Gimmick for the untrained ear?

[reuliss]

So, my Yamaha receiver has an "enhancer function" for digital music files that, as the name implies, is supposed to improve the quality of the sound. The manufacturer markets the feature as a way to restore lossy digital files.

I have to say that I enjoy the effect of the feature, though I find that I like it even with my lossless music files. What gives? Am I just being dazzled by audio gimmicks? Does anyone else use this or similar features on their receivers? Is this nothing more sophisticated than a "base boost" feature on a cheap rig? I can't help but feel guilty for liking the effect

[ratty]

You can't 'restore' quality in lossy files. Once it's gone, it's gone. What you can do is mask the artefacts, so perhaps this is what the Yamaha is doing. Apart from shaping the frequency response it might also be tinkering with phase/delay to create the illusion of an expanded soundstage.

[Majik]

As ratty said, you can't restore stuff that has been lost.

However, bear in mind that pretty much all modern recordings (including those considered to be audiophile reference standards) have been through some extensive digital processing. This pretty much always includes some audio compression and equalization, but can also include spatial image enhancement, clever dithering and other enhancements. They will also apply such techniques when restoring older recordings or badly recorded sources. I suspect this is the same sort of processing being applied by your receiver. The question is: is really any worse than what is routinely being done in the recording/mastering studios?

At the end of the day, there's a lot of ignorance, assumption, hypocrisy and snobbery in the audio world. If you like the sound of it, then that's the most important thing. Don't feel compelled to eschew using it because some magazine or audio forum told you it was "bad".

Bear in mind your views on how good it sounds may change with time and experience. A good example of this is with heavily compressed (in the audio loudness-wars sense) track will normally sound "better" to most people than a lesser compressed one, simply because they are louder and, psychologically, louder sounds better. However, after extended listening most people find the heavily compressed track fatiguing and lacking in dynamic range and will then start to prefer the less compressed version.

I have heard the same said about heavily data-compressed (compressed in the lossy mp3 sense) tracks.

But the message is to trust your own ears and brain and do what makes you the most happy, bearing in mind your experiences are, to a degree, unique to you. What is true for you may not be true for others, and vice versa.

Given your use of the phrase "untrained ear", I will suggest that enjoying music is not about "training" your ears. Certainly if you work in the audio industry as a Sound Engineer you need to do this, but if all you want to do is enjoy music then it's entirely optional. In fact I would say that the downside of "training" your ears is you start to focus on the minutia of audio rather than the beauty of it as a whole. It becomes more about the technical detail than about the musicality. In my experience, the more you focus on it, the more you get absorbed and obsessed with the mythical idea of "perfection" and the less you actually enjoy the music. And a by product of obsession is that your brain will play tricks on you and you can become increasingly disenchanted with what you have (however good it is). There's a danger you end up listening for flaws rather than listening to the music.

For instance, I have heard of people who would rather not hear music at all than have to "endure" listening to it on an average system. That seems very sad to me.

So my personal advice is to try to avoid over-thinking this and trust your own senses.

Cheers,

Keith

[ControlFreak]

Sounds like a bogus gingerbread feature...but if you like it play it.

I haven't the foggiest what it actually does, but I'm going to assume it's the net "Loudness" button.

Anyone in hi-fi can remember the progression it took...

In the 30's Fletcher & Munson published a paper detailing how sensitive the ear is to different frequencies at different volumes. They noticed that you hear less bass and treble at low volume.

So next thing you get were audio equipment with FM Contour, which was to adjust the EQ for "equal loundness contours".

Then you just saw "Contour" adjustment...then contour turned into the "loudness" button...now I'm guessing loudness has turned into "Enhancer".

[reuliss]

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies.

Majik, your words resonate with me most. I've already found myself playing recordings with better production even if I don't enjoy the actual music as much an inferior recording. A couple of times I've stopped myself and asked why I am doing this, and my response invariably has been "to enjoy the quality of my speakers, et al." While that may be okay to a certain extent, I think your reminder is a good one that there is reason we buy all of this gear: to enjoy the music we love.

Cheers, everyone!

[buzz]

For a while in the late 1970's and early 80's we had a series of "dynamic range enhancers". These devices attempted to reverse the compression used at the time. Compared to modern digital compressors that can operate in multiple bands and fuss with lots of things, the simple analog compression schemes of the era could be mostly reversed with a relatively simple playback scheme. There were a few very popular compressors used on the production side with more or less known characteristics that could be reversed. Certainly, one recording engineer may have set his compressor more aggressively than another, but a simple adjustment on the playback processor could compensate for this.

I'm not saying that the compression could be 100% eliminated, but you could do a reasonable approximation.

Now, with digital processing, the music can be taken apart and "enhanced" band by band. Certain bands may be boosted or have their attack and decay fussed with. In general, the processing is too complex to be reversed, but if one makes a few assumptions about the compressing strategy, a few bands could be expanded during playback. We now have digital processing on the playback side too. There is a lot of processing power in those A/V receivers and they are not very busy while working on simple stereo playback. Spare processing power is available. It takes a team to develop the anti-compression routines. There are a lot of trips to the listening room while proposed techniques are evaluated and tweaked.