Noise sharpening

What is noise sharpening?

It's a Foobar2000 plugin (component) that keep people coming back to Foobar2000. It makes sound more crispy and clear, which is a great complement for normal recordings and normal equipment that most people own. After using it for a while, some say their music collection sounds dull without it. Some people with pretty good equipment also like it.

As gaekwad2 explained:

It adds the diffeence between the current and the previous sample to the signal, thus boosting high frequencies (mostly the top octave ie. 11-22kHz in case of CD/44.1kHz files) and causing slight distortion.

To quote the description of the original foobar plugin:

Quote:

This started out as sort of a toy plugin containing DSPs for differentiation (input f(t), output f'(t)) and integration (input f(t), output F(t))

Recently a DSP for playback of f(t)+f'(t) has been added, in layman's terms this enhances treble / noise / transient content and can be seen as the audio equivalent of image sharpening filters.

It's not the same as increasing the treble:

No, if anything it's similar to boosting the highest band in the equalizer.

But like most 'enhancer' dsps it also creates additional waves (=distortion), which may help if your equipment doesn't reproduce these high end frequencies.

With good equipment, like all dsps, it does more harm than good.

(It is funny that the byproduct of a toy-plugin can cause such a hype, we'll see how long it lasts.)

And yes, you'll be addicted to noise sharpening, or loudness race in its purest form:

Well, in reality, you experience loudness race in its purest form - that which sounds louder feels to sound better. You get used to it very fast, and turning back is pain.

It mixes derivative of the signal (difference to previous sample) with signal itself. Amplitude of this derivative is higher with higher frequencies, thats why only treble is notably affected.

It is a sort of equalizer that increases treble in dependence to high frequency content amplitude - higher amplitude signals get increased more than lower amplitude content. It feels like "curtain has been unvelied"

Anyone remember Dolby B in tapes sounding better without undoing Dolby compression?

Who created noise sharpening?

It was accidentally created by ssamadhi97 while he was writing a Foobar plugin for converting between PCM and DPCM. He chose the name "noise sharpening" because it's similar to an image sharpening filter (according to ssamadhi97 and gaekwad2).

Do we need noise sharpening?

For casual listeners, it's very useful for music that lacks clarity. If your music is already crystal clear, it will make it too metallic and a little harsh on your ear (if you can hear it with your equipement :D)

If you're an audiophile, you may not need it:

Strictly speaking, nobody really needs this DSP. It's just that some people like the effect. If you want to compensate deficiencies in your playback equipment or listening environment, the convolver or the equalizer are more appropriate tools.