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Topic: Playback EQ preset curve per song according to the tune's year (Read 2669 times) previous topic - next topic
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Playback EQ preset curve per song according to the tune's year

Hello, this is about an idea I have for a new foobar2000 component:  "foo_YearEQ"

The main purpose of the component is to allow automated EQ-related choices according to [time era] sound engineering/mastering/playback system variations.  For example, perhaps soft rock music of the 1980's tends to have less low frequency content than soft rock music of the 1990's.  The component would automatically add a customizeable playback EQ curve to tunes meeting the set criteria for a date or range of dates.  The automatically chosen playback EQ curve would have the purpose of making the music "sound better" or "sound more appropriate" according to the user's preferences.  Also, the purpose of the component is to allow matching of historical tunes to more modern playback systems via EQ adjustments and vice-versa. 

The main functions of the "foo_YearEQ" component: 

1) The component would be toggled on or off according to user preferences. 
2) The component, when on, would EQ playback of a tune according to the corresponding year of the tune's origins. 
3) The criteria corresponding year of the tune could be selectable in user preferences. 
4) The year date could be from within the metadata.  It could be the earliest or the latest date found within the metadata. 
5) The year date obtained from within the metadata could be compared with an online database and/or a manually downloaded database, and automatically changed if possibly incorrect.
6) The year date obtained from within the metadata could be compared with an online website's info, such as Wikipedia, and automatically changed if possibly incorrect.
7) The year date for MP3's downloaded from Amazon.com could be obtained from the embedded Amazon copyright comment instead of from the year metadata field.  Often this may be preferable, since online distribution copyright dates often differ from original date of release for music.  Similar automatic corrections could be made for tagged audio files from other sources. 
8) The user could select (and edit) an EQ curve preset for each year (or range of years) and this would be saved within the component's user preferences. 
9) Additionally, a more advanced edition of the component would automatically select preferred/editable EQ curves according to the date criteria described above AND according to metadata genre (or even other metadata characteristics). 
10) As stated above, the main purpose of the component is to allow automated EQ-related choices according to [time era] sound engineering/mastering/playback system variations.  The component would automatically add a customizeable playback EQ curve to tunes meeting the set criteria for a date or range of dates.  The automatically chosen playback EQ curve would have the purpose of making the music "sound better" or "sound more appropriate" according to the user's preferences.  Also, the purpose of the component is to allow matching of historical tunes to more modern playback systems via EQ adjustments and vice-versa. 

Auxillary or advanced functions to consider: 

11) The component could be developed to also perform dynamics changes such as amplitude expansion to music of a certain era which tends to suffer from over-compression. 
12) Perhaps the dynamics changes could be selected to be restricted to certain frequencies.  This gets much more complex, but it could be useful. 
13) Certain tunes, genres, encoding formats, file extensions, or metadata attributes could be used to form a "whitelist" or "skiplist" of music that should NOT be affected by the component.  The component would be bypassed during playback of such tunes.  Similarly, certain tunes/files could be "blacklisted" so that if they met a user-defined criteria they would ALWAYS be affected by the component when on. 
14) If the media files are tagged as "spoken word" or similar, the component could have settings and options more appropriate for speech instead of for music. 
15) The component could also be developed to take into consideration the type of playback hardware the user specifies he/she is using.  For example, the user could sel

Other considerations: 

The component's playback EQ curves would be stored in a standardized, importable/exportable, portable format so that presets could be named and shared between different users in different geographical regions. 
The component would hopefully fully comply with Foobar2000's interface and file formats.  An A|B or bypass switch should be available in the interface of the component so that a listening user could discern whether or not the component is improving or degrading the playback sound of the original tune/file.

OK, that's it.  I'm sharing this idea with all of you.  I don't actually know how to implement the idea as software or as a Foobar2000 component or script, so I'm sharing it here with people would are likely to be able and/or willing.  I'm not claiming any ownership of this idea.  It's public domain for everyone as far as I know, unless somebody already developed such a thing. 

Please share your insights, thoughts, ideas, comments, questions, interactions, developments, experiments, etc related to this type of thing.  Peace.
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