Stereo Tool Free Download: Visual Stereo Control for Mixing

If you're working on a mix and need surgical control over your stereo field with clear visual feedback, Stereo Tool handles that with a focused set of controls and meters. It’s a straightforward plugin for VST and AU hosts, and you can grab a free download to add it to your toolkit.

This plugin gives you separate panning for your left and right channels, a global width control, and dedicated phase inverters. More importantly, it provides permanent visual monitoring with a vector scope, phase correlation meter, and PPM meters on both the input and output, so you always see what’s happening to your signal.

What It Does: Signal Control & Monitoring

Stereo Tool operates on a simple principle: manipulate your stereo signal, then verify the changes visually. You get controls to adjust the signal itself, and a suite of meters to confirm those adjustments are having the intended effect on your stereo image, level, and phase.

Feature Breakdown

Channel Manipulation Controls

This is where you process the audio. You have an ultra precise control of input gain to set your optimal level going into the plugin. From there, you get an individual pan for left and right channels, letting you reposition each side independently. A phase inverter is available on each channel for correcting polarity issues. For broader adjustments, there’s a global stereo pan to shift the entire image and stereo width settings to narrow or expand the perceived field.

Visual Monitoring Suite

This set of tools provides the visual feedback. The vector scope display shows a real-time representation of your stereo field. You also get PPM meters for both inputs and outputs to monitor levels before and after processing. A phase correlation meter gives you a clear readout of the stereo phase relationship, helping you identify potential mono-compatibility issues.

Technical Specifications

Stereo Tool is available as a VST and AU plugin, making it compatible with most major digital audio workstations.

Who Is This For

This fits a specific niche. It’s useful for an audio engineer who is finalizing a mix and needs to nudge the left channel of a stereo piano recording slightly center while watching the vector scope for placement. It’s also good for a producer checking the phase correlation of a wide synth pad after applying heavy stereo modulation, using the meters to avoid cancellation. If your work involves precise, visual-based adjustments to stereo positioning and phase, this plugin addresses that directly.

Limitations

The plugin is focused exclusively on stereo manipulation and monitoring. It doesn't contain any EQ, compression, or saturation. Its value is in its specificity—it does a few related tasks and provides clear visual data for them.

Final Verdict

You should get the Stereo Tool free download if you regularly need to make detailed, visual adjustments to stereo placement and phase. It gives you separate left/right control and the essential meters to monitor those changes accurately. It’s a utility plugin, so if you don’t often find yourself tweaking individual channel pans or checking correlation with a scope, you might not use it often. But for the specific tasks it’s built for, it provides a clear, no-frills solution.