more distortion" sliders in the VST version

Bug fix for Omnia 9: RDS A/B flag works properly now, and if you change the RadioText and there was no sequence of texts there the new text will start to be broadcast immediately

Bug fix: Forcibly remove DC offset in Loudness did not always work properly

Slightly reduced Loudness CPU load, but the new highs protection adds a lot more if it's enabled

2011/12/12 v6.21

Added multicore support for Declipper and Loudness. Throughput is now 38% higher in presets that use both.

Loudness: Fixed a bug in the non-SSE2 version.

Declipper: Fixed memory bug in clipping detection. This may have lead to weird issues.

Improved performance when closing/minimizing Stereo Tool if the virus scanner NOD32 is used.

Bug fix: Loudness de-esser setting was not saved in VST plugin.

Bug fix: Loudness values above 3.00 were not loaded correctly in VST plugin.

Bug fix: TA button in main window did not work.

Changed a value in Bojcha's Neodymium preset.

There is now also a separate declipper program! See www.perfectdeclipper.com. 2011/10/25 v6.20

Added declipper filter

Loudness: Completely redesigned for more consistency, better transients, louder output and greatly improved highs. Punch is no longer needed.

Loudness: Improved vibrating voices filter caused by loud bass.

Loudness: New filter that removes highs distortion caused by loud bass, now allows bass levels upto 100% without (much) distortion in the highs.

Loudness: New filter that detects when highs cause volume drops in the rest of the sound, and briefly lowers the highs level.

Loudness: Added oversampling checkbox for streaming and mastering: This makes sure that no clipping will occur if the audio is upsampled afterwards.

Loudness: Added separate dirty bass / mids / highs sliders for better bass control and 'artistic' effects.

AGC: Redesigned to handle different input levels much better.

AGC: Enabled ITU-1770 support (for bass and head separately).

AGC: Added stereo separation control.

AGC: Added start level for mastering.

AGC: Separate "Remove remaining peaks" settings for lows and mid-highs.

AGC: Added "Force level below" slider for improved peak control. Forces the AGC level down faster if the difference gets too big.

Added Bass AGC filter to reduce excessive bass sounds.

Multiband: Added voice protection settings to better cope with loud vocals in music.

Multiband: Allow changing band frequencies (only via STS file).

Multiband: Added control of link between bands 1 and 2.

Pre-emphasis: Moved to end of processing, just before clipping.

Highpass filter: Improved filtering to reach a cleaner output.

Highpass filter: Added "order" setting for non-phase linear filter.

Improved audio processing window shape to reduce artifact levels.

Improved pre-ringing filtering to avoid artifacts that occurred before.

Added SCA output channels (SCA1 works, SCA2 is problematic due to the required frequency range).

Support added for multiple Stereo Tool installations with different settings per installed version (requested by Jazler).

Added registration to command line version.

Bug fix: Fixed "Test right channel" in "FM Transmitter Calibration" (broken in version 6.10).

Bug fix: FM Calibration frequencies 23-57 kHz were not at the correct frequencies.

Bug fix: Fixed left/right channel swap that could occur in the stand alone version.

Bug fix: AGC could hang in some cases when enabling more bands. Fixed.

Bug fix: Phase rotation did not sound good at low latencies in version 6.10.

Bug fix: Time zone in RDS was wrong.

GUI improvement: Made waveform background black.

RDS: Adjusted behavior if no special characters (<, >, |, ||) are used: Word wrap with centering is selected by default. This was done for the Omnia 9 that uses the Stereo Tool RDS encoder; the behavior is now identical for both systems.

RDS: Ignoring trailing spaces for word wrap.

Added a lot of presets.

Added interface for blind users. Set environment variable STBLIND to 1 or YES.

2011/02/10 v6.10 Reduced latency:

Latency: ASIO: Add processing priority control to enable very low sound card latency (~ 1-3 ms) without hiccups; total latency of ~ 16 ms possible.

Latency: Upsampling (for FM) and downsampling (for high input sampling frequencies) no longer causes extra latency.

Latency: Reduced Composite Limiter latency from 1.7 ms to 0.9 ms at latencies 512 and 1024. Some (very small) effect on audio.

Latency: Found a bug that caused hiccups in audio processing, fixed it. Results in lower possible latency.

Latency: Pushing data to the output before the processing instead of afterwards to reduce latency.

Improved audio quality at low latencies:

Dynamically adjusting audio processing windows at low latencies to better match the type of audio that comes in.

Dynamically adjusting clipping effectiveness to avoid clipping 'too much' in certain conditions, depending on audio processing window and audio content. This protects soft highs against horrible vibration caused by bass sounds at latency 512 and (less) 1024.

