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All information in these pages is copyright (c) 1989-2003 by Roger Nichols. All rights reserved. Permission for personal reference only, and may not be reproduced by any method without written permission.

Philips IS 5021 & 5022 Sound Enhancer

by Roger Nichols

Remember Philips? You know, they guys who invented the CD along with Sony? Well, Philips has introduced two versions of a product that may sell as many copies as CD players. They call it simply, the "Sound Enhancer". That seems pretty straight forward, but what does it really do? I'm glad you asked, 'cause I'm gonna tell you.

The Sound Enhancer provides the following functions and effects:

• High end D/A converter for connection to CD players to improve audio quality.
• High quality A/D converter for processing analog signals and recording analog signals into samplers or DAT recorders.
• Sample Rate Converter for interfacing between digital gear of different sample rates (copying DAT tapes at 48kHz to CDR at 44.1kHz).
• Digital Sound Processor for de-clicking audio
• Digital domain noise filtering
• Stereo enhancement
• Compression/expansion
• Bass and treble control
• Quantization Noise Imaging
• Jitter removal.
• Digital volume control with auto fade-in and fade-out.

A great use for the Sound Enhancer is transferring phonograph records to DAT or CD-R. Just activate the scratch suppression and noise filter, punch up record, and away you go. Keep in mind that this box does not do a good enough job to replace the Cedar boxes or Sonic Solution No-Noise, but for home and production studio use, there is nothing on the market like it.

Your mixes are finished and you want to master them yourself? Well the Sound Enhancer gives you a big head start. You can brighten up the overall mix, add some bottom end on a couple of tunes, compress the whole mix a little to make it sound louder on the radio, and sample rate convert from 48kHz to 44.1kHz, all at the same time.

Because of the DSP time necessary for some of the more complex tasks, you can't perform compression/expansion at the same time as scratch suppression, noise filtering, and stereo enhancement. You can, however add EQ or any of the other functions at the same time.

Sound Quality

I haven't thought about vinyl records for a long time. When I opened the Sound Enhancer manual, the first picture I saw was of the Sound Enhancer set up for recording records to DAT. I figured that was what I was supposed to do, so I went to the garage and dug out my old Technics SL-110A turntable with SME 3009 tonearm, connected it to an SAE Mark 1B preamp, grabbed an un-opened, never-been-played Steely Dan album from 1974, fed the analog output of the preamp into the Sound Enhancer, connected the digital out to my CD recorder, and BINGO.

The Sound Enhancer did a credible job of lowering the noise level from the LP without effecting the music. Not bad! I then cranked in some SPATIAL enhancement to improve the stereo image, added some low end EQ and brightened things up a smidgen. Now this is the way the record should have sounded 20 years ago.

The EQ is just two bands labeled BASS and TREBLE. The are meant to a nice broad overall effect of warming up the entire bottom end and smoothly brightening the entire high end. I personally like this type of EQ for playback because it doesn't change the mix as narrower EQ often does. I took the finished CD out to my car for a listen and it sounded pretty good.

I/O And Recap ('cause I'm too lazy to separate them)

Both the professional unit and the consumer unit have multiple digital inputs. The consumer version allows you to switch between the pair so that you can have two digital sources. The analog inputs and outputs can be connected to the loop through jacks of your preamp (for hi-fi installations) or connected to your patch bay (for studio setups).

As for the analog I/O, I said earlier that the analog section is excellent sounding. It will be a vast improvement over the D/A converters in all but the most expensive CD players and DAT machines, and a must for playing back MiniDiscs.

The decision to buy a Sound Enhancer is a no brainer. Just do it. If your wife or girlfriend complains, tell her to see me. I'll straighten her out. Let me know how it turns out.