I want you to try a little experiment, start shaking your hand, and while doing so pick up a pen and write your name. If it seems a bit silly to expect your writing to be neat, or nice to read, then spare a thought for your speakers.
If you are feeding your speaker a noisy signal, your speaker has the audio equivalent of Parkinson's. You can't expect it to reproduce a sound accurately if it's shaking randomly in all directions first. How good would an orchestra sound in an earthquake?*
Noise is that hiss and hum you get when you should have silence. The problem is, it doesn't just go away when the music plays.
There are a few likely culprits for creating noise.
One of which is your input source. That is to say the music you are listening to. To check for noise in your music, one of the best ways I have found is listening to a quiet part of the song. Usually at the beginning of a song there is a quiet part before the music starts. Can you hear a hiss? If so, the recording is probably poor! Try finding a better quality song, if you want to hear it in its full glory.
Another terrible source of noise is your amplification. What usually happens is the input volume (e.g. the volume in foobar2000, iTunes, and/or your computer) is set too low, and the volume of your amp is set too high. This will usually be obvious as you will be able to hear a hiss when the speaker is not playing anything. Usually the volume from your PC or other input source should be about 3/4 of the way up.
Another way to set your input volume is to keep your amplifier (i.e. speaker volume) at a fairly low setting. Play a track, and while you do so, keep turning up your input volume. As soon as you get distortion, or the music does not seem to be getting any louder, back off the volume a bit until it starts losing volume a very little bit or the distortion (fuzziness, harshness) disappears.
This way, regardless of how noisy your amplifier is, you will have minimized it.
The last culprit, unfortunately is the point at which you might need to spend money. If your laptop, CD player, PC, or car stereo is creating noise or distortion you may want to replace it, because there is really little that can be done to work around it!
One of the best ways to improve the sound quality of a computers output is by improving the sound card. Before you panic, this doesn't necessarily mean pulling your computer apart. I think the cheapest, and best value way of improving a sound car is just buying an external one.
An external sound card is a great idea, because it gives you the ability to have good sound quality no matter what machine you're using. If you want to change or sell your machine, you just take the card with you.
A good, cheap example of an external sound card is the Soundblaster X-fi Go! It's readily available and retails for about $35US. If you're looking for a fix for bad input, it wouldn't be a bad place to start.
Best of luck in your noise reducing quest! If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
*I'm aware that an earthquake isn't exactly random motion, but if you take into account the stumbling musicians, the wild gesticulations of the conductor, and the tuba player colliding through the percussion section, random motion, and thus noise is approximated.
Friday, 30 September 2011
Tuning an equalizer for iTunes.
It occurred to me that a lot of you may be using an Apple computer, or the iTunes software. As such, I have created some new sounds which correspond to those on the iTunes equalizer.
You may download them here.
The principles are the same as tuning the EQ (equalizer) in foobar2000.
First, create a playlist which repeats, starting from 32Hz through to 16000Hz.
Next, adjust your listening equipment to a comfortable listening volume.
Open the equalizer, and play the playlist. As each tone plays, adjust its corresponding equalizer value, so that it sounds the same volume as the tone which played before it.
For example, if the tone 500Hz played, and it sounded much louder than 250Hz, you'll want to reduce its volume on the equalizer quite a bit. The next time the sound plays you may make a finer adjustment.
Keep adjusting and playing through the tones, and you when your are satisfied that each tone sounds the same volume you are done. Congratulations, you have just fine tuned your listening set up perfectly!
You may wish to save your EQ settings with the name of the listening equipment you are using, as any new equipment will require different settings.
You may download them here.
The principles are the same as tuning the EQ (equalizer) in foobar2000.
First, create a playlist which repeats, starting from 32Hz through to 16000Hz.
Next, adjust your listening equipment to a comfortable listening volume.
Open the equalizer, and play the playlist. As each tone plays, adjust its corresponding equalizer value, so that it sounds the same volume as the tone which played before it.
For example, if the tone 500Hz played, and it sounded much louder than 250Hz, you'll want to reduce its volume on the equalizer quite a bit. The next time the sound plays you may make a finer adjustment.
Keep adjusting and playing through the tones, and you when your are satisfied that each tone sounds the same volume you are done. Congratulations, you have just fine tuned your listening set up perfectly!
