I found the Noise Sharpening DSP on this component to be one of the main reasons I love foobar2000. I don't think I can listen to mp3's without it!

I highly recommend it to anybody.
http://pelit.koillismaa.fi/plugins/dsp.php#92
(for foobar2000 0.8.3)

To the developer, thanks so much for this great plugin.

----

No prob.

~ the developer

http://foosion.foobar2000.org/components/
(for foobar2000 0.9.5 and newer)


moderation: updated download link for foobar2000 0.9.5 version

Wow! That DSP is awesome. I'm usually not one for DSPs (in fact all I had before was just crossfading via DirectSound v2.0), but I must say I'll be keeping this one. Thanks.

I was the same way myself.

Here's something interesting. I publicized this plugin in another well known forum and I'm currently getting all sorts of responses with people saying that they will leave Winamp AND ITunes for Foobar2000 since their music sounds so much better with this component. Some are even asking for a port, and I of course gave credit to the developer and pointed them to his page.

I thought I'd try this out.....I only needed a slight enhanced...as my setup is pretty prime.....this is pretty good stuff.....everyone should leave winamp lol

haha yeah.

its cool what a little fun with mathematics can do

hmm

maybe ssamadhi97 is a mathemagician?

(simpsons anyone?)

heh-heh I saw that ep, spase.

In any case I usually don't use DSPs or even EQ, but this one seems pretty subtle. I'll try it for a while and see how I like it. Can any of the hardcore audio guys here explain if this will affect clipping and such (the only other DSP I use in the stack is the Advanced Limiter)?

it seems that the treble is a lot high in the musics, i turned the settings to 60% and now its all good, without the DSP enabled the treble in the music seem a little bit layed out or cutted off, something like that...

but i want some more tecnical explanations about, someone?

a good plugin.. 50% is enough for me..

That's what I noticed -- the bass was seriously lacking. But setting it to around 60 evens it out a bit.

Hehe, I'm tempted to create a snake oil urban legend around it wonder how long it takes before this will become a "fact"

/tongue in cheek/
You see, the oversampling DAC you most certainly use has to unavoidably do some digital filtering on the signal to do its job, which resembles something opposite to what this dsp does - and as a side affect is causing music a little bit layed out or cutted off in highs, something like that... So this noise sharpening is sorta undoing the damage by predistorting the signal in a manner that gets again undone by the DAC later. In effect, you get "more realistic" music, "as it was recorded". Now you can get the glimpse of why many audiophiles accept only non-oversampling purist DACs. And, um, you can get that without spending $$$$ now.

/tongue in cheek/

Well, in reality, you experience loudness race in its purest form - that which sounds louder feels to sound better. You get used to it very fast, and turning back is pain.
It mixes derivative of the signal (difference to previous sample) with signal itself. Amplitude of this derivative is higher with higher frequencies, thats why only treble is notably affected.
It is a sort of equalizer that increases treble in dependence to high frequency content amplitude - higher amplitude signals get increased more than lower amplitude content. It feels like "curtain has been unvelied"
Anyone remember Dolby B in tapes sounding better without undoing Dolby compression?

So, wimms, are you saying that this "increase in treble" is more correct? Is a more realistic sound?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=tongue-in-cheek

yeah im liking this for now....will test it out properly only using it at 40% as I set my eq high on tops (treble) anyway.
Nice plugin

How do I set this up? There we 3 components added to the list. 2 give me no bass and high trebile, 1 gives me way too much bass.....

There should be a 4th new entry in the dsp list, Noise sharpening, which is the one these people here are enjoying. Glad you people like it, btw.

(as for other questions etc in this thread, I'll answer after some sleep.. if I don't forget to)

@ssamadhi97,
I got the 4th entry in the dsp list. However, I am also confused by these 4 entries, seems like the "integrate" MUST to be used with EITHER "differentiate" or "diff; safe". I put "Noise sharpening" after two of these.

i.e.
1. convert LPCM to delta-PCM (differentiate)
2. convert delta-PCM to LPCM (integrate)
3. Noise sharpening (how many % is the best?? My default is 100. )

This is the best combination I get so far, pls advice me if you got better configuration or sequence of the entries to be loaded in dsp manager.

Thanks.

Won't the first two just be cancelling each other out? So remove them - they shouldn't be needed, just use Noise Sharpening on its own.

I set it to 40. Sounds great.

Indeed. If f(t) is your input audio signal (t = time), the output of the functions is as follows:

Convert LPCM to delta-PCM (differentiate): f'(t)
Convert delta-PCM to LPCM (integrate): F(t)
Noise sharpening: f(t) + f'(t)

I implemented the first one because it was requested (by wimms iirc), the second one as a means to test whether the first one works properly etc, and the third one.. dunno.. because I was bored and felt like playing around with this stuff.

