Re: 11 Bark channels

Yes, I have exactly that system running on my Mac. I use a product called SoundSource from the Rogue Amoeba. It pipes *all* audio through itself on the way out to the DAC. And it hosts all manner of AU plugins.

So I feed my output channel through a stack that has:

1. Loudness compensation - remember the old Loudness knobs on stereo amplifiers? As sound levels drop you lose the bass first. So this compensates for that, and allows full spectrum listening at any low sound playback level.

2. Ghz CanOpener - a Stereo/Haas crossover with mostly mono processing in the bass, and progressive stronger processing in the treble regions. You need this for headphone listening to get the same feel of air-mixing from left/right channels. Simply listening to stereo tracks on headphones has too much separation left/right.

3. Crescendo

4. Post gain - Crescendo, for severe impairments (like mine), produces a substantial boost in the treble region. To avoid clipping the DAC you apply pre-attenuation here, then make up with physical gain at the amplifier output. Once calibrated, you do all Volume changes ahead of Crescendo so that it knows you changed the Volume.


> On Nov 4, 2025, at 09:48, Yuri Davidovsky <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 4 Nov 2025, at 17:21, David McClain <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> I went through several attempts to commercialize, going all the way back to 2005.
>> 
>> In 2010 we formed a more substantial company with $1M funds raised from family and friends, and then more rounds from a wider network of investors. I spent an entire year shopping the idea to cell phone makers.
> 
> I think you started too grand, looking for an actual hardware product of sorts from get go. Not a lisp way. You need to iterate your way there.
> 
> I have something much simpler in mind: just a software algorithm (for now, maybe). It will be almost dumb, how simple it is: a virtual audio interface in MacOS (and Windows later, if the product shows some traction) that processes ALL the audio on the machine, music, video conferencing, movies, youtube, sound production, whatever, does the correction and outputs it to an actual audio interface. Use airpods, studio headphone gear, speakers, laptop tweeters, whatever. It will work as a part of the audio subsystem transparently.
> 
> Another product along side could be an AudioUnit/VST bundle for studio and audio production work. 
> 
> No real investment to build the product will be needed: just the time to put it together and DSP algorithms are rarely huge, despite the occasional complexity. Marketing is a different story and may need some money put into it at some stage, but it is something to worry about only when the product is ready and one needs to push some SKU’s off the shelf.
> 
> Even if it only shows a mild traction in the market, given how little financial and time investment it requires, it still could make it worthwhile to give it a shot.
> 
> Btw, phones are difficult. For example, in the context of this software audio system integrated solution, it would not be applicable to phones as there are no audio devices you can work with. So the only way to apply your algorithm would be to have a custom app for calls, custom app for music playing, custom app for youtube watching, and so on. This is not going to take off, will be prohibitively expensive to build, and implementing it in hardware, or on the OS level… well your experience shows well how far it is going to get.


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