BassBooster plugin released

I made a plugin to increase bass ans it's called BassBooster. It's basically a combination of HarmonicsGen and EQ Lowpass, with a gain control for the bass and volume controls. The harmonics slider controls how much harmonics are generated. I personally don't hear much difference between the different Harmonics settings.

 

Thanks Tril for another nice one from you.

 

Definitly, very nice indeed. Thank you sir.

 

Good job, you should consider also publishing it on kx preset-exchange http://my.kxproject.com

 

Very nice man, i looked at making this with a bunch of pitch shifters a while ago (due to my lack of dsp programming knowledge i couldnt make a plugin)

 

Does it sound good enough? How does it compare to other product that do something similar? I tried the waves maxxbass plugin a long time ago but I've forgotten how it sounded.

I tried the bunch of pitch shifter too and the results were bad because the pitch shifters were not good enough for the task.

 

i prefer it to maxx bass, allows for a much cleaner output (the maxx bass you have to significantly reduce the high frequency output to gain enough headroom for the new bass, this works better...) also, just curious, are you generating higher harmonics or lower?

 

Higher. I made this plugin based on the article linked in the first post of this thread (Headphone Bass booster idea) started by you, Chester01.

 

thank you for bringing my idea to reality.
Edit: btw, do you keep the fundimental frequency or remove it as in the maxx bass?

 

The fundamental frequency is kept. Is there a need for removing the fundamental frequency? If there is, I can add a checkbox for that.

 

well if you remove the fundamental it will basically be the maxx bass effect, maxx bass removes the fundimental and then adds the harmonics (see the link i gave to how maxx bass works), our brain make up for the fundamental (psychoacoustics) you could make a checkbox for it... the idea is that if you have a system with bad low frequency response you will be able to simulate a better subwoofer without distorting from overexcursion of the subwoofer. check out http://www.maxx.com/objects/MaxxBass_Overview_Jan03.ppt

 

I just found out that the plugin does not work well, at least not the way it should work. The increased amount of bass heard does not come from the harmonics. It comes from the mix of the lowpassed original sound (the bass) and the orginal sound.

I tried to add a "Remove fundamental frequency" checkbox and I noticed that I heard almost nothing when it was removed. If I applied gain to that, I heard that it did not sound pretty, the harmonics are distorted.

You would basically get the same result (without the distortion) as the BassBoost plugin if you used a lowpass filter, a gainHQ and a stereo mix.

I'll work on it again to try to improve the algorithm.

 

yes, i noticed that the pitch shifter plugin (if thats where you got the source for your harmonic generator) creates alot of distortion; and even worse (an area that your plugin does not seem to have trouble) is that the pitch shifter also delays the output by quite a bit making it sound very bad when trying to make a dsp based (use crossovers, pitch shifters etc) bass booster. your plugin doesnt seem to cause delay in the bass and despite the fact that it doesnt work as believed it sounds good and adds a good amount of low end punch (i like it much better than the 10 band eq) in that respect

 

See this if you like the BassBooster plugin : MoreBass plugin released


I did not use the pitch shifter for the harmonic generator. I multiply the input by itself, I substract the DC offset and I multiply by 2.

This gives a signal that has twice the frequency but it distorts the amplitude. The smaller the input, the smallest the output will be.

Example :
sine max value = 1
output = 1*1 = 1

sine max value = 0.5
output = 0.5*0.5 = 0.25

sine max value = 0.25
output = 0.25*0.25 = 0.00625


As you see, the smallest the input signal, the smallest the output will be. A sine wave go from -1 to 0 to 1. If you input a sine wave in this harmonic generator, the shape of the sinus will get distorted. I'm thinking that this may be the problem with my method but maybe that's not only the problem. That's what I think but I could be wrong.

 

Tril, you could use the following for a simple full wave rectifier:

tstneg out_l, in_l, in_l, 0x0;
tstneg out_r, in_r, in_r, 0x0;

 

Do you know any software tools that can compare two signals to find differences between them?
Or tools that can tell you how close a sine is to a perfect sine wave or calculate the THD (or any other information that could be helpful to measure the performance of the harmonic generator)?

I would like to compare a good 100 Hz sine wave with a 100 Hz sine wave generated from a 50 Hz sine by my plugin.

 

I did a quick google search for 'audio analyzer', and a couple looked interesting:

Analyzer 2000 (has a free 30 day trial period)
Spectrum Laboratory (freeware)

 

Rightmark, Cooledit or soundforge's FFT, Csound ('C like' audio language, its complex but powerful),

And, I found this for free (dual channel FFT) http://www.savioursofsoul.de/Christian/DCFFT.htm

 

Hmm, Spectrum LAb looks like fun...

 

Yes it does
I am playing with it right now.