New Stereo 2 Surround Plugin

[Lito]

Anyone saw this new plugin to make the stereo to 5.1 upmix?
What do think - is it worth €50 ?

Find a demo @ www.starplugs.com

+++02-11-2005++
New Plugins added to the working on...
----------------------------------------------------
+++30-09-2005+++
Today we have released the Starplugs 2-2-SiX.
+++ Stereo to 5.1 Surround upmixer +++
REAL Surround calculation
+ no cheap reverbs
+ no simple delays
+ no boring phase shifting

happy testing!!

Lito

[ursamtl]

I tried the 2-2-Six demo recently and thought it sounded ok. Overall, I'd say the plugin is promising, but there are some issues toi be resolved. Plus, the price is steep for something developed with Synthedit!

I put together a Plogue Bidule layout with both it and V.I. When I crossfaded between the two, I noticed very little difference. 2-2-Six seemed to have a slightly louder output than V.I. When I added a 3dB gain to V.I, they were hard to tell apart. However, I hooked up a monitor plugin called RMS Buddy and checked the outputs for both 2-2-Six and V.I for clipping (going above 0dB). V.I stayed at 0dB (this was without the 3dB gain boost I mentioned above) whereas 2-2-Six reached about +2-2.5dB, which for digital files is problematic! If you do use it, make sure you turn down its Master fader to about -3dB to be safe and put a limiter on its outputs as I did with V.I in the Plogue Bidule layouts I created for it to prevent momentary transient peaks from clipping.

By the way, the comparison tests were with V.I's Movie Mode switch turned off. 2-2-Six doesn't have such a mode so I didn't think using it would be a fair comparison. It is possible to vary the output using the 2-2-Six "calibration" controls. The manual states that these provide control of the width of front and rear images, but in my experience, the front one simply adds or subtracts the amount of mono or mid signal to the stereo field. I compared this to V.I's width correction control and found that it's similar in effect but with the control going in the opposite direction. In other words, turn it up and you narrow the stereo image, turn it down and you widen it. The rear "calibration" control didn't do much of anything in my tests. I tried isolating the rears to see if that would make the control's effect more apparent, but it was minimal.

The user interface is also interesting, although a bit big for my tastes (it would fill nearly half a 1024x768 screen!). The controls are good and the sliders only suffer a little bit from the inaccuracy between mouse movement and onscreen display, that's present with the standard Synthedit controls. The interface doesn't match the manual, however. The explanation of the controls is for the wrong plugin and includes types of controls not found on 2-2-Six at all!

I know I'll come across sounding as if I'm biased, but I'll still say that you can save yourself €50 and download V.I for free! I'm not saying there's anything terribly wrong with 2-2-Six--all in all, it's not a bad plugin (be careful with the output levels). I just don't see paying that much for a plugin. If whoever wrote it sat down and programmed the plugin from scratch then perhaps such a price would be justified, but he or she used Synthedit just as I did for V.I. Since the author of Synthedit has done most of the hard work and all a user of the program has to do is connect some modules together and choose "Save as VST" from a menu, it seems a bit high priced. $5 or 10 maybe, but not the equivalent of $60. The license for Synthedit is only $50 and that's only to enable some advanced features. The basic program can be used for free! Several people have told me I was crazy to give V.I away for nothing given how good it sounds but as I said, I just sat down with Synthedit, connected some stuff together after experimenting and researching surround sound on the web, and then clicked a menu choice. Yes, the graphics took a bit of time, but it was fun. I might put a Donationware button on a web site someday, but I'd never start charging more than $50US unless I put a lot of effort into it.

Regards,
Steve.

[f@chance]

Steve,

You are a real asset to this community, thanks for all your hard efforts. It did not amaze me that the world of DLP II Upmix is mushrooming. People like the DD 5.1 sound and editors of What Sound & Vision as well as Home Cinema Choice here in the UK have stated the way to watch a TV series is wait until it comes out on a box set and then watch it in excellent video quality & DD 5.1 sound. Also with the increasing popularity of HDTV & its DD 5.1 sound people demand it, thus companies will start releasing DLP II DD 5.1 upmix solutions.

End effect is money down the drain. I have a Nero DD 5.1 upmix plugin sitting here and used it once or twice after which I went with your V.I. but even Nero's plugin did not cost €50.

Please continue your valuable contributions to the doom9 community.

[j_olson]

The DVD I created using V.I, with a stereo satellite broadcast as source, came out just fine :) So I for one believe those 50$ can be saved.

