DFX Plug-In
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BACKGROUND
DFX (TM) is designed to dramatically enhance the
listening experience for users of Internet audio
formats such as MP3, and Microsoft's Windows Media
streaming format.
DFX is the first plug-in to make truly professional
quality audio processing available to Internet audio
users. DFX was developed by Power Technology, a
company with vast experience in DSP based audio
processing. Power Technology's professional audio
products have won multiple awards from leading
professional audio publications, and this high level
of audio algorithm expertise was used to create the
patent pending DFX plug-in.
DFX enhances Internet oriented audio listening
experiences by correcting for the sonic limitations
of all the popular data compressed Internet audio
formats. Data compressed audio suffers from two
major problems: loss of high frequency fidelity
and loss of stereo separation and depth.
DFX compensates for the loss of high frequency
fidelity by carefully regenerating the missing high
frequency harmonics in the audio. DFX then compensates
for the reduced stereo imaging and depth by carefully
generating ambience and stereo depth.
An additional factor limiting the quality of Internet
audio playback is the use of speakers that are
narrowly spaced and located close to the listener's
ears. These location constraints reduce the perceived
stereo field and reduces the natural room ambience
which is important to good sounding audio.
In addition to compensating for reduced stereo depth
in the audio source, DFX's added ambience and imaging
works particularly well in correcting for these
limitations of closely spaced and located speakers.
Typical PC based multimedia playback systems and even
home stereo playback systems also suffer from limited
dynamic range and headroom. DFX compensates for this
limited headroom by carefully processing the audio to
increase the perceived loudness of the audio without
altering the perceived dynamic range. This can
dramatically increase the undistorted playback level
available when listening to MP3 and and other streaming
audio files.
DFX performs all audio processing with 32 bit floating
point precision, yielding truly professional audio
quality. Since Internet audio playback systems
currently only support 16 bit audio playback, as a
final processing step DFX carefully re-dithers the
audio signal to the final 16 bit resolution using
Power Technology's proprietary high quality dithering
technology. Re-dithering allows a dynamic range in
the playback signal that actually exceeds the
theoretical limit of a 16 bit playback system.
CONTROLS
The control knobs function as follows:
--Fidelity: Controls the amount of high frequency
harmonics that are regenerated and placed in the
audio. Using this control to add Fidelity to the
audio eliminates the "muffled" sound that is an
artifact of the data compression algorithms used
in Internet audio formats.
--Ambience: Controls the amount of listening room
ambience added to the audio, compensating for
closely located speakers, poor listening environments
and sonic losses due to the data compression methods
used with Internet audio formats.
--3D Surround: Controls the amount of enhanced 3D stereo
depth which is added to the audio, compensating for
monitoring limitations and sonic losses due to data
compression.
--Dynamic Boost: Controls the amount of additional
loudness to be added to the audio. Using this control
to make your final listening level adjustment will
allow much higher listening levels while minimizing
distortion levels, particularly when using Internet
audio systems.
--HyperBass: Controls the amount of additional low
frequency compensation for multimedia speaker systems
to add deep, rich bass sound. Greatly improves the bass
performance of any sound system.
BUTTONS
The buttons function as follows:
--On/Off: Either turns On or Off DFX processing. If Off,
all DFX processing is bypassed.
--Presets: Allows managment of your factory and user
presets. Select the preset best suited for your
program material or save your current settings as
a new preset.
--Options: Allows you to select DFX options such as
skin selection.
--Help: This Help window
--Headphones/Speakers : Allows you to specify whether you
are listening through speakers or with headphones. If
headphone mode is specified then the audio is processed
in such a way that the music sounds as if it is
originating from a source in front of you rather than
coming straight at your ears. This creates a much more
pleasant and natural sound. It also reduces listener
fatigue by eliminating the "in your head effect" of
regular headphones.
We want to thank David Ballegooijen and Lim, Chooi Guan
for their skin development work.
PS- I usually turn the ambience setting off.
