Recording From DFX Audio Enhancer

[Astro-Xana]

When producing remixes with audacity, I like to enhance my remixes afterwards by creating a video with it in divx format and play it with the Divx player. Now as for the DFX audio enhancer for the Divx player, I use that to enhance my music and record the enhanced music with audacity. Now to further enhance my music to get a surround sound effect, I paste 0.040 seconds of silence in one of the tracks (left or right channels of the stereo track) which results in the music being a little louder, the music sounding "softer" (i.e. richer) and also getting the surround sound effect. And then I export the enhanced music and upload the enhanced music so that I can download it and listen to it on other computers to see how it sounds. But when I listened to it in Audacity (and also Putfile as well) on a couple of Windows XP desktop computers with built in speakers built into the computers themselves, the 0.040 seconds of silence has actually made the music much more quiet, and also there was no surround sound effect as well. In other words, only the richness of the music was present (along with, of course, the DFX audio enhancements). But when I got rid of that silence (duplicated one of the tracks [either the left or the right channels]), that returned the loudness back to the music. But of course, in doing so, the music no longer sounded rich and returned the "roughness" back to the music. But when I listened to the music on a couple of Mac desktop computers (which were monitors themselves with built in speakers), the 0.040 seconds of silence did actually have the loudness, the richness, and the surround sound effect just like on my computer (which is a Windows Vista Home Premium desktop computer with speakers built into the monitor). Therefore, why is it that the 0.040 seconds of silence sounded just like that on my computer when listened on the Macs and not when I listened on those Windows XPs? Because I wish to have that 0.040 seconds of silence as it improves my music alot. But at the same time, I don't want my music to barely be heard on other computers. Also, just to let you know, I don't necessarily have the 0.040 seconds applied to an entire piece of music--just to those portions of audio in the music that I want because there are portions of audio that I don't want to be rich so that they sound more clear as the softness (richness) does make the music somewhat less clear.

[steve]

I paste 0.040 seconds of silence in one of the tracks (left or right channels of the stereo track) which results in the music being a little louder, the music sounding "softer" (i.e. richer) and also getting the surround sound effect.

So you are introducing a delay into one channel, of 0.04 seconds (40 milliseconds).
This will tend to pull one track further forward than the other, and also, since the two tracks are no longer "in synch", it will produce a small amount of "phasing" effect, which could serve to make the sound "thicker" or "richer". However, the exact result will be unpredictable (as you have found out), since there are many factors, such as frequency response, distance between speakers, distance of speakers from the listener, and so on, which will change the perceived effect. So basically, this technique may work on your system, and on any identical system, but will sound different on other systems.