[ursamtl]

@f@chance:

Thanks for the kind words. sorry to hear you wasted some money on a useless plugin. You're right. Stereo-to-surround conversions have become "hip" right now. With listenable 5.1 systems available to the masses in Walmart and other such stores, a lot of people have 5.1 capability. Combine that with the mass acceptance of DVDs and you have a huge potential market. I guess it comes down to different preferences as well. To some people, "surround" simply means audio coming out of all six speakers. For example, a bootleg DVD of a 1979 Led Zeppelin concert in the UK surfaced this summer with alleged "5.1" sound. All the bootleggers really did was take the mono sound and run it through five channels! I even found another freeware VST surround plugin this week called "Spatializer." When I tried it out, the plugin only had one input. The result was the same as the Zeppelin DVD, just the same sound coming out of all speakers. The plugin featured three controls, but none of them seemed to do anything! Fortunately, this one was freeware so no one was losing any money.

Regards,
Steve.

[ursamtl]

The DVD I created using V.I, with a stereo satellite broadcast as source, came out just fine :) So I for one believe those 50$ can be saved.

I'm glad your DVD turned out well! Tell me, which encoding software did you use? How about the V.I settings you used, do you remember doing any adjustments or was it pretty much with all sliders in the center?

Regards,
Steve.

[f@chance]

@j_olson
The price is €50 which according to todays excange rate is $57. Just bought for $50 VideoReDo and paid €44

[j_olson]

That concert needed a lot of extra ambience, and I like sound in my rear speakers, so my settings were like this: Width were set in centre, front & rear ambience one notch from the right, rear level two notches from right. I also had to add a lot of extra gain to make the output level on par with my original DVD's because of the low level on the input source, added 8dB to the stereo input. Affected the noise level much less than I thought. Added 2-4dB extra using Classic EQ to the bass in the LFE channel, it needed a boost.

[ursamtl]

Excellent. Sounds like you have a good feel for making the necessary adjustments. Do you have a 5.1 soundcard/speaker setup to monitor your adjustments or did you just do it "blind"?

[Lito]

Thanks a lot for the the reply - I came to similar conclusions playing with for some time. Will certainly continue to use V.I - thanks ursamtl for all the good (pioneer) work in this area.
Cheers
Lito

[j_olson]

I do have a 5.1 soundcard/speaker setup but it currently doesn't work that good (had to play the channels separately) so I Trim()-ed a tidbit of the video/audio and tried in in my Home Theater and it sounded good, I just increased ambience to the current setting and it came out right.

[ursamtl]

Thanks a lot for the the reply - I came to similar conclusions playing with for some time. Will certainly continue to use V.I - thanks ursamtl for all the good (pioneer) work in this area.
Cheers
Lito

Thanks for the kind words, Lito. I'm glad V.I works for you.

[ursamtl]

I do have a 5.1 soundcard/speaker setup but it currently doesn't work that good (had to play the channels separately) so I Trim()-ed a tidbit of the video/audio and tried in in my Home Theater and it sounded good, I just increased ambience to the current setting and it came out right.

Your reminds me of my initial attempts at working with surround. I actually created V.I when all I had was a 4-channel soundcard. I had to approximate the adjustments, fake a center channel by feeding it 50-50 to both the left and right channels, then burn surround CDs and bring them into the living room and try on the home theatre system. Once I got a proper 5.1 card, it made things much easier!

[daphy]

Your reminds me of my initial attempts at working with surround. I actually created V.I when all I had was a 4-channel soundcard. I had to approximate the adjustments, fake a center channel by feeding it 50-50 to both the left and right channels, then burn surround CDs and bring them into the living room and try on the home theatre system. Once I got a proper 5.1 card, it made things much easier!
:D I bought a proper sound card months ago but found no place to position the speakers in my small computer room, so I still have to try things out the same way as discribted above :sly: This method is extrem time consuming :(

[ursamtl]

:D I bought a proper sound card months ago but found no place to position the speakers in my small computer room, so I still have to try things out the same way as discribted above :sly: This method is extrem time consuming :(

And it's addictive!

When I moved to my new place this spring, I set up my computer room with 5.1 in mind, so I've got the everything with the proper ITU speaker placements, etc. The surrounds don't seem to make too much of a difference but having the fronts at +-30deg from the center really seems to stabilize the soundstage, both for stereo and 5.1.

[j_olson]

I will restore my real computer surround setup with an Audigy 2 card and a good 5.1 speaker system, it has been serving another purpose for a while...