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Surround Sound in Headphones

soundguys.com

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Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#11

Post by bentcorner »

fractionalhare wrote: post #7
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.

I've found Dolby Atmos for Headphones to be pretty good. I play the video game Overwatch and it integrates atmos into it's sound processing pipeline and the sound is incredibly accurate. You can tell when people are behind/in front/above/below you very reliably.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#12

Post by yummypaint »

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 valve index headset does a great job with this. They use speakers a few cm away from each ear. The sound is one of the most immersive elements in my opinion. It doesn't get alot of attention because it's so well implemented that it's almost hard to notice.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#13

Post by yummypaint »

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 ?

I always thought it would be cool if someone made a sound-based gui alternative using spatial audio. Would open up capabilities on devices too small for screens.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#14

Post by 00jimbo »

i went to a qualcomm presentation at CES a decade ago where they demoed surround sound with basic cheap stereo cans and it was impressive as hell. i was always surprised it never seemed to take off as a general thing.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#15

Post by lumost »

00jimbo wrote: post #14

i went to a qualcomm presentation at CES a decade ago where they demoed surround sound with basic cheap stereo cans and it was impressive as hell. i was always surprised it never seemed to take off as a general thing.

my 2 cents is that it's really tough to market high quality audio despite a clear market willing to buy high quality audio.

There are dozens of ostensibly high quality brands selling 500 dollar headphones with drastically different audio quality. The audiophile community would often have you believe that all such headphones are junk and a random small brand has the best headphones of all.

At least tvs have color accuracy/size/price. Headphones are not measured with any clear metric of quality as far as I've seen..

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#16

Post by gooderist »

Shameless plug: My company also makes virtual surround sound software for headphones. But unlike other solutions (like Atmos and Airpods Pro) we generate your HRTF from a photo of your ear using machine learning. If you're interested in this stuff, please check us out too: https://embody.co/

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#17

Post by ryanmcbride »

lumost wrote: post #15
00jimbo wrote: post #14

i went to a qualcomm presentation at CES a decade ago where they demoed surround sound with basic cheap stereo cans and it was impressive as hell. i was always surprised it never seemed to take off as a general thing.

my 2 cents is that it's really tough to market high quality audio despite a clear market willing to buy high quality audio. There are dozens of ostensibly high quality brands selling 500 dollar headphones with drastically different audio quality. The audiophile community would often have you believe that all such headphones are junk and a random small brand has the best headphones of all. At least tvs have color accu…

I see you've also come across the cult of Stax "Earspeakers"

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#18

Post by kabdib »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #2

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.…

My first experience with the Waves NX stuff was on a Dell laptop; I started some music, and suddenly the "camera on" LED lit up. I spent the next few minutes searching the laptop for malware. I don't remember how I determined that it was Waves NX wanting to compute my head position and not some bad guy remote controlling the camera.

Can't speak for the sound quality of Waves NX, as I have it turned off.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#19

Post by maximilianburke »

Many years ago I had an Aureal 8830 Vortex 2-based soundcard and its spatial audio was amazing especially given that it didn't require any special hardware, beyond the soundcard itself. It was really crushing when Creative Labs bought Aureal and buried the IP.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#20

Post by vulcan01 »

gooderist wrote: post #16

Shameless plug: My company also makes virtual surround sound software for headphones. But unlike other solutions (like Atmos and Airpods Pro) we generate your HRTF from a photo of your ear using machine learning. If you're interested in this stuff, please check us out too: https://embody.co/

Hey! I bought a Sony headphone some time ago (WH-H900N, if you're wondering) and it told me to take a photo of my ear as well. Now I know why :)
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