SPECWEB (Now 2.2)

[DuncanS]

I'd forgotten about Fanny, wasn't Suzi Quatro's sister in it? I'm sure-ish that way back in the early 70s a friend brought in to school an album of theirs on clear vinyl.

Spent yesterday converting a whole bunch of stuff to listen to this week. Started out with some Beatle-esque stuff - "No Dice" & "Straight Up" (Badfinger), "Capital Collection Series" (Raspberries), "The Rutles" & "Archaeology" (Rutles). Then moved on to "Anthology 1968-1985" (Todd Rundgren), "Fanny Hill" & "Mother's Pride" (Fanny - most underrated girl group ever, imo), "A New World Record" & "Time" (ELO). :music

 

[JonUrban]

Here's a look at "Lookin' Up" from the new Elton John HDTracks HiRez .flac run through SPECWEB.
It does a great job putting solo Elton in the center channel, while the double-tracked Elton's are in the two fronts. No Elton's in the rears!

 

[GOS]

Something interesting I think. I'm sure those who "understand" will give me a reason...but this is striking.

So, I have a DSD64 download of Turn Of A Friendly Card - Alan Parsons. I'm sure any of you who have this know how amazing it sounds. It's as good as it gets....
So, to get it to work with Specweb, I made a duplicate copy of the DSD files and converted the duplicate to Flac...then I let Specweb do it's thing.

There really isn't much going on in the rears in terms of isolation....I assumed Specweb would have a hay day with this one....but no, it didn't. Yeah, it sounds great, but what is mostly in the rears is some echo/reverb from the information in the fronts. Again, I'm super surprised...

Now - does that have something to do with the fact that the "mother" files are DSD? I dunno...someone more educated in the music can comment.

Again...I found this very interesting.

 

[JerseyEd]

I'd forgotten about Fanny, wasn't Suzi Quatro's sister in it? I'm sure-ish that way back in the early 70s a friend brought in to school an album of theirs on clear vinyl.

Hi Duncan.
Yes, Suzi Quatro's sister Patti was a member, but not until their 5th album "Rock And Roll Survivors". After their 4th album, "Mother's Pride", original members guitarist June Millington and drummer Alice de Buhr left the band. Patti Quatro filled the guitar spot and Brie Brandt took over drums. I have the 2nd-5th discs on vinyl but just the normal black.

 

[HomerJAU]

SpecWeb 1.2 bug I just noticed: When processing a 176kHz file, SpecWeb.ini is supposed to automatically choose an fft of 32768; however, I noticed while watching the SpecWeb processing window that these files are being processed at an fft of 8192, which will result in a lower quality multichannel output file. Not sure how to correct this...

If you Helper it should be ok as Helper still has its original code to set the correct (recommend) fft value base on its input sample rate.

 

[HomerJAU]

Something interesting I think. I'm sure those who "understand" will give me a reason...but this is striking.

So, I have a DSD64 download of Turn Of A Friendly Card - Alan Parsons. I'm sure any of you who have this know how amazing it sounds. It's as good as it gets....
So, to get it to work with Specweb, I made a duplicate copy of the DSD files and converted the duplicate to Flac...then I let Specweb do it's thing.

There really isn't much going on in the rears in terms of isolation....I assumed Specweb would have a hay day with this one....but no, it didn't. Yeah, it sounds great, but what is mostly in the rears is some echo/reverb from the information in the fronts. Again, I'm super surprised...

Now - does that have something to do with the fact that the "mother" files are DSD? I dunno...someone more educated in the music can comment.

Again...I found this very interesting.

The FLAC you created should be ok (it's not the import file format it's the stereo audio image which is indentical to the original import audio)

 

[skherbeck]

If you Helper it should be ok as Helper still has its original code to set the correct (recommend) fft value base on its input sample rate.

I will try the Helper, but the reason I skipped Helper in the first place is that whenever I run 192kHz files through Helper, the output is 96kHz; I couldn't figure out a fix, so I just started bypassing Helper for 192kHz stuff. I thought the same might happen with 176kHz files... But I'll check it out.

 

[skherbeck]

Just tried 176kHz file through Helper... The correct fft setting was present in SpecWeb, however Helper resampled the file to 88kHz for the output. I tried changing the Helper Output settings to "save at over sampled rate" and "save at original rate"... In both cases I get error messages saying Helper couldn't find the over sampled file. I don't know what any of this means, other than I can't figure out a way to process a 176kHz file!

 

[HomerJAU]

You should probably post this on the Helper thread. Check you are using the current Helper app and if so I'll check it out as a possible bug.

 

[zeerround]

SpecWeb 1.2 bug I just noticed: When processing a 176kHz file, SpecWeb.ini is supposed to automatically choose an fft of 32768; however, I noticed while watching the SpecWeb processing window that these files are being processed at an fft of 8192, which will result in a lower quality multichannel output file. Not sure how to correct this...

Were you in play? If so I see why in the code. I didn't think any typical comupter could play specweb live at 176Khz and fft = 32768 so the code sets it to 8192.

