Chapter 6. Sound Settings
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6.8. Crossfeed
Crossfeed attempts to make the experience of listening to music on headphones more
similar to listening to music with stereo speakers. When you listen to music through
speakers, each ear will hear sound originating from both speakers. However, the sound
from the left speaker reaches your right ear slightly later than it does your left ear, and
vice versa.
The human ear and brain together are very good at interpreting the time differences
between direct sounds and reflected sounds and using that information to identify the
direction that the sound is coming from. On the other hand, when listening to head-
phones, each ear hears only the stereo channel corresponding to it. The left ear hears
only the left channel and the right ear hears only the right channel. The result is that
sound from headphones does not provide the same spatial cues to your ear and brain as
speakers, and might for that reason sound unnatural to some listeners.
The crossfeed function uses an algorithm to feed a delayed and filtered portion of the
signal from the right channel into the left channel and vice versa in order to simulate the
spatial cues that the ear and brain receive when listening to a set of loudspeakers placed
in front of the listener. The result is a more natural stereo image that can be especially
appreciated in older rock and jazz records, where one instrument is often hard-panned
to just one of the speakers. Many people will find such records tiring to listen to using
earphones and no crossfeed effect.
Crossfeed has the following settings:
Crossfeed.
Selects whether the crossfeed effect is to be enabled or not.
Direct Gain.
How much the level of the audio that travels the direct path from a speaker
to the corresponding ear is supposed to be decreased.
Cross Gain.
How much the level of the audio that travels the cross path from a speaker
to the opposite ear is to be decreased.
High-Frequency Attenuation.
How much the upper frequencies of the cross path audio
will be dampened. Note that the total level of the higher frequencies will be a
combination of both this setting and the
Cross Gain
setting.
High-Frequency Cutoff.
Decides at which frequency the cross path audio will start to
be cut by the amount described by the
High-Frequency Attenuation
setting.
Most users will find the default settings to yield satisfactory results, but for the more
adventurous user the settings can be fine-tuned to provide a virtual speaker placement
suited to ones preference. Beware that the crossfeed function is capable of making the
audio distort if you choose settings which result in a too high output level.
The Rockbox manual
(version 3.14)
Sansa Clip v2