You may wish to save your EQ settings with the name of the listening equipment you are using, as any new equipment will require different settings.
How to tune an equalizer.
First of all, if you haven't already, download and install foobar2000.
What we are going to do, is learn to tune an equalizer for your particular sound equipment. It may be your headphones, your stereo or your car stereo. The principles are the same regardless.
Download this file here and extract it to a folder. This is a collection of sound files, each 2 seconds long, playing a frequency that corresponds to those on the equalizer.
Next, open foobar2000. Click the file menu, then add folder. Add the folder you extracted the sound files to.
Then click the Playback menu, scroll to repeat, then repeat playlist.
When you have done that click the View menu and open the equalizer.
Set your equipment to a comfortable listening volume, and play the sounds you have downloaded.
Start with 55Hz and play through to 20000Hz. As you do so, adjust the equalizer so that each sound is the same level of volume.
Once you have made each frequency sound as close as you can to the same level of volume, your equalizer is set.
Save the equalizer settings with the name of the equipment you are using (for example if you were listening with a pair of Grado SR60 headphones, name it GradoSR60). That way, you have a perfect setting for the equipment you are using.
Congratulations! You are now listening to your music the way the producer intended! You may notice that some equipment is a bit quiet using this technique. This is normal.
This is because you are only able to have perfect sound up to the volume of your systems weakest frequency (Usually the lower Hz are not powerful enough, i.e. not enough bass). Most systems are biased towards middle frequencies and you will often find these are the lowest on your equalizer after it has been tuned.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
What we are going to do, is learn to tune an equalizer for your particular sound equipment. It may be your headphones, your stereo or your car stereo. The principles are the same regardless.
Download this file here and extract it to a folder. This is a collection of sound files, each 2 seconds long, playing a frequency that corresponds to those on the equalizer.
Next, open foobar2000. Click the file menu, then add folder. Add the folder you extracted the sound files to.
Then click the Playback menu, scroll to repeat, then repeat playlist.
When you have done that click the View menu and open the equalizer.
Set your equipment to a comfortable listening volume, and play the sounds you have downloaded.
Start with 55Hz and play through to 20000Hz. As you do so, adjust the equalizer so that each sound is the same level of volume.
Once you have made each frequency sound as close as you can to the same level of volume, your equalizer is set.
Save the equalizer settings with the name of the equipment you are using (for example if you were listening with a pair of Grado SR60 headphones, name it GradoSR60). That way, you have a perfect setting for the equipment you are using.
Congratulations! You are now listening to your music the way the producer intended! You may notice that some equipment is a bit quiet using this technique. This is normal.
This is because you are only able to have perfect sound up to the volume of your systems weakest frequency (Usually the lower Hz are not powerful enough, i.e. not enough bass). Most systems are biased towards middle frequencies and you will often find these are the lowest on your equalizer after it has been tuned.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
The best music software.
The best music software I have found is foobar2000.
It's free, and doesn't slow your computer down. It also runs just about any format, including lossless formats such as .flac. The file size is only 3.1MB!
The equalizer tuning described in this blog will be achieved using this software.
It's free, and doesn't slow your computer down. It also runs just about any format, including lossless formats such as .flac. The file size is only 3.1MB!
The equalizer tuning described in this blog will be achieved using this software.
Gere
A sudden fit of passion, feeling, transient fancy, or the like; a wild or changeful mood in which a loose is given to the feelings of the moment.*
That more or less describes the feeling this blog intends to promote when we help you get the best out of ANY sound equipment you have. Work with what you've got first, that will be the motto of this blog. You'll be surprised what you can do!
*Also an actor of dubious merit, yet indisputable good looks. All too much in the North American ideal though, too perfect, missing that je ne sais quoi. Perhaps it is as Sir Francis Bacon once said, There is no excellent beauty without some strangeness in its proportion. But I digress.
That more or less describes the feeling this blog intends to promote when we help you get the best out of ANY sound equipment you have. Work with what you've got first, that will be the motto of this blog. You'll be surprised what you can do!
*Also an actor of dubious merit, yet indisputable good looks. All too much in the North American ideal though, too perfect, missing that je ne sais quoi. Perhaps it is as Sir Francis Bacon once said, There is no excellent beauty without some strangeness in its proportion. But I digress.
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