Tilt control

[bogi]

I tested with only one 192k track. Both the original and the converted one have the same length 3:14. Yesterday I didn't observe such a thing, but I also didn't listen to whole tracks. Now I found one crackle (not very loud but it is here) at 1:11 which doesn't occur in the original track. The rest was free of crackles or pops.

 

On the end I will be using the Foobar method described above, because it can be is easily included into my solution without the need for MrsWatson.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Thanks.

I thought I’d try mrswatson with sTilt. Listening through a whole track now with no snap, crackle or pop problems at all. And the processed track is also the same length as the original. Perhaps mrswatson chokes a bit on the complexity of the TDR Slick EQ Ge plug-in. Just guessing.

 

sTilt does one thing only; tilt!

 

A shame, because I think TDR sounds a little better.

 

Will try also with Sweetone, if I can figure out how to activate the license. I worry though that it also might choke mrswatson with its added complexity and might colour the sound in unwanted ways.

 

With sTilt though, I’m confident that I now have a programable solution.

 

 

 

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I've discovered that MrsWatson cannot handle bit depths of greater than 16. I can process 96khz, 192khz files; etc. through sTilt using MrsWatson programmatically, I must first use SoX to reduce the bit depth to 16. The necessary dither is also applied by SoX.

 

So this is a limitation and I've sent Teragon audio a message about it.

 

I'm still quite happy though using MrsWatson with sTilt.

 

Although TDR Slick eq or Sweetone may sound slightly better through the usual VST hosts I use (Audirvana, J River), I'm quite happy with the result of Tilt correction using sTilt.

 

I get the snap crack and pop problems when using anything other than sTilt through MrsWatson. These problems never occur with sTilt.

[copy_of_a]

 

On 9/20/2020 at 3:01 PM, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Will try also with Sweetone, if I can figure out how to activate the license. I worry though that it also might choke mrswatson with its added complexity and might colour the sound in unwanted ways.

With the preamp simulation disabled Sweetone doesn't introduce colour by adding harmonics / distortion or so.

The correction curves are not "straight" but slightly shaped. Therefore it's not really a "Tilt" in a strict sense but a musical approach to "brighten" or "darken" music. It sounds extremely "natural" or "organic" ( so the opposite of "processed" or "EQed") or however you would be the most appropriate term ...

 

1 hour ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

I get the snap crack and pop problems when using anything other than sTilt through MrsWatson. These problems never occur with sTilt.

Okay. This is clearly an issue with MrsWatson. Artefacts shouldn't occur for sure.

How much db do you adjust Slick M to darken too sharp/bright masters?

I'll send you a dirac impluse (192kHz/24bit WAV) with the respective correction to try it out in HQPlayer so that you get an idea of it without artefacts. Could of course do the same with Sweetone if you are interessted ...

 

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Yes, definitely interested. Thanks. I will be using Sweetone and Slick with Audirvana and J River to get a better feel for what they can do.

 

I take it Sweetone's pre-amp is off when the red light shows red rather than pinkish. Is that right? Otherwise I may have saved my preset with the pre-amp on 😅

 

I brought licenses for both.

 

I'm using about 7 mins before or after the 12 O'clock mark on the dials.

 

I agree the issues are with MrsWatson.

[copy_of_a]

17 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

I'm using about 7 mins before or after the 12 O'clock mark on the dials.

That's funny :-)

Can't you just read the numbers of the gain control of the tilt filter?

Anyway, I've set both to -0.6db.

Due to the different shape of the curves there will be a difference in perceived loudness.

Have fun!

slickm_06db_dark.wav sweetone_06db_dark.wav

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Just got into the clockface habit I guess. Well actually I don't use these plug-ins much, so only just realized I don't have to use the pretty GUI amplifier. I can use a text version with basic sliders. So much easier to apply consistent values.

 

Thanks for the files.

[GregWormald]

I haven't been able to figure out how to use sTilt with my favourite player, Amarra Luxe, but it did spur me to investigating what I can do with AL's built in equaliser. I'm liking the results with some of my recordings, despite AL's quirks/bugs.

[copy_of_a]

12 hours ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

I take it Sweetone's pre-amp is off when the red light shows red rather than pinkish. Is that right? Otherwise I may have saved my preset with the pre-amp on 😅

Switch Up = On

Switch down = Off

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

2 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

Switch Up = On

Switch down = Off

I'm a brit so I sometimes get confused as "Down" is usually on in Britain 🤪

[copy_of_a]

56 minutes ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

I'm a brit so I sometimes get confused as "Down" is usually on in Britain 🤪

😁

[bogi]

19 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

I'll send you a dirac impluse (192kHz/24bit WAV) with the respective correction to try it out in HQPlayer so that you get an idea of it without artefacts. Could of course do the same with Sweetone if you are interessted ...

 

I am not enough familiar with the IR and convolution topics, but on Sunday I attempted to find a tool, which would allow to save something as you called "dirac impulse" (I searched for IR) from any VST plugin so the WAV response file could be then used in HQPlayer. Is there a free or at least inexpensive tool which could I use for that purpose? Is such a thing somewhere enough easily explained so one average software engineer without special audio mixing/mastering know how could understand it? On Sunday I did web search and went through many webpages, but I was not able to find something I could use. Maybe I just didn't know what exactly to ask Google.

[bogi]

17 hours ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

I can use a text version with basic sliders. So much easier to apply consistent values.

 

Now I have booted my work OS I'm using for home office so I cannot check it ... please how to switch to that text mode? :o) I will try it at evening with my home OS.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

5 minutes ago, bogi said:

 

Now I have booted my work OS I'm using for home office so I cannot check it ... please how to switch to that text mode? :o) I will try it at evening with my home OS.