However if not in play it should have set the fft size correctly. Guess I can do some testing.

The other place is could go wrong is if the sample rate isn't exactly 176000 Hz. In that case the default is 8192. Guess better code would be if the sample rate is greater than 96000 Hz, set the fft size to 32768.

 

[zeerround]

Something interesting I think. I'm sure those who "understand" will give me a reason...but this is striking.

So, I have a DSD64 download of Turn Of A Friendly Card - Alan Parsons. I'm sure any of you who have this know how amazing it sounds. It's as good as it gets....
So, to get it to work with Specweb, I made a duplicate copy of the DSD files and converted the duplicate to Flac...then I let Specweb do it's thing.

There really isn't much going on in the rears in terms of isolation....I assumed Specweb would have a hay day with this one....but no, it didn't. Yeah, it sounds great, but what is mostly in the rears is some echo/reverb from the information in the fronts. Again, I'm super surprised...

Now - does that have something to do with the fact that the "mother" files are DSD? I dunno...someone more educated in the music can comment.

Again...I found this very interesting.

Should only have to do with the stereo mix, not the source. If the mix is mostly centered, it will be mostly centered in the surround. You can stretch it out by making the center and/or front widths smaller, forcing more of the sound to the rears.

 

[Spock]

Something interesting I think. I'm sure those who "understand" will give me a reason...but this is striking.

So, I have a DSD64 download of Turn Of A Friendly Card - Alan Parsons. I'm sure any of you who have this know how amazing it sounds. It's as good as it gets....
So, to get it to work with Specweb, I made a duplicate copy of the DSD files and converted the duplicate to Flac...then I let Specweb do it's thing.

There really isn't much going on in the rears in terms of isolation....I assumed Specweb would have a hay day with this one....but no, it didn't. Yeah, it sounds great, but what is mostly in the rears is some echo/reverb from the information in the fronts. Again, I'm super surprised...

Now - does that have something to do with the fact that the "mother" files are DSD? I dunno...someone more educated in the music can comment.

Again...I found this very interesting.

I used Specweb on the 2007/2008 remaster of this cd - and it sounds great, a lot more action in the rears than just echo/reverb. Have you tried the cd?

 

[zeerround]

Yeah I should have been more careful with my wording. By "source" shouldn't matter, I meant the media the particular release/mastering was on shouldn't matter, just the mix of that particular release/mastering.

Clearly different release/mastering versions can have vastly different results.

Even that has some caveats I guess. You might prefer a vinyl rip, vs. a cd, for tone, etc. even though the mix would be the same, and thus what SpecWeb separated out being the same.

 

[zeerround]

I'm putting this, in the next version, for autofft size:

if (autofftlen == true) {
fftlen = 8192;
if (srate > 48000)
fftlen = 16384;
if (srate > 96000)
fftlen = 32768;
}

 

[HomerJAU]

I will try the Helper, but the reason I skipped Helper in the first place is that whenever I run 192kHz files through Helper, the output is 96kHz; I couldn't figure out a fix, so I just started bypassing Helper for 192kHz stuff. I thought the same might happen with 176kHz files... But I'll check it out.

This is a bug in Helper 1.2 (problem with Oversampling 176.4 & 192kHz source files). I've fixed it for 1.3. If you want to beta test let me know.

 

[RobJam]

Hi all...been gone for awhile but just wanted to check in and say I'm still havin a hell of a good time with SpecWeb. Converted a ton of material and enjoying it all. If you come up with a gapless playback, let me know. skherbeck mentioned awhile back setting the Oppo for gapless, but that feature is with memory stick only, unless I'm mistaken...and I'm burning my upmixes to BluRay. Cheers!

 

[zcftr29]

If you come up with a gapless playback, let me know.

I use a Raspebbry Pi 2 running Kodi(OpenELEC) via HDMI to my surround receiver - Gappless out of the box (and really cheap too). The RPi3 has just been released which promises to be even better for media playback.

I previously used a Netgear NTV550 media streamer which was the only Mch/flac/highres hardware player I could fine that would playback gapless.

 

[zeerround]

SpecWeb 1.3 has been released:

http://www.surroundbyus.com/sbu/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=913

Post at top of thread updated with new info.

 

[zeerround]

For the new version, I suggest you try the following command line options:

-Z -6-3

That will use "normonly gains" for ZAG (assumes your speakers are calibrated to all have the same volume level at the listening position) and use a Mastering Limiter, with a threshold of -3db, relative to the song's peak level.

The idea is to more closely match the loudness and levels of the original stereo.

If you still want to control the channel to channel levels yourself, you can either keep -Z and use the gain controls, or you can skip -Z and use the ZAG channel gain controls.

...

If your 5.1 speakers are not in the ITU configuration (as to angles) in this new version of SpecWeb you can tell it what your angles are (see the guide and included angle chart).

Cheers,
Z

 

[JanBakker]

SpecWeb 1.3 has been released:

http://www.surroundbyus.com/sbu/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=913

Post at top of thread updated with new info.

Do I have to un-install the previous version and does it work with helper 1.1.0.1? Thanks.