Equalizer curve advice

[visage]

the issues was that some ringtones sounds hoarsely and distorted: mostly those audio which have many basses and a wide dynamic range. Sure I know that cell phone speakers cannot reproduce very low frequencies, so it's better not to use source which contains many basses. I experiment with different ways of tuning up the ringtones. I will try this Chris's Compressor.
Please clarify about low frequency cut off I asked: what attenuation level is normally Ok to use, -40dB or -24dB? What is difference between High-Pass Filter and Equalizer for use for low-frequency cut-off? And what the cut-off value is Ok to set: 100Hz or 300Hz?

[kozikowski]

The HiPass Filter is a "cliff" effect cutoff. Nothing lower than the listed frequency gets through. It's pretty brutal and sometimes you can hear it working because it can produce damage. The Equalizer tool lets you manage the attenuation or boosting of frequencies as you wish. The less steep the curves, the less the effect, but the less the sound damage. The curve you posted may be duplicated in the equalizer tool given enough time and strong coffee. Like I said, with the exception of the low frequencies, that could be the curve for several speaker systems on the market. They're far from perfect.

To address the low frequency attenuation, the 24dB droop will probably perform for you just fine and sound pretty good to the bargain. The 40dB droop is guaranteed not to allow any low frequencies through, but may sound a little funny. The goals are different.

You can lose frequencies below 100Hz and few people will miss them. If you cut everything below 300Hz, the sound will be seriously thin and lacking body.

You shouldn't be asking us these questions. The answers are like trying to describe the color blue. Try each filter on a high-quality speaker system or headphones and then see which ones result in a good ringtone.

Then, since this forum is a dialog, write back and tell us how you did it.

Koz

[visage]

Does anybody have help file for Dynamic compressor plugin?
http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/
There is lack of any guide/user's manual..

[steve]

That page IS the user guide. The Dynamic Compressor was written and is maintained by Chris Capel. The information on his web site, an in the plug-in itself, is all the information there is.

The main adjustment is the first one: "Compress Ratio"
Increasing this increases the compression ratio. This should normally be in the range of 0.5 to 0.8
The other settings usually work best at their default values.

[kozikowski]

They changed the process since the last time I downloaded it. Where did you get stuck? Did you get the "compress.ny" file OK? Put that in the Audacity > Plugins folder wherever that is on your machine. I'm a Mac elf.

Restart Audacity and you should have a new effect called "Compress dynamics..." Launch it and use it with all the default values. I sometimes increase the first number, Compression from 0.5 to 0.77 to get loudness management similar to the local FM station. The show gets more squeezed and louder as the number goes up.

No compressor works without damage and sooner or later, you're going to get some with Chris. His claim to fame is under normal circumstances few people can hear it working.

Koz

[visage]

I had no problems to instal Compress dynamics, all works. Subjectively, audio compressed by this plugin(with default settings) gives louder sound than compressed with standard Compressor. But i tested mp3 clips on PC speakers, not on phone yet.

[kozikowski]

<<<But i tested mp3 clips on PC speakers, not on phone yet.>>>

That's not what I said earlier. I said good quality speakers or headphones. Most PC speakers are one small step away from not having speakers at all. The way you're doing it, you're trading one set of crappy speakers for another, different crappy speaker.

Chris didn't just get louder. It also adjusted the quieter parts of the performance up so the difference between quiet and loud isn't so great. Chris designed this tool to listen to music in the car. Cars have a high background noise level and his tools raise the performance volume selectively to compensate for that.

And not destroy the show while he was doing it.

If you then adjust the whole show down in volume slightly with the amplify tool, it should be possible to hit a happy point where the phone sounds reasonable without distorting. Have you tried this on more than one phone? You may be surprised to find that yours is the only phone that does this.

I have a TracFone whose sound quality is awful. Far worse than my company cellphone.

Koz

[visage]

the best way is to test ringtones on phone, it's the only way to test real sound. I made two the same ringtone samples, one compressed with regular Compressor, another with Chris compressor, but I didn't notice a sound quality difference when ringtone play on phone.
It would be good, if Audacity developers could add pair of predefined EQ curves designed specifically for mobile phone ringtones.

[kozikowski]

<<<if Audacity developers could add pair of predefined EQ curves designed specifically for mobile phone ringtones.>>>

It would be good, but that kind of thing is usually contributed by outside users since it's simple and it doesn't affect the core programming. The trick is to get the first one. Write back when you get one to work.

Koz

[visage]

I created this curve for EQ, perhaps someone will improve it.

Code: Select all

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