DAFX Studio
is a professional audio enhancing studio for winamp and other soft-wares which support winamp DSP plugin. So far, it
includes five main classes of audio processing modules:
1) "Audio Restoration",
which has DeClick, DeHiss, DeNoise, DeEss* and DeHum*.
2) "Graphic
Equalizer (GEQ)", which consists of many professional multi-bands Graphic Equalizers.
3) "Spatial Audio", which consists of DeVocal (Karaoke effect),
Model-Reverberation, Sample Reverberation* and Virtual 3D.
4) "Tempo / Pitch modification",
which consists of Tempo Scaler, Pitch Scaler and Resampler.
5) "Distortion effects", which
consists of Vibrato and Whisper.
*Latest Updation in V1.2
About Registration
A trial version is available with full functionality. For
un-registered version, "DAFX Studio
(Un-Registered)" will be displayed on DAFX Studio window’s title. Every time DAFXStudio is launched, or a DAFX module is switched, a
registration dialog as shown in figure 1, will pop up. and ask for a valid "Name" and "Code" pair. The registration dialog will
disappear and never pop up again after the valid registration, unless you select "Reg" or "About" from the popup menu.
Figure 1 Registration Dialog
For
registered version, the DAFX Studio window’s title is "DAFX Studio". If you
select "Reg" or "About" from the popup menu, the registration dialog will pop up with "Name" displayed and "Code" masked,
as shown in the following figure.
Figure 2 Registration Dialog of
registered DAFX Studio
For more
information about purchase and registration, please visit our website: http://www.DAFXStudio.com.
Please send your emails to support@dafxstudio.com for technical questions and bugs reports.
Press "F1" button for help in DAFX Studio. A document named "Help.html" will be opened. If the help file is lost, the web page will be opened at http://www.DAFXStudio.com/manual.html. For other operations, just
right-click the DAFX Studio panel, a menu will popup at the position of
cursor as shown below.
Figure 3 Popup menu of DAFX Studio
User operation Interface
First, select the "DSP/Effect" option in the
preferences panel, then select DAFX Studio
in the plug-in list, and the DAFX Studio panel will pop up automatically.
If it doesn’t, just push the "Configure" button. Next time winamp starts, the DAFX Studio will be loaded automatically with the last setting. In the
DAFX Studio, you can select different DAFX modules from the column on the left. For
each DAFX module, you can load some presets or manually tune the related parameters
to obtain satisfactory effects. The operation chart is shown in the
following figure.
Figure 4: Operation chart of DAFX
Studio
In
the panel of certain DAFX module, there is at least one component, "Gain"
slider. If the DAFX module does more than just "pass by", there will be some
run-time tunable parameter sliders.
DAFX Modules
1: Level
Tuning
This module does nothing but letting winamp play the audio directly. The only configurable parameter is "Gain". You can change the gain coefficient
of the selected channel, and it varies from -60dB to 60dB.
Figure 5 Level Tuning
* For stereo stream/file, or the DAFX
module support channel selection (such as EQ), there will be two check boxes
noted as "L" and "R". You can apply the effect to the channel you selected.
For mono stream/file, or the module without channel configuration (such as DeVocal), there is only a check box "pass", which let you
apply the effect to the whole data stream or not.
2 : Audio Restoration
There are three modules in Restoration,
DeClick, Dehiss and DeNoise. They deal with the polluted audio from the old media,
such as old tapes and old films, or thoes recorded in a noisy environment.
① DeClick
DeClick is designed to meet the demand of
enhancing the old recordings, such as old tapes and old films. Unlike most other
programs, DAFX DeClick does the Restoration work automatically. The only runtime configurable parameter is "Thresh", which
controls the auto detection threshold of click. A lower "Thresh" means a more sensitive
detector, and the default value is 8.0.
② DeHiss
DeHiss suppresses the hiss noise in old
music, opera recordings, or those generated by circuit thermal noise in some equipment.
Its configure panel is very similar to that of DeClick. The "Thresh" controls the
sensitivity of hiss suppression.
