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I've never had a chance to use one of these things, so i'm not sure what the effect actually sounds like. i do have an Aphex Aural Exciter (Type C) and think i understand it's principles of operation. (synthesizing harmonics)

But from what i've read, spatial enhancers split up the signal into bands and delay them differently to 'enhance' the signal. This almost sounds like something that could be tried at home with a DAW, some HP,BP,LP filters and delays. (while we're at it, we could make a multi-band compressor too). Would this work? For an enhancer, does anyone know what kinds of values we'd be working with? (e.g. delay <100hz, 10ms; 100-250hz, 5 ms; >250hz, 0 ms) Is there anything proprietary going on here, or is it just a lot of work getting the values that sound right. Why would delaying the lower frequencies enhance the sound?

Any takers?

C.

Comments

Ethan Winer Tue, 07/22/2003 - 09:05

Merrial,

> But from what i've read, spatial enhancers split up the signal into bands and delay them differently <

The widening effects I've seen use frequency-specific phase shift to make the image seem wider than the loudspeaker boundaries. Likewise for some stereo synthesizers that create stereo from mono. I'm not aware of anyplug-insthat apply only shift phase, but this is what you'd need to experiment on your own.

> Why would delaying the lower frequencies enhance the sound? <

I don't think it would enhance the sound. That sounds more like the smoke-screen BBE uses to describe their spectral enhancer effects.

--Ethan

anonymous Tue, 07/22/2003 - 22:25

Thanks Ethan for the reply.

A quick follow-up question:

I'm not aware of anyplug-insthat apply only shift phase, but this is what you'd need to experiment on your own.

what is the difference between phase shift and delay? if i split a sound into two frequency chunks and then delay one of those chunks, i'm shifting the phase of the one chunk relative to the other, aren't I? all i would need is a DDL plug.

i guess really i should just go try it and see what happens...

c.

Ethan Winer Wed, 07/23/2003 - 07:43

Merrial,

> what is the difference between phase shift and delay? <

The difference shows up when you combine the original and phase-shifted versions of a signal. With delay you get a comb filter having a series of peaks and dips in the frequency response that extends infinitely. With phase shift you get a limited number, depending on how many shifting stages you use.

--Ethan

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