SPECWEB (Now 2.2)

[ji eff]

oooooooooo... gonna have to try this on Radiohead OK Computer and NIN Year Zero... both already sound good in PLII Music, so there's gotta be something cool to do with this!!

Thanks MC !

 

[zeerround]

Wow! I just made my first upmix, and I'm pretty excited! "Piece of Mind" by Iron Maiden from a vinyl rip... Used Audacity to increase the center and rears by 2dB each... Very happy with the results (but still not as good as upmixes by Holland123 or DKA) This might become a habit...@:

Same Algorithm as used on all the (since maybe 2009) DKA conversions. He used the "full" version which requires Plogue bidule, this is the same math without PB. DKA also wrote the "how to win with ArcTan" portion of the SpecWeb Guide.

Practice and patience...

If you want the rears and center louder you should make those adjustments in "ZAG" C to front changed to 5.0, and rear to front changed to -1 would raise C and Rears by 2dB. The output will still be normailized so the loudest peak is 0dB (or whatever level you set the ZAG output to).

 

[skherbeck]

Same Algorithm as used on all the (since maybe 2009) DKA conversions. He used the "full" version which requires Plogue bidule, this is the same math without PB. DKA also wrote the "how to win with ArcTan" portion of the SpecWeb Guide.

Practice and patience...

If you want the rears and center louder you should make those adjustments in "ZAG" C to front changed to 5.0, and rear to front changed to -1 would raise C and Rears by 2dB. The output will still be normailized so the loudest peak is 0dB (or whatever level you set the ZAG output to).

Does this mean that if I use SpecWeb on the same recording that DKA upmixed that I would get a similar result? As far as making adjustments using this program, it looks pretty daunting to a non-technical guy like me (if I can't point and click, then it ain't gonna happen!) I guess it would help if I read the directions...@:

 

[skherbeck]

If you want the rears and center louder you should make those adjustments in "ZAG" C to front changed to 5.0, and rear to front changed to -1 would raise C and Rears by 2dB. The output will still be normailized so the loudest peak is 0dB (or whatever level you set the ZAG output to).

Thank You! It took me a while to figure out how to make the changes from within SpecWeb, but it's worth it... when I make the changes in Audacity, the size of my multichannel flac file is cut in half; when I make the changes using ZAG, no information is lost.

 

[woody]

Total dumb-ass alert on my behalf. Has anyone downloaded this and launched on a Mac? I can't get off ground zero as I cannot find a way to 'run' the download. Seeks a program to open this with, and I note many file are apparently windows specific.

 

[LizardKing]

I am sure we all have our own lists of classic albums that were never released in surround. Personally I'd like to do a few Australian/NZ artist's albums I have starting with Crowded House, Hoodoo Gurus, Australian Crawl, Paul Kelly and Split Enz.

Oh yeah....:beer2


Nice list.

 

[edisonbaggins]

Total dumb-ass alert on my behalf. Has anyone downloaded this and launched on a Mac? I can't get off ground zero as I cannot find a way to 'run' the download. Seeks a program to open this with, and I note many file are apparently windows specific.

It's for Windows, though you may be able to run it through WINE?

http://wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX

 

[MC Maniac]

I did The Little River Band - Very Best of yesterday and it has nice seperation..

Oh yeah....:beer2


Nice list.

 

[skherbeck]

It's interesting when it comes to the separation you get from various albums... some are OK, others are fantastic (Scorpions "Blackout" sounds amazing); I seem to be getting better separation on the albums with higher DR numbers (but it could be entirely unrelated). Bottom line, better quality source material seems to make for better quality upmixes. I love this program... It's "Upmixing for Dummies" (like me@:banana:

Edit: Anyone who's never heard an upmix or has a favorite album that hasn't made it to surround should try this once for fun... I'm hooked (and made a donation to the creators, too!)

 

[GOS]

I did an upmix of David Lee Roth - Skyscraper, and I have to say that it sounds really, really good. Some of the surround moments are way better than I figured it could do. Cool!

