Crossfeed settings

[ted209]

I always use the crossfeed plugin in foobar, and was excited about trying the crossfeed option in Rockbox on the Clip+. So I installed Rockbox and activated the option and it sounded... awful! The bass is all boomy and there is an excessive loss of stereo width (ok I know that's the point of the effect).

After a deeper read of the manual and a tweak of the settings, I came up with the following:

Direct gain: -1.0 dB (default: -1.5 dB)
Cross gain: -12.0 dB (default: -6.0 dB)
High frequency attenduation: -16.0 dB (default)
High frequency cutoff 700 Hz (default)

Now the boomy bass is gone, and the effect is virtually unnoticeable in music without hard-panned left/right instruments. In music with such panning, the effect nicely brings "forward" the hard-panned sound, making music more comfortable to listen to.

I would recommend anyone who's tried and then abandoned crossfeed to try again with the more subtle settings above.

[CrowdAds]

[Confuseling]

If you have a build environment (or fancy setting one up), this might interest you... http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/11577

[Timar]

This is a split from the Clip+ thread, concering the crossfeed:

Originally Posted by TANJENT

Are many track already "crossfeed" when recorded, cause cross-feeding off, sounds better to me than any setting I can create.

Probably 1-2% of all albums are already "crossfeeded" by recording. Mostly classical or live performances which were recorded to 2-track with a simple stereo microphone (or very rarely, a dummy head or a Jecklin disc). Most live performances are recorded to multi-track and pan-mixed just like a studio recording. Those ~98% of all avaiable records will sound unnaturally with headphones, because the directional information they contain is only conveyed by the relative loudness of the stereo channels and not by phase mixing. This is perfectly fine for listening to those records on a stereo, because phase mixing will take place in the listening room.
So why do many people dislike crossfeed even if it makes the listening experience with headphones more natural? I think it's all a matter of habituation. You have been listening with headphones for many years and have become used to the somewhat artifical sound signature they produce. The absence of phase mixing and interference produces a very clean sound signature where details in the upper mids and lower heighs are more pronounced than they would be in a natural listening environment. Many people like this about headphones and are disappointed if a crossfeed takes away from this kind of sound signature. However, the rockbox crossfeed is very much customizable and it allows for a compromise (just like the most popular hardware crossfeeds by Meier Audio etc. employ some compromise too). The most important settings for the rockbox crossfeed are:

- The amout of low frequency cross gain (cross gain - direct gain)
- The amout of high frequency cross gain (hf attenuation - direct gain)

If you want to have a more subtle crossfeed-effect, you should lower both values, especially the last one, because crossfeeding above the cutoff frequency (700hz, shouldn't be changed) will introduce comb filter effects and affect the sound signature in the way mentioned above. This is my recommendation for a very subtle crossfeed:

direct gain: -1.0db / cross gain: -7.0db / hf attenuation: -24.0db

Give it a try by listening to it a while without switching the crossfeed on and off constantly. After some hours switch the crossfeed off again. I bet you will have become accustomed to the crossfeed by then and begin to prefer it to headphone listening without crossfeed

[Timar]

Originally Posted by ted209

After a deeper read of the manual and a tweak of the settings, I came up with the following:

Direct gain: -1.0 dB (default: -1.5 dB)
Cross gain: -12.0 dB (default: -6.0 dB)
High frequency attenduation: -16.0 dB (default)
High frequency cutoff 700 Hz (default)

As I wrote above, it is much more important to lower the high frequency attenuation if you want to avoid the colourations the crossfeed might have on the sound signature. To avoid a "boomy bass" I'd rather try to compensate it with the equalizer instead of lowering the cross gain that much. Just my 2 cents.

Originally Posted by Confuseling

If you have a build environment (or fancy setting one up), this might interest you... http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/11577

Wow, this is a very interesting flyspray, thank's for pointing me at this.
I think increasing the delay wouln't make much sense though, as virtually any crossfeed uses delays <= 300us, just like the ideal speaker setup is a equilateral triangle. A speaker angle > 60°, respectively a delay > 300 us would break up the stereo image.

However, the meier or bs2b crossfeed would be a very fine alternative to the existing crossfeed because it has a non-linear phase approach. It should satisfy those who feel that the current crossfeed colours the sound too much.

[TANJENT]

Thanks for that info Timar, very handy.

I have found a site with loads of free live recordings, all legit, in high quality.
Listening to Maroon5 right now with your CF settings, which sound great BTW, and will turn CF off as suggested after a while..
TANJ

[lestatar]

@Tangent, all, forgive the OT, but 2 quick things:

- thanks for kind words on my rant. I don't normally do that here, but that ssuuk guy is clearly talking out his ass and is a moron. I did not want to respond further there in that thread.

- I am sure skip252 was not meaning to imply that you were causing a problem with your questions! Of course not! None of us know everything and we all learn stuff daily - me too right now with this crossfeed stuff as well.

He was simply suggesting you begin educating yourself so you would be able to more easily recognize bs from a-holes like ssuukk...

cheers and sorry for the digression...
-lestatar

[TANJENT]

Thats what Im here for..the educating bit, I have stated that I have read the manual a number of times, but Im a layman...lol
Thanks guys,
TANJ

[TANJENT]

Listening to Mr Mayer live @ the Bowl, sounds better with CF off, but the Meier setting is also nice is for other occasions.
Man that Internet archive has some sweet recordings...FREE also...
TANJ