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Surround Sound in Headphones

soundguys.com

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Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#41

Post by bombcar »

CardenB wrote: post #40
bonestamp2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirPods Pro are good, but they only support iPhones/iPads as a source (I assume they'll add Apple TV later). I've heard the Sony system is good, but audio has to be encoded in Sony's format. I used to own the Smyth Realiser 8 and it was awesome. The latest version is the 16. It's rather expensive, which is maybe why the source article didn't mention it, but you can feed it almost any surround sound source. It's proba…

AirPods Pro are normal Bluetooth headphones and support anything as source. You can also use a lightning to 3.5mm cable to connect them to an auxiliary port.

I believe they’re saying that spatial audio is only supported on the iPhone/iPad.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#42

Post by gooderist »

vulcan01 wrote: post #20
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 :)

I've seen a couple companies (Sony, Creative Labs, etc) do the ear photo thing like us but from what I recall they only use the photo to match you against a library of HRTFs. Our approach generates a unique HRTF for each user. But yes, I would expect to see a whole lot more of this in the near future from all the headphone makers.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#43

Post by mckirk »

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/

That's really cool! I'd hoped custom HRTFs would become more prevalent, as using these one-size-fits-all HRTFs is a bit of a shame.

Are photos really enough to get a good result, though? I'd imagine e.g. internal bone structure and layout of the ear canals to have quite an impact as well.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#45

Post by insonifi »

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…

It is no different from other products. There are people who do subjective reviews, and others who put some science in it.

Although, as far as I understand, headphones are both quite simple in engineering and complex with the task they try to handle.

Every person's audio perception is unique and depends on unique anatomy and unique experience (brain calculations). So it is quite difficult to normalize every data we can measure.

Still, some are trying to do it. E.g.

http://rtings.com/ - authors develop their methodology to take into account all relevant measurements, and explain their function

http://diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com/ - author does a measurement based subjective analysis of overall audio experience. Sometimes directly comparing rivals in relevant aspects.

https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990 - based on research from Harman R&D, measure and develops equalisation parameters for popular headphones, as well as, their weighted score (deviation from target)

The research is quite interesting in itself when addressing you statement, because it develops a statistical model of preference for audio reproduction by average human. Of course, it is not a silver bullet equal for all but many agree they enjoy headphones with "target" frequency response more.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#46

Post by lioeters »

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.…

> Web Audio API implementations of HRTF and multi-channel ambisonic decoding down to binaural

Curious, here are some related links I could find.

- MDN: Web audio spatialization basics

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_A...

- Implementing Binaural (HRTF) Panner Node with Web Audio API (2015)

Article - https://codeandsound.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/implementing-b...

Code - https://github.com/tmwoz/hrtf-panner-js

- WebGL / Web Audio API interface for listening to the CIPIC HRTF database

https://github.com/kai5z/hrtf-simulation

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#47

Post by gooderist »

tracyhenry wrote: post #38
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/

How much is your product better at identifying footsteps in PUBG than a traditional headset?

Hi, we don't sell headsets. Our software works with any pair of headphones. Really the comparison is how well does our personalized HRTFs perform for you compared to the generic HRTF that comes with PUBG. And I think this is a question that is better answered with a demo than a forum reply. Please give Immerse a try, we have free trials for everything.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#48

Post by gooderist »

mckirk wrote: post #43
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/

That's really cool! I'd hoped custom HRTFs would become more prevalent, as using these one-size-fits-all HRTFs is a bit of a shame. Are photos really enough to get a good result, though? I'd imagine e.g. internal bone structure and layout of the ear canals to have quite an impact as well.

I'm not really allowed to share numbers right now, but our algorithms produce very accurate models as compared to actual anechoic chamber measurements. And we have things in the pipeline which take that accuracy even further. But do feel free to try us out for yourself. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#49

Post by Shish2k »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #37
ziml77 wrote: post #24

I find the way some of these surround virtualizations work to be odd. Like when I used Atmos, it sounded more like I was in a room surrounded by speakers instead of like I was actually immersed in the content. Maybe that's desirable for movies? It certainly didn't make sense to me for games.

That makes sense, since Atmos is a discrete set of channels designed for speakers in specific locations around the listener. The alternatives are: - record a real sound space using a binaural mic head, then simply use 2-channel output. Head tracking not supported, HRTF is physical not modeled/virtual. - build a 3D virtual sound space. Apply the HRTF in post-production with output to 2 headphone channels. Head trackin…

> encode a potentially large number of discrete channels and their positions in 3D space

This does seem like a lot - but at the same time, it doesn’t seem like much compared to the advances in graphics over the past decades? I feel like if audio had kept up with video, we should have an equivalent to Physically Based Rendering / raytracing by now...

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#50

Post by teddyh »

lloeki wrote: post #39
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 ?

This rendition of Amiga tracker music is fantastic as well. https://youtu.be/W1bgMX4UCjw

I wouldn’t call that a “rendition”. A “cover” or ”remake” would be a better term; it takes some liberties with the source material. Compare it to (one of) the original music:

https://ftp.acc.umu.se/mirror/media/Oakvalley/soamc/000/MP3/...

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