what the heck is "Sound Enhancer" anyways

T

thisbechuck

Mac-ing
So, I'm here, listening on dave matthews band on iTunes, checkin out the prefrences, and all of a sudden i'm like "dude, wth is this sound enhancer thing?". I messed around with it for a little while, but I couldnt really tell a difference, so i'm here to ask, um, well, whoever has any idea pretty much...
 
It basically beefs up sound on mp3s a bit. When songs get compressed to mp3 they typically lose some bottom end, even when the bit rate it fairly high. The sound enhancer just fattens up the sound a bit to make sound closer to the original.
 
I turned it on, and tried listening to "Eye of the Tiger"... it sounds like, basically, all it does is turn up the bass, and turn up the midrange where the vocals are. Which... you could do with the equalizer, if you wanted.... *shrugs*

I keep it off.
 
Yeah, near as I can figure it's a typical bimodal EQ setting applied by a single slider, pretty much negating the bad EQ you get out of an mp3. I do the same with mp3s and even more so with tapes. Adding oomph to the highs and lows makes a big difference in feel in lots of songs. Other than that ... I don't know. Perhaps it's applied differently to different formats, because mp3 has different weaknesses than mp4 or AIFF.

I have it set completely differently on different computers I've noticed. Which coincides with it being pretty much an EQ setting. My different computers have different acoustics.

And this is all anecdotal, I have no technical evidence of anything.
 
Well Chuck that depends, if you have Apple Pro speakers: useless.

Whenever I enable sound enhancer on my pissy little AP speakers, it sounds like the rubber membrane around the diaphragm is ripping apart (even though it's not) with a flat EQ and low volume.

I'm going to back up theed on his assesment too, (with the same caveat ;)).

I guess if I had better speakers it might make a difference, but I think it's not useful myself.
 
Yeah, it's a shame about those Apple "pro" speakers. I heard (probably) the same distortion from mine when I used the sound enhancer or anything that really worked them hard.

I'm using no-name $30 speaker/supwoofer system that's really great except it buzzes when idle.

Doug
 
Oh one more thing.

I've got a Peavey Rage 158 guitar amp, which conveniently has this little CD/Tape input for practicing songs. This input is not affected by the on-board EQ or volume.

I noticed that with Sound Enhancer on, when I'm piping through my amp, the sound is muffled, highs are cut and lows are boosted. With the sound enhancer off, however, the sound's much clearer.

Mind you, the diaphragm of my amp's speaker is a nice big 8 inch Blue Marvel, so that certainly has an affect on the enhancement cheme iTunes uses, since it's probably for smaller speakers...
 
Originally posted by michaelsanford
I noticed that with Sound Enhancer on, when I'm piping through my amp, the sound is muffled, highs are cut and lows are boosted.
Click to expand...

The Sound Enhancer is a sound filter that works much, to my ears, like DBB (Dynamic Bass Boost, also known as Dirty Big Bass ;)). It makes the bass a bit more omnipresent ('bouncy') and helps the mids with a slight cutoff.

Your amp has its own sound correction. Rule of thumb: never apply sound filters on a serial scheme (ie. source-->--filter1-->--filter2-->--output). You usually apply both filters to the source (parallel filtering) and then merge them to output.
 
Yeah I know, my amp does have its own dynamic correction system. Also you're totally right about filters in chain. :)
 
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