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Surround Sound in Headphones

soundguys.com

51–60 of 107 posts

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Our software works with any pair of headphones.

On mobile it looks the gaming version of Immerse is only available for headphones made by a few manufacturers. Which version should I choose for AKG or Sennheiser?

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#52
post #39

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

That is a pretty good piece of music. Having always had a special liking to old school music, this instantly got added to my music playlist.

Got more of similar stuff?

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#54
I have a 5.1 surround system (with real speakers around me) and I find the lack of surround support in games sad. How come not any game supports output to a surround system - they have their sound sources in a 3D environment and should be able to mix a sound output with arbtrary speaker setup ?

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#55
You can mix a surround effect for stereo headphones with audio plugins like DearVR Pro but I personally find all these psychoacoustic effects lacking. I wouldn't use them for music. For effects they are fine, though.

Mixing with such plugins is weird because you have to run everything through them and "build" any stereo effects by hand - because sounds become so localizable that they sound like someone positioned a single speaker somewhere. Just like real surround sound, it also often sounds very unnatural and you cannot really use any other reverbs or delays for sound sculpting.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#56
post #54

I have a 5.1 surround system (with real speakers around me) and I find the lack of surround support in games sad. How come not any game supports output to a surround system - they have their sound sources in a 3D environment and should be able to mix a sound output with arbtrary speaker setup ?

What games have you been playing and on what platform? I remember being amazed how well surround sound worked in Left 4 Dead 2 on PC back in 2010.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#57
post #54

I have a 5.1 surround system (with real speakers around me) and I find the lack of surround support in games sad. How come not any game supports output to a surround system - they have their sound sources in a 3D environment and should be able to mix a sound output with arbtrary speaker setup ?

What do you mean? I've yet to play any AA or AAA game without support. Games like RDR2 or The Last of Us 2 allow you to configure your audio output to a high degree.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#58
post #54

I have a 5.1 surround system (with real speakers around me) and I find the lack of surround support in games sad. How come not any game supports output to a surround system - they have their sound sources in a 3D environment and should be able to mix a sound output with arbtrary speaker setup ?

What games have you been playing and on what platform? I remember being amazed how well surround sound worked in Left 4 Dead 2 on PC back in 2010.

ex. Fortnite don't seem to support it (but it does support some binaureal sound). When I got the system I ran through a couple of games on my steam Library to try it out and found very few supported it. Most vere based on the big engines (Unity / Unreal) and I kind of just suspected it to be a compile time swith on the devs side, but maybe im wrong - are sounds mixed in a studio and not on a "per source" kind of way ? - maybe they are not really attached to a position.

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#59
post #40

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.

Aren’t you thinking of the AirPods Max?

Re: Surround Sound in Headphones

#60
post #34
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.

Didn't it? I thought games, at least, all did this by default since ever? I remember positional audio being a thing back when I was learning DirectX 3.

sure it works to some extent but it’s basically never marketed as anything like an immersive soundscape (for lack of a better term) or surround sound. like, i should be able to put on a simple pair of headphones and reliably get a surround experience for any content that supports it on pc or mobile. it’s probably patent encumbrance which is why we see a dolby plugin in the microsoft store and stereo headphones marketed as surround for a (often substantially) higher price with an included dongle to virtualize the audio
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