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[samtheman57]

Last night I tried the DFX audio enhancer for MC16.

While I could hear some enhancements in the mids and high frequencies, the sound quality seemed a bit leaning towards the brittle side.

A couple of questions, is there a freeware plug in that does as good a job or better?

That is, if MC 16 is an audiophile grade player, and you have made the effort to upgrade your speakers and convert your library of CDs  to FLAC, or purchased HD tracks 96/24, does the DFX plug in do more harm than good?

I will defer to the experts, but it seems to me that if music is EQd in the (expensive) studio before final mastering, then why do you need further "enhancements"?

Excuse the naive nature of the questions, any opinions appreciated.

[Matt]

There's no right answer to what DSP is good.  It's just what sound you like.

You might play with the included DSPs in Media Center.  There's some good stuff there.

You can also install professional VST DSPs natively in Media Center.

Try not to mistake more volume for better sound, which is harder than you might think.  A lot of things that make people go wow (including DFX to some extent) are due to volume changes.

[Vincent Kars]

Some examples of DSP

Room correction: your speakers are a bit too close to the wall or a corner but you don’t have the space to place them otherwise. This in general results in a booming bass. You might use DSP to correct this.

Today active speakers often comes with a digital crossover.
It allows for filters hard or impossible to build with analogue components like FIR filters: http://www.dspguru.com/dsp/faqs/fir/basics

Often the DSP is also used to correct the frequency response. Normally this is +/- 3 db.
DSP can limit this to +/- 1 db.

If a recording is over bright you might EQ it a little.
You are a bass head? Use the EQ to get that true car stereo sound.
You want your 24 bit/96 kHz FLAC sound like a 1930 turn table? http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/vinyl/
Etc. etc.

How you cope with DSP is a matter of style.
Purist won’t use it. It is not true to the recording!
Engineers will use it as an effective means to compensate for deficiencies
Hedonist will use it to create the sound they like

[samtheman57]

Try not to mistake more volume for better sound, which is harder than you might think.  A lot of things that make people go wow (including DFX to some extent) are due to volume changes.

That type of thinking might have appealed to me in ancient times as a teenager, but now, my battered ears actually prefer hearing detail at softer volume. Matt, I think you hit the nail on the head, certain frequencies, using DFX seemed louder but with a brittle edge. I am not a believer in features where I don't understand what is happening, the vague terms like "3D sound" and "Dynamics"..you have to ask what is being changed in the output.

How you cope with DSP is a matter of style.
Purist won’t use it. It is not true to the recording!
Engineers will use it as an effective means to compensate for deficiencies
Hedonist will use it to create the sound they like

Thanks Vincent, I suppose that is what I was looking to hear.