Surround Sound in Headphones

#1

Post by giuliomagnifico » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 6:40 AM UTC

Surround Sound in Headphones
soundguys.com

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#2

Post by AndrewUnmuted » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 12:45 AM UTC

This article mentions the Waves NX system, but I think it's important for those interested to know that the Waves NX system is rather half-baked. It is not extensible, nor open source in any respect. It's proprietary and generally unavailable in any useful contexts.

I was also surprised to see no mention of the Web Audio API implementations of HRTF and multi-channel ambisonic decoding down to binaural in the browser. This may well be today's most sophisticated approach to spatial headphone-driven audio.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#3

Post by m463 » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 12:50 AM UTC

I think it would nice to have headphones that can detect orientation accurately and do positional audio. Probably a gimmick but maybe some of the VR headset technology will trickle down.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#4

Post by The_rationalist » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

It's been 14 years since the last state of the art 3D audio experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA has anybody done as good since then ? What's this Cetera algorithm ?

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#5

Post by divbzero » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:05 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #3

I think it would nice to have headphones that can detect orientation accurately and do positional audio. Probably a gimmick but maybe some of the VR headset technology will trickle down.

Apple offer spatial audio [1] for AirPods Pro or AirPods Max paired with newer iOS and iPadOS devices.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211775

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#6

Post by pta2002 » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:06 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #3

I think it would nice to have headphones that can detect orientation accurately and do positional audio. Probably a gimmick but maybe some of the VR headset technology will trickle down.

The AirPods Pro can do that

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#7

Post by fractionalhare » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

The_rationalist wrote: post #4

It's been 14 years since the last state of the art 3D audio experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA has anybody done as good since then ? What's this Cetera algorithm ?

Holy shit that demo is amazing. Are there more demos like that? I was wearing AirPods Pro and nearly jumped out of my seat, I thought someone walked into my room. That’s better than anything I’ve ever heard using so-called “spatial audio”, and it’s just surround sound.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#8

Post by joemaller1 » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

darn it, just tell me what to buy.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#9

Post by motohagiography » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:27 AM UTC

Hacked around with this Anaglyph tool in Audacity for some music I was working on: http://anaglyph.dalembert.upmc.fr/ Results were good, and it felt dependent on the resonance of the sound, where more pure tones seemed difficult to isolate the direction of (just like in real life).

There are a number of plugins like it, and I think even GarageBand has a spatial filter for it.

Was thinking through what a more modern audio game might be like given these features, it's such a rich area.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#10

Post by PragmaticPulp » Mon, Apr 12, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

If you don’t mind tinkering with software, the open source HeSuVi software supports various HRTFs (as captured by recording their impulse response) to produce binaural audio from multichannel sources: https://sourceforge.net/projects/hesuvi/

Useful for trialing different solutions but it’s quirky.