How to apply special effects to a playing sound
This control supports the following kinds of special effects:
The purpose of custom DSP effects is to give the developer the possibility to apply custom DSP algorithms to the sound under playback. Check the
How to manage custom DSP effects tutorial for further details.
Steinberg''s
Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an interface for integrating software audio synthesizer and effect plugins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems. VST and similar technologies use Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to simulate traditional recording studio hardware with software. Thousands of plugins exist and VST is supported by a large number of audio applications. Check the
How to manage VST effects tutorial for further details.
DirectX Media Object effects
DirectX Media Objects (also known as DMO) are components that can be inserted in a media stream to manipulate the data in some way. In audio, DMOs are generally used to create special effects.
The use of DMO requires DirectX version 8 or higher: you can check if your system has the required DirectX version installed using the
IsDirectX8Avail method.
The following standard effects are installed with the operating system:
Chorus
Compression
Distortion
Echo
Environmental reverberation (I3DL2)
Flange
Gargle
Parametric equalizer
Waves reverberation (music reverb based on the Waves MaxxVerb technology, licensed to Microsoft)
These effects can be used with any sound format supported by our control and come with their own default settings: you can retrieve the current settings using the
GetDirectXEffectParams and you can change them using the
SetDirectXEffectParams . Once the effect parameters have been setup, you can apply/remove an effect using the
SetDirectXEffect method.
Note that more than one DMO effect can be applied on a playing sound.
Sound equalization is obtained through the DMO effect "Parametric equalizer".
This control allows setting up a pool of 50 different equalizer bands for each player; each equalizer band works on a different frequency: the
SetEqualizerBand method creates/removes one of these bands. The gain associated to a certain band can be modified using the
SetEqualizerBandGain method.
EAX environmental effects can be applied to a given output device (sound card) in order to enhance your music listening experience: not all of the commercial sound cards implement EAX and not all of the sound cards implementing EAX reach the same quality you can have with Creative sound cards. You can check if an output device supports EAX through a call to the
IsEAXAvailableOnOutputDevice method.
EAX parameters (volume, decay and damping) applied to a given output device can be obtained through the
GetEAXEffect method and changed through the
SetEAXEffect and
SetEAXEffectPresets methods. Differently from DMO effects, which are applied directly to an existing player, EAX parameters are applied to a given output device: this means that EAX settings will automatically affect all of the players associated to an EAX compatible output device.
It's important to note that EAX effects can be applied only to sounds loaded through the
LoadSoundForEAX method: this method will load a given song in Mono and will not allow further Tempo, Playback rate and Pitch changes.
EAX supported effects are the following:
None (removes the current EAX effect, if any)
Generic
Padded cell
Room
Bathroom
Living room
Stone room
Auditorium
Concert hall
Cave
Arena
Hangar
Carpeted hallway
Hallway
Stone corridor
Alley
Forest
City
Mountains
Quarry
Plain
Parking lot
Sewer pipe
Underwater
Drugged
Dizzy
Psychotic
It's important to note that EAX effects are mutually exclusive: you cannot have more than one EAX effect applied on an output device.
Samples of use of the mentioned special effects in Visual Basic 6 and Visual C++ 6 can be found inside the following samples installed with the product's setup package:
- SpecialEffects
- VstEffects
- CustomDSP
- CustomDSPWithUI
- TestEqualizer
- TestVideoPlayer
