Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas

More advanced EQ - (Adjustable 10 Band, Pre-Amp ++)

(1/3) > >>

Inocybe:
I think a good equalizer is one of the most important things in a music player, either to adjust the sound to be more natural (flat), or customized. A 5 band EQ is quite limited, and it's very hard to get the sound close to right, even if the bands are adjustable and/or with band widening.

Another thing is an adjustable EQ Pre-Amp (sound level before reaching the EQ). Like your Pre-cut. This is very important to prevent digital clipping when adjusting the EQ settings. It will also optimize the headroom, by adding gain before the EQ. Here a EQ db meter would be useful (placed after the EQ), with "0" marked as clipping.

Here is what I would like to see/have:

1. 10 band EQ.

2. Each band adjustable

3. Each band with possability to be widened

4. EQ Pre-Amp/Pre-Cut (to prevent digital clipping)

5. EQ db Meter (Headroom/Clipping)

To go really nuts, here is something I have wished for for a long time, and something that, as far as I know of, don't excist anywhere:

6. Store EQ settings per folder (album)

This could be just a little text (.txt) file containing the EQ settings (and other settings, like gaps). Before playing songs in the folders, Rockbox would automatically search in this text file, and change the settings (or choose standard settings if no info is found. Why do this? A lot of recordings sound completely different, not only due to the mixers and the mastering process, but also due to the time it was released/made. Personally, I find myself changing the EQ settings all the time, so a feature like this would be very helpful.

:)

Llorean:
1. Each band increases the CPU load. On many of the players 5 bands is a strain already.
2. This is already the case.
3. This is already the case.
4. EQ Pre-amp creates clipping. In what situation do you expect it to prevent clipping?
5. The gain is measured in db already. Could you be more precise as to what you see this "meter" doing besides just reporting to you what the gain applied is again?
6. If the song is mastered "wrong", why don't you apply EQ settings before you compress it. Generally the Rockbox EQ is intended to offset hardware differences. The less EQ work that is done the better, for battery life, so if you have songs that should always be equalized, rather than ones that only need it with one set of earphones but not your speakers, or what not, you should do so while compressing them to improve performance. This would also not only allow per-album equalizing but per-song, and independent of the software or hardware you use to play them back.

Inocybe:
Llorean,

1. What about the other players? I see there is differences between versions allready.

2. and 3. I did actually know (should have mentioned that). I was just describing the whole setup.

4. By having minus values, or having a scale of 1 to 100, and default is 50, for example.

5. This live meter would just report db, nothing else. See answer 2. and 3. (sorry).

6. Have tried it, but found it unpractical. This would create a lot of work, creating different versions of mp3's and flacs, depending on where they would be used. I use different EQ settings for my mp3-player and my laptop, for example. I can't see how EQ-settings per folder would create more strain on the CPU, it just replaces the default ones (not in addition). Thanks for suggestions, though :)

To save CPU load and battery life, these advanced EQ-options could be optional (for those players that can handle it).

Llorean:
1) It's possible to have it on all players (since disabled bands don't do anything)  but most frequency response curves don't really need more points than we already offer.

4) Please describe further. That statement on its own doesn't clarify anything.

5) So basically, it'd repeat what you already know from actually setting the values?

6) If the problem is with the file, why do you need different EQ files for different players? You fix each song to an individual EQ for that file, then you set _one_ EQ file for your MP3 player that you use all the time to counterbalance the hardware. This solves your situation, doesn't require you to have multiple copies of each song, and doesn't require complicated (and breakable) features in Rockbox.

Inocybe:
Llorian,

4. When using minus values, it would work like your Pre-Cut. Reducing the gain before entering the EQ. Same as in the MediaMonkey player (Pre-Amp and 10-band, but no db meter).

5. In a way yes, the db result after EQ settings. You could, for example, set how much headroom you would like to have in reserve in case of sudden peaks. Or, this is a bad one, adding gain and accepting some clipping to get high sound levels. This by observing the db meter and adjusting the Pre-Amp (Pre-Cut).

6. My mp3-players sound differently, so do my laptop, desktop and mac, and not the least, my home stereo (all in flat EQ position). But, this is a feature that is not THAT important. A 10-band EQ would make me happy for some time :)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page