For quite a while I have been searching for methods to improve the audio quality on anything that I play on my laptop without any external or extra hardware.
I've got over 7000 audio files on my laptop with several jazz albums dating all the way back to 1950s. As much as audio mastering has improved over the decades in music production, there is still great music from the past years.
The top two things that caught my interest were:
- The file size for the install file is only 4.88 Mb
- It works flawlessly with whatever current hardware setup you're using.
For the purpose of this article, I'm going to review this wonderful little utility called DFX Audio Enhancer, version 12.017.
The software tweaks 5 areas of sound:
- Fidelity
- Ambience
- 3D Surround
- Dynamic Boost
- Hyperbass
Presets:
The software offers a bunch of presets that you can choose based on the genre of music you're listening to. There are 48 presets to choose from but I just keep it at the very first one titled "Light Processing - Modern" which I find caters to mostly all audio types
The easiest way to see it in action is by turning the software on and off while playing any kind of music.
Playback Devices:
Choosing any existing playback device is easy with the setting under Menu > Playback Device > YOUR_DEVICE
What I really enjoy about this is the usage of existing hardware without the need to buy a separate device.
My default audio device is Realtek's High Definition Audio but I've also tested it with the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi and the results are great either way.
Limitations:
As far as limitations are concerned, I haven't found any in the past month of regular usage. I will update here if I run into any compatibility issues.
Troubleshooting:
On rare occasions, changing a playback device through Windows' settings can mute the entire audio. In that case, I usually stop the audio source and start it again or exit the DFX application and restart it.
NOTE for musicians mastering their final mixes: If you're a musician who masters track on your device, make sure you turn DFX off before you start the process.
Since the software boosts all audio, it heavily 'colors' the mix and hence the mastering results may be inaccurate.
The free version is available here: http://www.fxsound.com/dfx/download.php
The full version called DFX Plus retails for about USD $39.99 which was on sale at $29.99 at the time of writing this review.