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Comment by mb_72 | Hacker News Reader

"There are a few different ways you can make it, but it’s really distinguishable when someone makes 8D correctly. When it’s done wrong, the music doesn’t sound like it’s in the room with you. It just pans back and forth."

That's what the few examples listed in the article sounded like to me; in fact I found the panning of the instruments and vocals a bit frustrating to listen to. Perhaps this works better on some people than others, i.e. non-musicians?

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I think the problem is more that people's ear shapes are pretty different, and the exact way that sound coming from a specific direction presents itself is different for every person - so you pretty much need a different profile (HRTF [1]) for every person to make them accurately hear sound coming from specific directions.

I played around with those a while ago since it makes a pretty large difference in the realism of positional audio (both for surround video and for games). For me especially for differentiating between sound coming from in front of and from behind me. But I never really got it to work globally. [2] has a list of 50 different HRTFs. Only ~5 of them manage to make the sound come from in front of me correctly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/2ot5ov/enable...

Don't most people look at YouTube on their phone or crappy laptop speakers? I look forward to the day when people care about their "hi-fi" stereo again, but I don't see that coming anytime soon.

Unfortunately, I feel that the only ones who will "care" about it "again" are the only ones who care currently. There's a reason people don't have Hi-Fi setups anymore; they're completely unnecessary and a waste of time/money/space when >80% of the population will tell you they can't hear a difference between the EarPods that came with their phone, and a $10,000 top-of-the-line stereo hooked up to $2000 monitors.

Anecdote time; friends of mine own(ed) a niche A/V store, their grandparents opened the store in the early '60s and their primary focus was to carry, sell, service, and most importantly demo everything from a $50 loudspeaker to the $10,000+ amp. Back then, every product was completely different from the next. A $50 amp and a $500 amp was like the difference between a CRT TV and a 4K OLED TV, same with speakers. About 25 years ago when their parents took over, it was already becoming evident (mainly with everything going digital) that the difference between a $50 amp and a $500 amp wasn't nearly as pronounced as it was 50 years ago. 5 years ago the business pivoted away from A/V, because nobody is going to spend $500 on an amp or receiver when they can pick up a $30 soundbar at Walmart and get 95% of the quality/experience. I've seen it myself; the family is still a bunch of die-hard audiophiles where money is absolutely not an object when it comes to audio, to the point they built a home theater and spent $30,000 on a custom-built 11.2-channel tube-based Atmos receiver, >$2500 per speaker (that's right, nearly $30,000 in speakers), and around $10,000 for each subwoofer. While most of our friend group will tell you it's unquestionably the greatest sounding thing on the planet, there's still a few who'll put in their dollar-store earbuds, load up a 360p song on YouTube, and tell you completely straight-faced it sounds no different.

There are middle-grounds between folks happy with dollar store earbuds and those spending $30k on a stereo system. Many in that middle care about sound quality PLUS design. This is why Bang and Olufsen still exists, and I admit I'm a sucker for good design too, I own awesome 1980s Magnepan speakers that look even cooler than they sound.

People spend $200 or $300 on Beats headphones, and are happy to overlook the inferior quality to get a hot name brand. I have two wishes:

(1) that companies with very strong brands actually cared and invested in quality and R&D (ahem, beats); (2) that companies that actually do have the quality and attention to detail in their product, find a way to use modern media effectively, and not just drive potential customers to their particular products, but encourage folks with a passion for pure beautiful sound that their aim is worthy.

Agreed - a well mixed track will use stereo panning as an artistic feature. These tracks, at least in my opinion are gimmicky at best and actively detract from the original at worst.

It might be because I'm a little hung over this morning, but all of the linked yt videos make me feel ill.

I get that it's a novel feeling to hear music coming from a "soundstage location" that isn't traditionally used in mixing, but the novelty only lasts for so long, and constantly moving it around just draws your attention to it moving over actually listening to the song.

Me too. The constant movement made me feel sick.

I only listened to the Queen song, but I don't think I like this. It's amusing and interesting, but I feel like it's an awful way to listen to music. Maybe it could have practical applications for other types of audio, but for music I find it distracting and it takes away from the original song.

In my home office I have two sets of stereo speakers - front and back. A kind of pseudo-surround sound but it's just two banks of stereo. The "8D Audio" (terrible name imo) doesn't sound too bad in that kind of set up because you're already immersed in the sound in a way that's more natural/forgiving than having headphones on. However even in that situation I don't feel it adds anything aside a massive dose of novelty so I only managed 2 demo songs before switching back to regularly mastered tracks.

I listened to the first one by Queen, it sounded like a tinny AM radio sitting in the corner of the room.

Sounded like that but the radio is on a huge motorised lazy susan behind me. Yeah, truly mind-altering stuff.

The Queen example sounds pretty bad to me, but the later examples sound like the music is in the room with me. I don't really like how the music seems to be spinning around me though, I wonder if that's needed to get the effect.

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