③ DeNoise
DeNoise can eliminate the un-wanted audio in
the spectrum domain. In most cases, the eliminated audio part is background
noise, such as power hum. By default, it takes the first audio clip (specified by the parameter "NoiseLen") that winamp plays, as the reference
of un-wanted audio part. If the appropriate reference noise exists (with little desired audio as possible) in
the middle of the audio, stop the player, pull the playback time to the wanted
place first, then push the "Snap Noise" button and play the audio. Then pull the playback time
to the beginning, play the audio again, then you
will hear the enhanced audio. The "Thresh" is the suppression
ratio of the un-wanted audio. When it’s tuned up, there will be less un-wanted
audio, but more distortion, and vice versa. The default value is 0.5. "Window" is the frame width in millisecond, this parameter is set according to the stationary duration of noise. For steady noise such as power hum, "Window" can be set up to hundreds of millisecond. The default value of "window" is 50 millisecond. Another
parameter is "Noise Len"(default value is 4 times of that of "Window"), which
controls the length of the reference noise.
④ DeEss
DeEss can reduce the annoying "Ess" sound or sibilance in recorded speech. Unlike other sibilance suppression tools, DeEss of DAFX Studio has the folowing properties: I It can suppress the sibilance only and with the rest speech signal untouched. II It can do most work automatically by its adaptive filter, the only tunable parameter "Ratio" controls the suppression ratio of sibilance.
⑤ DeHum
DeHum can remove the annoying background power hum noise. Unlike other hum noise removal tools, DeHum of DAFX Studio can remove the hum noise automatically, even in case of hum frequency varying with time.
And there are no complicated and tedious setting to the tool. The common power frequencies are 50Hz, 60Hz, 25Hz and 16.7Hz which are listed in the preset listbox already.
3 : Graphic Equalizer
(GEQ)
There are 5 GEQ modules in DAFX
Studio, from simple 3-Bands to professional 1/3 Octave 31 Bands. Mmany EQ
presets are supplied with the software. The dynamic range of each band is -18dB~18dB.
① 3 Bands EQ (8/3 Octave)
With this EQ, you can easily modify the bass or tremble property of the audio for 3 tunable
bands.
Presets: BASS, Tremble, Bass&Tremble, MidBoost.
② 10 Bands EQ (1
Octave)
16 different popular presets are supplied with the 10
Bands EQ.
Presets: 1965, 1965-II, Bass Vib, PresenceMusic, High Pass, Low Pass, Rattle Trunk, Bass Cut, Bass Lift, Tremble Cut, Tremble Lift, Mid Boost, Mid Cut, Notch2Oct, Vocal Boost, Vocal Cut.
③ 15 Bands EQ (2/3
Octave)
28 different popular presets are supplied with the 15
Bands EQ.
Presets: Bright&Flat, UltraLoudness, EnhanceLight, EnhanceHeavy, Acoustical, Blues, BrightFat, Classic, Dance, HipHop, HomeTheater, Jazz, Latin, Loudness, Metal, NewAge, NoBoomBass, Presence, R&B, Rock, SmallRadio, SpokenWord, Telephone, UltraLowBoos, UltraLowCut, VocalBoost, VocalCut, Woody
④ 20 Bands EQ (1/2
Octave)
12 different popular presets are supplied with the 20
Bands EQ.
Presets: Classic-V, BowedString, BrightPunchy, Dark&Dull, CarStereo, LowFidelity, NotchOct, PossibleBass, SlopeTremble, SlopeBass, SpitClear, TinyBrittle
⑤ 31 Bands EQ (1/3
Octave)
15 different popular presets are supplied with the 31
Bands EQ.
Presets:
ClassicV, Pop, Punch&Sparkle, HomeTheater, GentleHiBoost, GentleHiCut, GentleLowBoost, GentleLowCut, GentleMidBoost, GentleMidCut, Notch2/3Oct, Premaster, PrePhoneCut, PresentDrum, ShimmerVox.
4 : Spatial Audio
① DeVocal Mono
This module can suppresse the voice of the stereo
audio, and produces a mono output. There are three tunable parameters, "Voice
Low Frequency" and "Voice High Frequency" control the frequency domain of the
voice, with the default value, 200 Hz and 10KHz respectively. "Panning" controls what
part of the audio will be cut. The voice is panned in the middle by default, and the correspondent Panning coefficient is 0.0.
② DeVocal Stereo
This module is more attractive than "DeVocal
Mono" with the resulted audio having a clear stereo music image. The tunable parameter "Vocal"
is designed for suppressing or boosting the voice of the stereo audio. For
example, -1.0 for vocal suppressed maximally, 0 for unchanged vocal, and positive
value for boosted vocal. The other parameters are just like the ones in "DeVocal
Mono". A full Karaoke function can be achieved by working together with
other tool, such as lyrics.
③ Sample Reverberation
This module is more attractive than Model Reverberation for the true environmental impression, such as amphitheater, operaHouse, etc. There are 14 typical environment : Amphitheater,
Auditorium,
Cave,
Chapel,
Club,
ConcertHall,
Hallway ,
InCar,
MediumHall,
OperaHouse,
SmallRoom,
Stadium,
Stairway,
Studio.
Figure 17 Sample Reverberation
④ Model Reverberation
This module adds a model based
reverberation effect to the audio. The mixing of the
audio consists of three parts, direct sound, early reflections and later
reverberation. "Size" controls the size of the rectangle room. A large size means more reflections and longer reverberation time. "RefC" controls the reflection coefficients of the wall. "DirR", "RefR" and "RevR" controls the ratio of the three mix components. A
large room with high reflectivity may result in a clipped audio, tune "Gain" down
in that case.
Figure 18 Model-Reverberation
⑤ Virtual 3D
This module adds binaural localization
effects to stereo output device. The first tunable parameter is "Azimuth"(θ), and the
second is "Elevation"(φ), and they indicate the position of audio source relative to the human head. The definitions of the parameters are illustrated in the following
figure. You can "move" the sound source in the space by changing azimuth and
elevation at runtime. Tuning the third parameter "Both" will change θ and φ simultaneously.
Figure 20 The meaning of
"azimuth"(θ)
and "elevation"(φ) of sound source to
the listener
*Notes: This effect
works better with ear phones, an alternative selection is headphones. For
speakers, you should sit around the so called "Sweet spot".
5 : Tempo / Pitch modification
There are three different modules available. "Tempo Scaler" changes the tempo speed of the audio and
keeps the pitch unchanged. On the other hand, "Pitch Scaler" changes the pitch of the audio without changing the tempo. The "Resampler" changes the sample rate of the audio. Playing
the audio with original sample rate will result in a varied tempo and pitch.
① Resampler
This is a sample rate converter, for example
for converting 44.1kHz music to 48kHz. However winamp plays the resampled audio
by the sample rate specified in the original file, so this may cause a pitch
distortion. You can only modify the sample rate parameter by a third tool. Tuning "Ratio" up results in up-sampling, tuning down results in down-sampling. The
resulted sample rate is the product of the original sample rate and the "Ratio".
② Tempo Scaler
This module changes the tempo speed
smoothly with pitch un-changed. It can be used in foreign language studying, or
audio length conversion. The resulted time duration is the product of the original one
and the "Tempo" coefficient.
③ Pitch Scaler
With this module, you can modify the pitch
of the audio. When "Pitch" is tuned up, a high-pitched audio is played, a low-pitched audio is played otherwise. Tthe time
duration is unchanged.
6 : Distortion Audio
DAFX Studio also supply some distortion transforms,
such as vibrato and whisper.
① Vibrato
This module adds vibrato effect to the
playing audio. In most cases, voice with vibrato is more attractive than
the music only audio. "Vibrato frequency" controls the frequency (Hz) of
vibrato, and "Delay" controls the vibrato amplitude, which varies from 10 μs
to 0.1 s.
② Whisper
This module is for speech only. It provides a whisper effect, with voice suppressed. The only tunable parameter "Wet" controls the mixing ratio between whisper and the original audio.
Notes:
Host Compatibility
-
DAFX Studio can also be used in
other softwares, such as foobar 2000 (0.8 or higher, with winamp dsp plugin bridge), KMPlayer, TTPlayer. But there are
some restrictions:
- The host software may have no output
ability.
- Some modules of DAFX Studio, such as Resampler and TempoScaler, may not
work correctly, as these host softwares do not handle
the inequality of input samples and output samples.
- In the next major version, DAFX Studio will be released via VST interface.
Contact Email : dafxsupport@DAFXStudio.com
