Stereo Enhancer/Stereo Field Editing effects are designed to alternate the spatial characteristics of music in a stereo field. In The Stage Package, The Widener (TW) expands or narrows the perceived sound field and The Deepener (TD) controls the distance of the center sound source. The package operates on two orthogonal directions over a 2D plane, therefore enabling musicians to fulfill their sound imagination easily and freely. In fact, either in mixing or mastering, stereo enhancer effects are fundamental and essential. In light of this, we present The Stage Package and hope it becomes a classic and a must-have tool when making music.
After the release of British Kolorizer, we started to think: is there a possibility to let modern AI technology learn to emulate stereo or even multi-channel effects? The package is the first exploration and during the attempt, lots of challenges emerged. While modeling stereo effects, signals from left and right channels are strongly correlated. The interaction in gain and phase between the two channels is what makes us feel the changing of the sound field. The complexity of such a system is extremely high and any mistake including subtle phase shift can cause the result to sound distortion and unpleasantness. Fortunately, after relentless trials and experiments from our DSP research team, we successfully conquered the problem.
Another challenge is the smoothness of transition when turning the knobs. If testing the plugins carefully, no matter how the parameters are changed, including EQ, there won’t be any glitch sound and the transition is always silky. In fact, knobs in many vintage analog machines are designed in a step manner, and the machine we modeled is also one of them. We did spend lots of effort to break such limitations only for bringing the best experience for the consumers.
The spirit of the product design of Master Tones is to keep everything simple except for the sound quality. In The Stage Package, there are only three components: Gains (input and output), spatial adjustment (width or depth), and EQ filter slider (filters from low to high). We believe musicians should only focus on their creation and intuition, and leave the technical part for engineers. For example, the oversampling option couldn’t be found on the plugin. What’s the oversampling for? It’s a technique that resamples the input signal to a higher sampling rate and then processes it. Oversampling can eliminate aliasing, which will introduce undesired sound to the music. It’s somewhat important to quality but usually ignored and always consumes more computation power. We set it as a default and found a balance between efficiency and quality. The highest internal computational sampling rate of the package is 192kHz.
Aside from the aforementioned features, The Stage Package has the following merits: First, the highest input sampling rate is 96kHz. Second, when input signals are being overdriven to some degree, the signals will be distorted and colored according to the volume. All of these characteristics are designed to recreate the analog machine as faithful as possible. Additionally, for The Stage Package, the target analog machine we emulated is renowned for its clarity and quality. It’s a classic mastering-grade gear and unanimously favored by our collaborative Tonmeisters and musicians. From hardware choosing to algorithms modeling, we only pursue the best quality and hope such an attitude can empower the users’ unprecedented music-making experience.
Currently, we are planning to write a technical blog to introduce the modeling algorithm of Ariosa – the modeling engine of The Stage Package. Please stay tuned for further information, especially as a DSP engineer or researcher. Lastly, we want to break the impression, or stereotype, that the digital plugin can never ever act like its analog counterparts. The Stage Package is a proof of concept, a step forward, as well as marking a breakthrough of our Ariosa technology. The package is being used by our musicians and has revolutionized their workflow, we believe such a change will also happen to you.
Behind the Scene: The Making of The Stage Package
Stereo Enhancer/Stereo Field Editing effects are designed to alternate the spatial characteristics of music in a stereo field. In The Stage Package, The Widener (TW) expands or narrows the perceived sound field and The Deepener (TD) controls the distance of the center sound source. The package operates on two orthogonal directions over a 2D plane, therefore enabling musicians to fulfill their sound imagination easily and freely. In fact, either in mixing or mastering, stereo enhancer effects are fundamental and essential. In light of this, we present The Stage Package and hope it becomes a classic and a must-have tool when making music.
After the release of British Kolorizer, we started to think: is there a possibility to let modern AI technology learn to emulate stereo or even multi-channel effects? The package is the first exploration and during the attempt, lots of challenges emerged. While modeling stereo effects, signals from left and right channels are strongly correlated. The interaction in gain and phase between the two channels is what makes us feel the changing of the sound field. The complexity of such a system is extremely high and any mistake including subtle phase shift can cause the result to sound distortion and unpleasantness. Fortunately, after relentless trials and experiments from our DSP research team, we successfully conquered the problem.
Another challenge is the smoothness of transition when turning the knobs. If testing the plugins carefully, no matter how the parameters are changed, including EQ, there won’t be any glitch sound and the transition is always silky. In fact, knobs in many vintage analog machines are designed in a step manner, and the machine we modeled is also one of them. We did spend lots of effort to break such limitations only for bringing the best experience for the consumers.
The spirit of the product design of Master Tones is to keep everything simple except for the sound quality. In The Stage Package, there are only three components: Gains (input and output), spatial adjustment (width or depth), and EQ filter slider (filters from low to high). We believe musicians should only focus on their creation and intuition, and leave the technical part for engineers. For example, the oversampling option couldn’t be found on the plugin. What’s the oversampling for? It’s a technique that resamples the input signal to a higher sampling rate and then processes it. Oversampling can eliminate aliasing, which will introduce undesired sound to the music. It’s somewhat important to quality but usually ignored and always consumes more computation power. We set it as a default and found a balance between efficiency and quality. The highest internal computational sampling rate of the package is 192kHz.
Aside from the aforementioned features, The Stage Package has the following merits: First, the highest input sampling rate is 96kHz. Second, when input signals are being overdriven to some degree, the signals will be distorted and colored according to the volume. All of these characteristics are designed to recreate the analog machine as faithful as possible. Additionally, for The Stage Package, the target analog machine we emulated is renowned for its clarity and quality. It’s a classic mastering-grade gear and unanimously favored by our collaborative Tonmeisters and musicians. From hardware choosing to algorithms modeling, we only pursue the best quality and hope such an attitude can empower the users’ unprecedented music-making experience.
Currently, we are planning to write a technical blog to introduce the modeling algorithm of Ariosa – the modeling engine of The Stage Package. Please stay tuned for further information, especially as a DSP engineer or researcher. Lastly, we want to break the impression, or stereotype, that the digital plugin can never ever act like its analog counterparts. The Stage Package is a proof of concept, a step forward, as well as marking a breakthrough of our Ariosa technology. The package is being used by our musicians and has revolutionized their workflow, we believe such a change will also happen to you.