Upsampling and downsampling: Far less artifacts caused, far cleaner output signal.

Created alternative Phase Rotation filter for low latencies (512, 1024).

Multiband: Added an 'artifact protection' step that limits the maximum difference in reduction between adjacent bands, if they cause too much (configurable) artifacts.

Multiband: Adapted frequency bands and band content to make Multiband at latency 512 sound as much as possible as higher latencies.

Loudness: Disabled Improved Bass Distortion Protection filter for latency 512 because it caused distortion.

Loudness: Fixed vibrations caused by Very deep bass distortion protection at latency 512 and 1024. Now also enabled for latency 512.

Hard Limit: Fixed (minor) artifacts in upsampled audio.

Bass Boost: Reduced artifacts at latency 512. Note: Using a less steep filter (bigger difference between frequencies) helps!

Other changes:

Loudness: Improved Punch filter: Now causes far less artifacts than before. But it is less effective for soft sounds.

Loudness: Removed distortion caused by Punch.

Bass Boost: Removed distortion.

Quality and Latency are now part of presets, and STS files.

Bug fix: Loading and saving Noise levels in VST version resulted in incorrect behavior.

Bug fix: Displayed Multiband output levels were unreliable at low latencies, especially clipping.

Bug fix: For high input sample rates, now removing very high frequencies that cause issues with Hard Limit.

ASIO: Added ASIO Configure button, which allows setting ASIO parameters such as ASIO buffer granularity.

ASIO: Changed buffer size configuration to match whole ASIO grains.

Added and updated a number of presets.

2010/12/17 v6.00

Noise gate: Fixed crackling sounds in first band.

Added FM Hiss filter. Removes FM hiss from input signal, useful for re-transmitting FM signals.

AGC: Added 'Based on volume before Pre Amp' checkbox to make it easier to create presets with consistent behavior at different Pre Amp settings.

AGC bug fix: Behavior was different at different input sample rates.

AGC: Lock band 1 to band 2; if the bass is loud but not extremely loud it is not lowered. This avoids sound changes caused by the AGC, and results in a warmer, more natural sound.

Multiband: Added 'Flat frequency response' mode which works much better.

Multiband: Added display of the median amplification, useful for configuring Multiband settings.

Singleband: Added 'AGC style' mode. Doesn't seem too useful though.

Final Limiter: "DIFF" mode fixed.

Final limiter is now automatically bypassed when Loudness is used (improves audio quality and reduces CPU usage).

Loudness: Added filters to protect highs against loud bass sounds. The bass level can now be set much higher without causing distortion, even if Punch is used.

Loudness: Added 'maximum mirror reflection' to make the sound more natural (less metalic) and louder.

Loudness: Fixed 'Improved loudness distortion protection' artifacts.

Loudness: Fixed 'Very deep bass distortion protection' artifacts.

Loudness: Removed 'Allow louder lows' slider (no longer needed).

Loudness: De-esser: Replaced 'Allow louder highs' by an AGC.

Loudness: Added a slider to increase the dynamics of the output (by allowing some more harmonic distortion).

Loudness: Added a filter to protect certain sounds (female voices) against vibrating.

Loudness: Fixed dynamic Loudness input level behavior of Punch

Hard Limit: Added an extra slower Hard Limit phase; volume comes up slower when the peaks are really loud.

Added 'Lossy Compression (MP3/AAC/OGG/...) output optimization' filter for webradio stations. See this image for a display of the effect of different pre-emphasis values on 128 kbit/s MP3 files; this image displays a frequency analysis (high frequency content means clipping), again 128 kbit/s MP3, Post Amp at 90%.

FM Output: Repaired the lowpass filter which sometimes caused artifacts.

VST plugin notifies host of the delay.

VST plugin: Bypass mode fixed.

VST plugin: Removed separate window border, now loading inside host window.

VST plugin now also works in mAirList.

Improved handling of hiccups in the stand alone version when the CPU load gets very high.

Presets: Made Generic and Web Radio presets sound much closer to the sound of modern CDs.

Presets: Made FM presets sound much closer to that of popular hardware processors (more bass and highs, among others).

Presets: Added new user presets, removed some obsolete ones.

Command line version: Files larger than 2 GB can be processed now.

Linux version added! Both a standard command line version and one with a GUI.

Other versions : 7.10 7.03 7.02 7.01 7.00 6.32 6.31 6.30 6.21 6.20 6.10 6.00 5.02 5.01 5.00 4.22

v7.10 [04-05-13]