 

[ji eff]

I did Permanent Waves and IMO it came out pretty good - for this one try raising both surrounds - my default setting has Ls and Rs with a value of 6..

Holy crap, MC !! I just tried SpecWeb for the first time, and on Astronomy Domine (Electric Moo) your settings ( -Rx=+6.0 ) do WONDERS !! :banana:

bye bye PLII Music...

Gotta try that on other stuff too!

Thanks a bunch for making us aware of it :upthumb

 

[ji eff]

Electric Moo CD1 was a joy to listen to...

In the Flesh? is quite the treat so far... the Hammond is dominant in the Rs, same for the guitar, but in the Ls, and Roger's vocals, originating from the center, echo in stereo ping-pong delay in the rears !!

Happy happy joy joy !! :51banana:

Just a note... since the originating tracks are normalized, I took precaution of doing The Wall with a single flac file + cue sheet, so there aren't any volume inconsistencies in the blending tracks.

They gonna ma $$$

 

[GOS]

Just completed upmix of Smiley Smile (derived from a hi-rez download) Whoa! How cool....this is the way BB were meant to sound IMO.

 

[DuncanS]

I've always liked the Lime Spiders

I am sure we all have our own lists of classic albums that were never released in surround. Personally I'd like to do a few Australian/NZ artist's albums I have starting with Crowded House, Hoodoo Gurus, Australian Crawl, Paul Kelly and Split Enz.

 

[HomerJAU]

Here's a setting in the manual that should be used for 96kHz sources:

(edit the SpecWeb.ini file with a text editor - its about half way down - anything with a ';' semi-colon is ignored - just comments)

[fft]
;power of 2 >= 64
;default 8192
; Size for 96kHz = 16384 48/44.1kHz = 8192
size=16384

 

[zeerround]

Total dumb-ass alert on my behalf. Has anyone downloaded this and launched on a Mac? I can't get off ground zero as I cannot find a way to 'run' the download. Seeks a program to open this with, and I note many file are apparently windows specific.

Sorry but SpecWeb is windows only. I haven't tried any of the methods for running windows programs on a mac so don't know if you can get it working or not.

However, there is a version of "Spec" (requires Plogue Bidule) that does run on a mac, so that route is available for sure.

http://www.surroundbyus.com/sbu/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=216

You can get a demo version of Plogue Bidule here: http://www.plogue.com/downloads/ That will work until Jan 15th. Usually shortly before or after that there will be another demo version that will work for 3 months (and of course, you can always buy a copy).

 

[fredblue]

I've always liked the Lime Spiders

I'm more a Lime Daiquiri kinda guy..

 

[edisonbaggins]

Tryin' Rush - Vapor Trails Remixed (Dave Bottrill mix) for S's & G's...

 

[MC Maniac]

What I do is use two Specweb folders - one for CD (44.1) sources and the other for 96K (192k) sources

each INI file has the relevant fft size

Specweb uses the ini file in the folder that has your source files

This is also handy when you install a new version of SPEC web - you dont have to modify your ini files each time

Here's a setting in the manual that should be used for 96kHz sources:

(edit the SpecWeb.ini file with a text editor - its about half way down - anything with a ';' semi-colon is ignored - just comments)

[fft]
;power of 2 >= 64
;default 8192
; Size for 96kHz = 16384 48/44.1kHz = 8192
size=16384

 

[ji eff]

Just tried something... I felt the sub could take some more in NIN The Perfect Drug and Britney Spears Toxic... so I tried using -Ex=0 (sub to fronts) on top of -Rx=0 (rears to fronts) ... (yeah, -Rx=0 give me the same output as -Rx=+6.0, don't know if I got it wrong in the first place...). There seem to be a "ceiling" to 0dB for the sub-to-fronts and rears-to-fronts values.

So basically: all default settings, -Ex=0, -Rx=0 .....and everything goes 0dB relative to fronts, except for the center that stays +3dB relative to fronts (and it needs to... I tried to "zero" it and the vocals got buried big time in the mix)

And that gives me something I'm really satisfied with.

But now... I think I'm gonna mess with the other settings for fun! :xp: