[LAU] Exciter / Enhancer Plugin [WAS:] Linux-audio-user?Digest , Vol 19, Issue 9

[Reuben Martin]

Back on Friday 12 September 2008, Fons Adriaensen was like:
> On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 05:43:12PM -0400, drew Roberts wrote:
> > I will try and make some time to listen and see what my ears say.
>
> I don't yet have the complete picture (which is why I
> keep on pushing) but one thing that's quite clear is that
> this 'alternating polarity' thing may be much more related
> to how the Harmonic Generator plugin works than to anything
> essential to the 'exciter' effect.
>
> The actual harmonic levels that are generated are
> *not* independent as the interface would suggest,
> and the interaction between them depends on polarity.
>
> But that's quite different from harmonics 'cancelling'
> or 'mangling' each other on their own - no such things
> \happen, it's the plugin behaving in a much more complez
> way than one would expect.
>

I've never been speaking about this in terms of theory or math. Quite honestly 
I've never really looked into that aspect of it. At the time I created it the 
jack rack preset, I just wanted an exciter, I did a little reading on what 
type of dsp processing elements are involved, and just messed with different 
setups until I got something I liked.

When I say "canceling out" or other terms, please understand I'm not speaking 
literal physics and math. I'm talking about what I hear. And in the end, what 
I hear is all that matters to me. I'm simply trying to say that in my messing 
around, I found that if I set the third and fifth harmonic both in the 
positive or negative direction on the harmonics generator, it would start to 
cancel out (i.e. negatively influence) the desired _effect_ of the exciter.

If you are truly that into the math side of it, the source for those plugins 
is always available for you to pull apart and see for yourself the 
innerworkings and algorithms used.

-Reuben