• "phantom" effects in audio enhancements
    3 replies, posted
so for a long time i've been struggling with recordings/streams from my computer having awful, tinny sound to them, and i've only recently realized that this was due to some sort of "enhancement" being made to the audio - and the quality only seemed that way for myself, since what was actually happening was that i was hearing the already "enhanced" audio being "enhanced" again when i played it back. i didn't realize at first because checking the audio settings, i didn't have any of the "enhancement" options enabled, so clearly there was nothing there, right? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/201587/e5202a68-8d0c-49e5-ac2d-f97f1563bd29/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/201587/9526619f-8dc9-406b-bd07-cc6c0b610c07/image.png well apparently for years i've been accustomed to some sort of "enhanced" sound, since when "Disable all sound effects" is checked, the audio sounds noticeably different. namely, it just seems bassier and muddier to me. but none of the "enhancement" options were enabled before anyway (nor is there anything enabled in the additional dell/realtek audio settings) - so what's going on "under the hood"? what's this phantom enhancement that's hidden from me here, only affected by the broad "Disable all" setting? all this leaves me with several other questions, like, is either setting necessarily better or worse quality than the other, in an "objective" sense? am i so used to the "enhanced" sound that i've tricked myself into thinking it's better? thus, would i be able to just adjust myself to the "proper" sound with time? or is it actually better with whatever these mystery effects are? i'd really appreciate if someone could enlighten me as to what the hell is up with these audio settings.
Probably this. Your ears can get used to sounds pretty quickly and it's why mixing engineers take breaks to avoid ear fatigue. I don't know why realtek would have effects enabled even if they're unchecked, could be a bug. Or maybe the fact that you're apparently running though both dell and realtek audio drivers? I've never used dell or realtek drivers before so I'm not sure You must've had an equalizer applied to your audio, but the exact effects and settings differ between sound devices and drivers. I don't know how you'd go about fixing this other than reinstalling drivers, it's hard to tell without knowing how your audio sounds and what hardware you have This all depends on your hardware. An effect on all your audio would objectively be worse quality if you want everything to sound how it was intended. But if you're not an audiophile looking for the best sound then it's completely up to you, if your speakers or headphones sound too bassy then use an EQ to compensate. You could even google the frequency response of your speakers to see if your ears are correct in hearing too much bass.
i decided to update my audio drivers (which have probably been untouched since forever), and discovered there's a separate "Dell Audio" settings that included some "MaxxAudio" shit that was applying EQ (among other things). for whatever reason, this entire thing wasn't showing up at all before i updated the drivers, but the maxxaudio was there in the background and enabled by default. disabling all effects in the windows sound settings turned it off but i couldn't see it anywhere, so i didn't know what was happening. now that i can toggle it on and off at will (separate from all the other enhancements which were, off course, also off), i know it's been the culprit this whole time. :mysterysolved: now that i've really narrowed down what's going on, i'm going to leave the effects off for a while and maybe later i'll turn it back on and see if the audio with effects sounds weird to me after getting reaccustomed to the "natural" sound. i wouldn't call myself really an audiophile, but i care about quality enough to notice the difference and spend some money on nice headphones, so it bothers me that this has been escaping me for so long. generally i'd think i'd prefer things flat, but who knows - maybe i'll decide i just like things a little less bassy, or maybe it was just aural stockholm syndrome.
For me, the "disable all" option doesn't even appear. How do I check to see if I'm experiencing something similar?
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