Configuration and its sub-screens control the non-audio parts of Stereo Tool, such as performance, foreign language support, scheduling, interfacing, sound cards and FM/AM transmitter settings. Bypass panel Turn all processing off.
Bypass processing Turn all processing off.
If Bypass is enabled, Stereo Tool does nothing - the audio goes through unmodified. Bypass is useful to compare the original input with the output, or to turn Stereo Tool off without having to unload it.
Auto start panel Automatically start Stereo Tool when Windows starts.
Auto-start with Windows Automatically start Stereo Tool when Windows starts.
Note that Stereo Tool is only started when the user under who's account this setting was enabled logs in. So, to make this work properly, make sure that this happens automatically when Windows starts.
Watchdog panel Automatic restart behavior when problems occur.
Stereo Tool is made to run unattended for months or even years without human interference. And - as many people have reported over the years - it usually runs for years without a single glitch.
Audio processing is very different from other types of programs: Once the processing runs, as long as the program is untouched it does not allocate or deallocate memory, it does not swap to or from the disk, it does not attempt to access servers, load or save files. All it does is continuously getting a same-sized chunk of audio from a sound card, run the same processing over it and send it to another sound card. This means that the vast majority of programming errors will cause issues immediately in the first second - if it runs for one second it will probably run for years.
But if something goes wrong anyway, these settings determine what action is taken.
Note that if something bad happens, you will always get a popup window with a notification, and if the directory C:\temp exists and is writable it is also written to a file, C:\temp\StereoTool_Exceptions_Log.txt.
Detect and attempt to fix sound card/VLC timeouts Automatically calls Restart sound cards if an input or output does not work.
If no audio passes through a sound card input or output for over 10 seconds, if this setting is enabled Restart sound cards is triggered automatically.
Note that VLC inputs or outputs are not included in this (they might disappear for longer periods due to network issues etc).
Restart on crashes or unsolvable sound card timeouts Restarts Stereo Tool after an unrecoverable issue.
If an exception occurs in Stereo Tool, it will first attempt to recover from it without restarting. If this keeps failing (more than 10 exceptions in a 10 minute period, for some parts of code immediately), Stereo Tool will close itself and start a new instance.
The automatic recovery will be attempted regardless of whether this setting is enabled or disabled.
TEST ERROR (CRASH!) CRASHES STEREO TOOL. Used to test watchdog and logging behavior.
Pressing this button will cause an exception in Stereo Tool that would normally cause it to crash. This can be used to test if the logging works (see description above) and if the Restart on crashes or unsolvable sound card timeouts behavior functions properly.
When this button is pressed, an attempt is made to write data to memory position 0. You will see an exception with code 0xc0000005, read/write=1, r/w location=0x0.
User interface panel Switch between simple and more extensive settings.
Startup minimized in system tray Hides the Stereo Tool window upon startup.
Normally, the Stereo Tool window is shown when you start Stereo Tool. Once you have configured it to your satisfaction, if you only want to hear Stereo Tool without seeing it, enable this option to auto-hide the window every time Stereo Tool is started.
Operating mode [Select how extensive the user interface is.]
With this pull-down menu you can choose how extensive (and hence complicated to use) the user interface is.
if you want to load a preset and only change some simple things, use Simple. For normal users, Basic should be fine. Advanced and Expert show a lot more settings that are difficult to use and can easily ruin the sound. Extreme Tweaker contains lots of obscure settings that you should probably never touch.
Skin Selects a built-in skin for the Stereo Tool GUI.
Full screen mode Switches to Full Screen mode.
In Full Screen mode, the window bars are removed and the Windows start menu (if available) is hidden. Mainly useful if you have a small touch screen, or if you use nothing else on your pc except Stereo Tool.
Full height mode Switches to Full Height mode.
Full Height mode is similar to Full screen mode, but only in vertical direction. Useful for example when you want to show a window beside the Stereo Tool window, like a music player.
Draw scopes at half height Draws the scopes with more headroom.
If you have overshoots, this allows you to better see them.
Title bar info Extra text shown in the title bar.
If you are running multiple Stereo Tool instances on a pc, for example if you have a streaming server, this allows you to change the title of each Stereo Tool window to indicate which signal it is processing. The text is shown in the title bar and when you hover over the tray icon in Windows.
Language panel Settings for multi-language support.
Language Language selection.
.stl (Stereo Tool Language) files must be placed in the same directory where Stereo Tool is installed. You can find language files in the Language/Translation files section of the forum. In the future, they will be included in the Stereo Tool installation.
Export language file Export.stl Used to translate Stereo Tool to another language.
This button exports the current texts to a file named Export.stl. This file is generated in the same directory where Stereo Tool is installed. If that's not possible due to access rights, it is placed in the Users directory (normally C:\Users\yourusername\).
This file consists of lines with the original text in English, an = sign, and the translated text. Example:
Configuration=Configuratie Language=Taal
If you want to edit this file, rename it to the language that you want to support (for example Nederlands.stl) and if needed copy it to the directory where Stereo Tool is installed. After restarting Stereo Tool, you will see Nederlands as a selection under Link error ''. Now you can start editing the file.
Some texts are too long to fit in on the screen if you have a small display. For such texts, multiple versions are available:
Startup minimized in system tray.0=Start geminimaliseerd in system tray Startup minimized in system tray.1=Start geminimaliseerd Startup minimized in system tray.2=Start min.
Upto 3 texts can be provided. In case your translation is longer than the original text and you need more alternative texts than are provided in the generated file, you can just add them. If there's only one line, you can add the .0 yourself and create a .1 (and .2) version.
If a new version of Stereo Tool comes out, new texts may have been added or texts may have been changed. If you load your old language file and then press the Export button, you get a file where everything that you have translated previously is available in the file, but things that you have not yet translated are there too - in English.
Stereo Tool can be password protected. This makes it impossible to change or export any settings. Note: The protection is not very strong, if someone has access to the .ini file they can still make changes or disable the password protection.
Password The password to access Stereo Tool settings.
Warning: The password is stored without encoding, so don't reuse passwords that you use elsewhere.
Turn password protection on Enables password protection.
