Summary: The recently developed essentially fourth-order or higher low dissipative shock-capturing scheme of H. C. Yee, N. D. Sandham and M. J. Djomehri [J. Comput. Phys. 150, No. 1, 199–238 (1999; Zbl 0936.76060)] aimed at minimizing numerical dissipations for high speed compressible viscous flows containing shocks, shears and turbulence. To detect non-smooth behavior and control the amount of numerical dissipation to be added, Yee et al. employed an artificial compression method (ACM) of Harten but utilize it in an entirely different context than A. Harten [Math. Comput. 32, 363–389 (1978; Zbl 0409.76057)] originally intended. The ACM sensor consists of two tuning parameters and is highly physical problem dependent. To minimize the tuning of parameters and physical problem dependence, new sensors with improved detection properties are proposed. The new sensors are derived from utilizing appropriate non-orthogonal wavelet basis functions and they can be used to completely switch off the extra numerical dissipation outside shock layers. The non-dissipative spatial base scheme of arbitrarily high order of accuracy can be maintained without compromising its stability at all parts of the domain where the solution is smooth. Two types of redundant non-orthogonal wavelet basis functions are considered. One is the B-spline wavelet [S. Mallat and S. Zhong, IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 14, No. 7, 710–732 (1992)] used by M. Gerritsen and P. Olsson [J. Comput. Phys. 129, No. 2, 245–262 (1996; Zbl 0899.76281)] in an adaptive mesh refinement method, to determine regions where refinement should be done. The other is the modification of the multiresolution method of A. Harten [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 48, No. 12, 1305–1342 (1995; Zbl 0860.65078)] by converting it to a new, redundant, non-orthogonal wavelet. The wavelet sensor is then obtained by computing the estimated Lipschitz exponent of a chosen physical quantity (or vector) to be sensed on a chosen wavelet basis function. Both wavelet sensors can be viewed as dual purpose adaptive methods leading to dynamic numerical dissipation control and improved grid adaptation indicators. Consequently, they are useful not only for shock-turbulence computations but also for computational aeroacoustics and numerical combustion. In addition, these sensors are scheme independent and can be stand-alone options for numerical algorithms other than the Yee et al. scheme.