And indeed, Noise sharpening can/should be used alone.

Wow! Nice plugin! 40% is good for me too

wow, this indeed makes the sound sharper. Nice work there.

Isn't this means I asked my foobar to do a double job here? haaa..

Now I removed any "integrate" & "diff" and leave the Noise sharpening works great!
Thanks to pointing this out else I'm still in blur..

hmm, it seems that some tunes, especially ones with already high treble on them get too clear with this plugin, and sound worse then they should be. Vinyl and MIDI recordings seem to suffer from this it seems. (MFSL Beatles recordings, Doom 2 midi recordings)

Hi guys, I love foobar2000 but perharps am not I as good an audiophile-tester as you all dudes!
so here is my config:

Jimi Hendrix - Stepping Stone (mpc 1.15v insane profile)
creative soundblaster live! 24 bits external
24 bits (no dither) @ 48000 khz SRC (Sinc best) Resampler -> directsound 2.5 output



Have I well done?
Thanks for your forum, your time and your help!

Sylvain, France

Take out "convert LPCM to delta-PCM (diff; safe)" & "convert delta-PCM to LPCM (integrate)"

this plugin's awesome! great for the crappy 128kbps files i have... makes them sound a lot lot better!

i'm using this dsp config:
Gap killer
Equalizer
Noise sharpening
Channel mixer
Advanced limiter

is that ok?

Hi, how are you?

Is there another way to download this plug-in, like a Zip?

Because I'm behind a firewall and can't download DLLs and EXEs

Thanks in advance!
Rodolfo from Mexico

I set up a mirror. Hope you guys don't break my traffic limit . http://digitalfrost.planetzord.de/foo_dsp_delta.zip

Yeah, i love this thing too. I used to have it up at 125, but the transients were too clear (noise, hissing etc)

Reducing it to 60 gives a much better result. I've got some really nice sound with foobar now.

30 was too much for me :-)

25 = perfection

0.9 could really use this now that its out...

Yeah yeah yeah here you go

foo_dsp_delta for foobar2000 0.9 final


I'm glad to see that people are enjoying this plugin so much, even though it isn't much more than a little experimental boredom project.

Have fun!


PS: Special thanks to foosion for compiling as I don't have the necessary resources right now.

A big thank you to both you and foosion.

If I'm not mistaken, the result of this component output is similar to a linear frequency raise? Since dsin(2pi*n*f*t)/dt = 2pi*n*cos(2pi*n*f*t), the added signal is dependent from f and its amplitude is higher at high frequencies.

Yes. This is also quite easy to see if you use basic rules about the Fourier transform (pictures from Mathworld):

What effect strenght are you guys using?

PS: It really makes a difference 8)

From 15% to 25% depending on the HF content of the music I'm listening to.

What? Are you kidding? This an awsome plugin. Really! Thank you so much.

Well, basically (and this is imo another interesting - albeit somewhat obvious - observation in the vein of what foosion and djet talked about) the operation this plugin performs is very simple: It's merely a convolution with (-a 1+a), where a, the effect strength (or the factor a in f(t)+a*f(t), see my description earlier in this thread), is in [0; 2]

If you apply this on an image, you will see that it's simply an unilinear sharpening filter - hence the name I picked for the dsp effect.


@Chaser: I use anything from 0-200, depending on how muffled the recording is. I have a lot of live music on my harddisk, and a considerable amount of these recordings sounds a lot better to me with the help of foo_dsp_delta.

Thx for the update.

Would it be possible to make a plugin that does the oppisite as well? I've got some recordings that sound very harsh. Preferably in a "passive" fashion to aviod clipping.

What do you mean by "'passive' fashion?"

That aside, yes, I've been thinking about that. We'll see what happens.

Negative gain instead of positive to avoid clipping.

I had this awesome DSP before my computer got fried. Now, I'm trying to re-install it, but I'm having a problem.

I put the .dll file in the components folder.
I open foobar2000.
I get an error message that says:
"Failed to load DLL: foo_dsp_delta.dll
Reason: This component is missing a required dependency, or was made for different version of foobar2000."

Because of whatever this means, the noise sharpener doesn't appear in the DSP manager. Can anyone help me?

realdaguro: First of all, what version of foobar are you using? 0.8.3 or 0.9?

I'm using v0.9. I can't find any other version.

Make sure you downloaded the 0.9 version of foo_dsp_delta (second link in first post).

Got this a few weeks ago, forgot to say thanks. So thanks for the nice plugin

Same, pretty nice. Good work :]

Awesome, I really like the way it works.