You have made your presentation on which you or your students worked long hours, you’ve got it up and running – it looks good. But how does it sound?

Let’s take narration as a test case. The narration you’ve prepared sounds fine on your stereo system but it loses body and presence when you play it through your computer’s speakers. It doesn’t sound as deep and dramatic as it used to. The reason for this lies within your computer’s speakers. Small multimedia speakers are not made to produce a deep bass. The general rule says that if you want your sound to have a low bass, get better (sometimes bigger) speakers. The average multimedia speakers don’t belong in this category. Additionally, the speakers you want to present your work on are not the ones you’re going to have, and carrying a pair of good speakers is out of the question. Now what?

Consider MaxxBass. By utilizing MaxxBass you can create the illusion of a deep bass (and thus get that deep, dramatic feel) even from small speakers. It works like this: MaxxBass generates harmonics derived from the existing bass frequencies, using a generalized “Missing Fundamental” algorithm. These harmonics occur in a higher frequency range than the original bass, in the range that small speakers can deliver.

The Missing Fundamental phenomenon occurs when an instrument, a trombone for example, plays a very low note. As you know, every musical pitched note has a fundamental frequency and an overtone series. For example, if you play the note A on your flute, the frequencies produced are 440Hz (the fundamental note), 880Hz (1^st harmonic), 1320 (2^nd harmonic), 1760Hz (3^rd harmonic), and so on. Sometimes when a very low note is played the instrument cannot produce the fundamental note but our ear still perceives it due to its complex nonlinear processing ability – it’s just something the ear can do.

MaxxBass uses an algorithm that is based on the ear’s capability, applying it to bass frequencies in general.

Listen to this Original.WAV, preferably through a set of small speakers. As you can hear, the sound lacks depth. The bass range is there but you can’t hear it.