Motherboard: Intel D865PERL (Springdale) Review :: Controls

On/Off - click the big round button to turn Sonic Focus ON or OFF.

What's always there when Sonic Focus is ON is the clarity enhancer for voice and solo instruments. It works as well for movie and game dialog as it does for music tracks. There are no adjustments necessary for this - the sweet spot is there.

Reset - if you move any slider its background color will change. Clicking the reset button returns all sliders to their default positions and color.

Monitoring Level Selector - select the monitoring model that you wish to simulate.

• Left position - large speakers with high Sound Pressure Levels (SPL)
• Mid position - multimedia or personal speakers - medium SPL
• Right position - headphones or very small full range monitors - low SPL

Select - choose a Sonic Focus Audio Environment from the pulldown list - it's the 'room' or 'space'. Sonic Focus will recreate those acoustical characteristics. Select one of the ten presets (see the list at right) that fits the source material. Or experiment by placing your source material in a different space than you'd normally find it. The sliders change position when you select another ambience, but there is much more going on behind the scenes than just slider position.

Sliders affect the sound within the chosen space as described below. You control many internal Sonic Focus Digital Signal Processing (DSP) parameters with only five sliders. These five sliders have 'macro control' over the audio restoration and enhancement process, as if with many hands.

Brilliance - a smooth high-end adjustment that compliments treble controls or graphic EQ. The effect of the brilliance control can be subtle. It affects the top octave of sound. If there is little content in the source material above 12,000 Hz, it won't make much difference. In movies, games and CD quality audio, the effect is 'shimmery' and can help compensate for inefficient or poorly designed tweeters.

Deep Bass - an even smoother low end control without thump, bump or 'mega'. Superior to traditional bass controls because it controls a complex DSP process which senses and augments overall low spectrum energy. It won't clip or distort, but it can produce overwhelming low frequency signals that may challenge your subwoofer's 'cone excursion limits'. If you don't have a subwoofer or large speakers, resist the urge to crank this all the way up as compensation.

Depth - as you move this control to the right, you are enlarging the recording environment. This control changes the depth and volume of the room or space defined by the selected preset.

Width - moves the rear microphones from the center of the environment towards the edges. As you move the width control to the right, you're moving the virtual mics from the center of the room towards the walls or sides of the environment. As with all Sonic Focus sliders, we help you avoid overdoing the effect.

Sonic Focus Audio Environments

Sonic Focus enhances music, movie and game sound by analyzing the audio stream in realtime and re-engineering it. You oversee this complex process with a few simple controls, only one of which is usually necessary - the audio environment selector.

Sonic Focus Audio Environments:

• Audio Studio - Great for most music. It's a good starting point for familiarizing yourself with the operation of Sonic Focus controls. If you just want to 'set and forget' Sonic Focus for music listening, use Audio Studio.
• Jazz Session - Similar in virtual size to Audio Studio, but with a warmer, more intimate sound.
• Night Club - A medium room, dense early reflections, harder surfaces. Designed with dance music in mind.
• Game Space - Minimal ambience. Allows game environment and sound FX to come through while enhancing clarity and providing deep bass control.
• Bass Jam - Special treatment of the lower portion of the audio spectrum for subwoofer huggers.
• Theater - Theater auditorium space optimized for movies and featuring superior dialog enhancement. Good for music too!
• Rock Concert - Modeled after a famous outdoor amphitheater near San Francisco, California. You are at the prime mix position.
• Sonic Wide - Exaggerated perspective along the wide dimension. Try it with a mono audio source.
• Symphony - Perfect for classical music, but try it with anything that's musically large in scope
• Cathedral - Exhibits the size, dimensional and hard early reflection characteristics of an ancient stone cathedral.

Each of these preset audio environments restores compressed audio and regenerates acoustical properties. There is no 'wrong way' to set these, although you will get the best results by matching audio environment presets to the sound source in your PC as you go along.

Sonic Focus Technical Product Description

Sonic Focus: Space, Time and Frequency

Sonic Focus incorporates advanced, nonlinear adaptive processes that dramatically enhance the sound quality and user experience for any digital sound source including MP3s, DVDs, Games and CDs. The technology works in time, acoustical space, and frequency domains. Sonic Focus enhances all digital sound by creating a deep, controlled sound field. Sonic Focus incorporates unique deepening and clarifying algorithms based on real-time adaptive processing and is compatible with all current movie, game and audio enhancement technologies.

Audio Energy Analysis and Redistribution

Sonic Focus technology analyzes the various components of the sound, provides adaptive filtering and three dimensional interpolations and redistributes sonic energy across the entire sound spectrum. Sonic Focus features an environment simulator that makes it possible for you to experience a sound recording in ten acoustically modeled listening environments. Because Sonic Focus reduces playback distortion, the improvement is quite pronounced with small speakers and at low playback levels.

Recapturing Recorded Performance

Recorded and compressed material passed through Sonic Focus algorithms is buffered and analyzed in realtime for a number of clues about the original performance which tend to become masked during recording, and to an even greater extent during the various types of compression and downsampling (MP3, 16 bit pcm, surround encoding and others) that occur after the original performance was captured. Sonic Focus then manages the restoration process automatically, giving you control over multiple room and performance parameters.

Intelligent Audio Engineering Inside

Based on a pro-audio approach to adaptive signal management and psycho-acoustic modeling, Sonic Focus features advanced dynamics algorithms that yield full dynamic range enhancement by smoothing the waveform in real time. Sonic Focus version 1.0 includes virtual acoustic recording environments, real-time distortion analysis and reduction, enhanced stereo sound field generation and PurePhase tube-modeling filtering.

The acoustical and recording engineers at Sonic Focus have created environments that are optimal for most listening tastes. You can oversee this complex process with just a few controls, but without the risk of degrading overall sound quality. It's as if our audio engineers were there to interpret your commands.

Main Features Include:

The graph below shows how the Sonic Focus enhances and strengthens the sound source.

• MP3 audio quality restorer and decompression engine. Brings higher rate MP3 files to near CD quality. Lower rate MP3 files are noticeably improved.
• Full-range clarity enhancer - vocal warmth, movie & game dialog intelligibility and solo instrument clarity are significantly improved. Listening fatigue is never a problem.
• Automated Dynamic Range compensator - dynamic performance characteristics are restored and made adjustable.
• Sound stage & audio environment modeler for all types of digital audio. Room acoustical characteristics are enhanced and you can adjust them. Stereo and sound stage perspectives are deepened, balanced and adjusted to optimum.
• Bass definition processor - low frequencies are analyzed and dynamically managed. The deep-bass range is intelligently augmented.
• Monitoring level selection - multiple sound pressure levels are supported.
• Golden Ears Quality - Sonic Focus is designed by professional recording engineers and meets or exceeds all professional audio quality criteria for a 'golden ears' mastering tool.

For what it worth I think that for the analog or digital 2.1 Audio environment Sonic Focus is the best software enhancement tool available that combined with the SoundMAX 4.0 is a solid kick in the ass to anyone who truly enjoys quality music playback. Intel, Sonic Focus, Kliptch and many others including Latin guitar legend Carlos Santana have all been impressed with the technology Tom and his team have developed. Most people only use 2.1 audio on their desktop as 5.1, 6.1 or even the if 7.1 speakers take up a lot of space especially if you are try to surround yourself with speakers as that just consumes real estate. Two speakers and a subwoofer is the most common speaker configuration so Sonic Focus is very viable to many who already own this speaker setup themselves.