Quote:
Yea I know about the gain, I've already adjusted all the presets to the point I won't hear any distortion when listening to the songs with the "closest" to clipping point I got, I don't want to lower the whole graph so that the highest peak touches 0-level as it results in an audible sound quality loss in my ears, may be due to the fact I'm not using WASAPI and using the Windows mixer, don't know but I'm sure there's a difference in the result even if I adjust the volume levels to make up for it and since there are more non-bit perfect listeners out there than me that argument becomes a moot point anyway, I always decide all the changes by my ear as I don't put too much faith in theories. With Electri-Q the distortion seems to be appriopriate to the "area" of the whole curve, if there's a range going below 0-level another can be a bit above and still won't result in clipping so therefore different presets of mine can have some of the peaks sticking above the 0-level by different amounts and still sound as "clean". I think the best compromise in this case is to do what I did, just adjust it to the point the most distortion-prominent tracks remain distortion-free by a subjective analysis.
I don't like ReplayGain since it modifies the files themselves, I just don't want any modifications to be done to the files at all, they should have the same checksum-match as before even.
Go download this frequency sweep wav file
http://www.mediafire.com/file/dxy7xevh8muwrhb/full%20range%20full%20volume%20sweep.wav
and try to play it back with preamp at 0dB and just the equalizer in the DSP chain. If you manage to put any point above 0dB without the corresponding part of the wav setting off the clipping alarm on the peak meter, I'm all ears.
Now granted, you may manage to scrape by your music collection with your current settings without setting off the clipping alarm, but that would be just luck, that your music collection doesn't go near 0dB for the parts of the frequency range that you are boosting, even for the loud parts. Then again, I have had mp3s set off the clipping alarm even when everything on the equalizer was <0 and I'd already dialled in a -2dB preamp, to boot. Like I said, mp3s encoded without Replaygain can go way past clipping point on decoding, but these can be rescued by ReplayGaining or setting the preamp setting.
Replaygain does not modify the content of the music file, it only adds a tag that tells the player to interpret all the output with a digital multiplier. The only possible audible effects of changing replaygain are
1) Correct replaygain restores peaks that were clipped off before (unless the clipping is in the recording itself)
2) Negative replaygain raises the noise floor by the corresponding number of decibels (the same thing happens with lowering the curve on Electri-Q
Now, right now I'm just listening straight out of the notebook headphone jack, and could actually use a lower noise floor. But the only audible effect of the noise floor for me even now is a bit more noise at the beginning and end of music tracks. Can you hear the noise floor on your current setup now? Do you hear the noise floor going up if you crank up the main output volume on the windows mixer, or any other analog volume controls you have? (within your *normal* listening volume range, not "I can hear this amp noise if I crank all the knobs to 11. Oh, and now if I hit a wrong button I'd blow my eardrums out of my head") If you do, you could theoretically benefit from making the digital signal as hot as possible and setting the main output volume and other analog volume controls as low as possible. But then if I were doing that I would be so worried about clipping, I would be watching the peak meter on foobar like a hawk instead of of finding time to actually listen to my music
BTW, AFAIK WASAPI doesn't avoid the problem of raising the noise floor. You still need to modify the digital signal for your EQing and Dolby Headphoning, modifying the digital signal is the whole *point*. WASAPI just means the modified signal is then sent straight to the DAC rather than going through the windows mixer.
BTW2 here's the EQ curve I'm using to equalize my headphones,
as detailed in my review of my current headphones:
Anyway, someone else reading this thread could easily modify your presets with a few clicks depending on who he believes in. I don't think it's a big deal, it's not like clipping is what's putting me off Dolby Headphone.
Quote:
Yea I explained the loading preset bug a few times already and to avoid crashing you have to load the "Custom: Stock foobar" or "Custom: No EQ" or one of the bottom 3 presets everytime in-between you switch to another as the crashing occurs when there's Electri-Q plugin in the active DSPs list in both the current used preset as well as the loaded preset setting.
If you just want a wider soundstage, remove Dolby headphone plugin and play around with the Stereo image width in channel mixer and use the default settings for everything else (disable surround etc).
Well, I'm not talking about changing between DSP chain presets. I'm talking about going into Electri-Q, hitting the "M" button, and selecting Presets->Import Preset... but thanks anyway.
Does the stereo image width setting have an effect even without Dolby Headphone? Then that sounds like it would mix the left and right channels for settings <1 and cancel out the parts common to the two channels for settings >1. Not really what I want if that's what it is. Is there a readme for this thing? Thanks. (don't look too hard for it though--I don't promise to try this again. I'd probably try Isone first... Not your fault, you've really overdone yourself preparing all this for Dolby Headphone and I commend your efforts)