Using Audacity choose “Options” from the same “Hamburger” menu within the Plug-in’s interface that you export prefixs from.

 

The resulting window has an option to disable the GUI interface. Then reload the plugin or restart Audacity. The next time you access the plug-in it should just consist of basic gui elements, such as text with slider controls, instread of the pretty image of a piece of Audio gear.

 

I don’t know if this is true of all plug-ins. It worked for Sweetone.

[copy_of_a]

Found this little piece about the Quad 34 on Stereophile:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/quad-34-preamplifier

 

The shape of the tilt curve is very similar to that of Sweetone:

 

Quad 34:

Sweetone:

 

[copy_of_a]

1 hour ago, bogi said:

Is there a free or at least inexpensive tool which could I use for that purpose?

unfortunately I can't recommend any inexpensive software ... and no sofwtare at all for Windows.

I mostly use iZotope RX ... but if your only purpose is to create IR files it's sure way too expensive.

"Audacity" is a free audio processor that is supposed to also load audio plugins ... but I only heard of it, never used it so I'm not sure if it's what your looking for.

This also looks like something you might try out, but again I'm not familar with it: https://www.wavosaur.com

 

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

45 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

Found this little piece about the Quad 34 on Stereophile:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/quad-34-preamplifier

 

The shape of the tilt curve is very similar to that of Sweetone:

 

Quad 34:

Sweetone:

 

Thanks for posting that. Of course you can alter the center frequency with these plug-ins. Something I don't believe you could do with the Quad pre-amps.

[bogi]

6 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

unfortunately I can't recommend any inexpensive software ... and no sofwtare at all for Windows.

I mostly use iZotope RX ... but if your only purpose is to create IR files it's sure way too expensive.

"Audacity" is a free audio processor that is supposed to also load audio plugins ... but I only heard of it, never used it so I'm not sure if it's what your looking for.

This also looks like something you might try out, but again I'm not familar with it: https://www.wavosaur.com

 

Thanks! I am looking to understand the principle: I need to download a test signal, play it through VST plugin and record output as WAV. Then maybe yet some editing of the recorded signal.

 

The test signal can be sine sweep or Dirac Pulse (a short digital click which produces sound at all frequencies at the same level). It seems sine wave produces better result. If it is sine wave then to get impulse response the recorded WAV file needs to be "deconvolved against a reference of the original signal".

Is it bad idea to use MrsWatson with the test tone as input and save the result as WAV?
Geoff wrote that MrsWatson is limited to 16bit processing but my out.wav file from the above example is 192k/24bit as the input was.

Alternatively, there is a guide using Audacity and MPC: https://medium.com/@jaakkopasanen/recording-impulse-responses-digitally-405e3acbde9a

 

For the sine sweep case I found Voxengo Deconvolver. The free version should suit for the purpose, the product page says: Demo version does not support batch processing and is limited to 3 deconvolution operations per program's session. https://www.voxengo.com/product/deconvolver/
Here I found a chapter "Generate IR with Voxengo Deconvolver" https://www.heamusic.com/Documents/Sound/IR_Creation.html

 

What's your opinion? Is it bad idea to use these tools? Did I miss something important?

[bogi]

7 hours ago, Geoffrey Armstrong said:

Using Audacity choose “Options” from the same “Hamburger” menu within the Plug-in’s interface that you export prefixs from.

 

The resulting window has an option to disable the GUI interface. Then reload the plugin or restart Audacity. The next time you access the plug-in it should just consist of basic gui elements, such as text with slider controls, instread of the pretty image of a piece of Audio gear.

 

I don’t know if this is true of all plug-ins. It worked for Sweetone.

Thanks! Probably it works for all plugins, or it is de facto a standard. I tried SlickEQ GE and it worked.

[bogi]

On Windows, one can install a VST plugin into Foobar2000, configure a Converter preset to use that VST plugin and run Converter on sine sweep test tone to generate output WAV. That's in principle equivalent to MrsWatson command line usage. Foobar2000 allows to do that from command line too.

The same can be done in JRiver MC too. In both cases we are sure that sample rate and bit depth is not restricted.

[bogi]

Why to do that? Because I have also DSD source content and VST plugins are not applicable to it. But impulse responses can be used in HQPlayer with DSD content too.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

I don't know if it works for all plug-ins. I only tried it with Slick and Sweetone too. Also, I couldn't get it to work from within Audirvana; only Audacity.

 

Sweetone through J River on Windows gave me the same dreaded latency echo. Again on Mac through Audirvana this was much less of an issue.

 

I have to say that MrsWatson, for all her limitations of Snap,Crackle and pop with Slick and Sweetone (but not with sTilt), she handles latency well on Mac and Windows. Undetectable to my ears so far.

 

I'm only guessing; but whether or not latency is an issue does seem to be a combination of how well the host copes, coupled with the OS and the simplicity of MrsWatson (being command line only) must be helping here I think.

 

 

 

 

[bogi]

On Saturday I tried TDR SlickEQ in Foobar Converter and it worked without the unwanted echo. I didn't try JRiver with that one.

[Geoffrey Armstrong]

Just found this on Steve Hoffman:

 

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/general-parametric-equalizer-setting-to-tame-bright-cds.981009/#post-24579588

[bogi]

On 9/22/2020 at 6:59 PM, copy_of_a said:

That's funny :-)

Can't you just read the numbers of the gain control of the tilt filter?

Anyway, I've set both to -0.6db.

Due to the different shape of the curves there will be a difference in perceived loudness.

Have fun!

slickm_06db_dark.wav 1.65 MB · 3 downloads sweetone_06db_dark.wav 1.65 MB · 2 downloads

Thanks! I tried them in HQPlayer with DSD content and they worked. I like the bit warmer touch of Sweetone.