Re: [SoX-users] sox_ng-14.6.0 released

[Sylvain L. <sy...@ch...>]

17 juin 2025 20:16:51 SoX NG <so...@fa...>:

> Well, we seem to have shaken 14.6 out over the last month
> and 14.6.0 is now up at
> 
>     https://codeberg.org/sox_ng/sox_ng/releases
> 
> Apart from the last six months' enhancements, bug fixes and relaxations,
> the most interesting additions are two new effects and
> a new combine method for synth.
> 
> Effect dolbyb is the big one, something people have been hankering for
> for some time now, and its frequency response curves, though not as
> exact as commercial offerings such as DDiCodec claim, are surprisingly
> close to those of a Nakamichi NR-200. We have yet to see how close its
> reactions in the time domain are to the real thing but as it is a digital
> simulation of real Dolby B electronic circuitry, my expectations are good.
> 
> The tricky part is adjusting its response to whatever level the tape was
> digitized at; a real tape deck knows what voltages represent the "Dolby level"
> on the tape itself, corresponding to the saturation level of the tape itself,
> but when it's been digitized through a preamp and the sound card's mixer,
> the level could be anything, which is what its "threshold gain" parameter
> is for. As yet, listening tests at a variety of levels is the best we have
> but are hoping to be able to semi-automate an initial guess for it.
> 
> The second new effect is "softvol". If one of those is in the effects chain,
> the 'v' and 'V' keys in interactive mode (i.e. when it's called as "play_ng")
> adjust the volume while it's playing, something that seems to have stopped
> working when it's trying to adjust the volume in the sound card's mixer,
> and it goes far over "to 11", limiting itself only when the audio would
> have clipped.
> 
> Its other optional parameter slowly increases the volume, again limited to
> when the audio would have clipped. This not only lets you play a range of
> tracks recorded at different levels and adjusts them all to about the same
> volume, but brings out the quiet passages. My personal favourite is
> "softvol 400 10" which gradually increases the volume so that it doubles
> in ten seconds if everything is quiet, but it starts at 40,000% of normal volume
> giving a strange emphasis to the opening moments of the track, which may contain
> something quiet but interesting and at worst make a track start with a burst.
> 
> Lastly, the "synth vdelay" option uses the synthesized wave as an offset
> into a delay line of the input signal, which allows the creation of a range
> of custom choruses and phasers as well as some strange other effects.
> 
> An example of softvol and vdelay in action can be found under
> http://martinwguy.net/test of which Osage Extension is the apparently
> silent second half of the leadout of the film "Killers of the Flower Moon"
> but which is actually something very very quiet: a fly passes,
> distant thunder rolls, wolves howl in the distance, all overlaid with
> the MP3 noise of the original amplified to an audible level and all
> processed with a triangular vdelay to make it yodel by an octave and a half.
> Osage_Harper instead is a 6-minute track that this serendipitous discovery
> inspired a contemporary composer, David "Kawika" Harper, to create.
> 
> Thanks to the many developers who contributed changes included in this release
> and to the authors who pulled all the stops out to help me make the best
> we could of their work.
> 
> The next new-feature release, 14.7.0, is scheduled for November '25,
> and, in August, bug-fix releases to each of the 14.X release series.
> 
> All contributions, suggestions and reports of oddities are welcome.
> 
>     M
> 
> 
> 
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Congratulations, and thanks to the team and all contributors. It is a pleasure seeing the revival of that project.

The one feature it always lacked was good noise reduction. At the time, Audacity was much better than Sox at removing mic and background (mostly) white noise. Maybe there is an issue tracker where I might ask that for the next feature release?

Best regards,
- Sylvain Leroux