Surround Sound in Headphones | Hacker News Reader

Surround Sound in Headphones

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HRTFs are awesome, but I really wish we could have an open standard here and not a dozen competing proprietary ones. It feels like you really just need a standard way to encode the position of multiple audio tracks in 3D space and let your implementation of choice do the spatialization for you.

Anyway, fun fact: OpenAL Soft has an implementation of this. If any games you play use it (Minecraft notably does) you can get 3D audio by just setting 'hrtf = true' in your OpenAL config.

> a standard way to encode the position of multiple audio tracks in 3D space

Isn't that the idea behind Ambisonics [1], which OpenAL Soft is based on?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics

Ambisonics is for encoding a full-sphere soundfield. The components have a fixed location. Positioning individual tracks is not quite the same thing, as they can start/stop/move, and they are not limited to spherical harmonics. Video games have done exactly this for ages, but the only storage and distribution formats for that type of positional audio are still proprietary (e.g. Atmos).

They should correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the GP's point was that there should be a standardized way for software to present spatial audio to the sound system, which can then render it according to the user's preferences. How the sound is generated (e.g. moving point sources; spatial reverb; pre-spatialized tracks) does not matter.

Yes, using even third-order Ambisonics is not as precise as rendering all point sources (and non-point sources...) exactly through the HRTF. But it is an existing standard you can use today via OpenAL Soft.

I'm currently working on something vaguely related, but presently focused on converting stereo to arbitrary N-channel surround (and documenting it on YouTube). I agree that spatialization should be more standardized, and it should be easy to convert between arbitrary spatialization setups.

There is, except that every big company wants its own piece of the pie: https://adm.ebu.io/

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.

I was using my old QC15s in the office...I had to stop about a quarter way in because it sounded for all the world like it was just in the room with me, and I couldn't convince my brain that only I was hearing this.

How have we not done better since? How is this not just in every video game now?

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.

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/...

It sounds the same as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLMhBE99byM to me. What makes you sure it's not just the original mod with a filter for headphones, as it claims to be?

Huh, I guess there are multiple variants of that same mod, made by different people. It could very well be as you say.

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?

If you know "The Last Ninja" from the C=64 times, then this may be something for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7U5pQZJYKM

(Sound of Games: "The Last Ninja - Pure Meditation" - HQ)

This is not an algorithm, but a recording using the binaural dummy head - that's why it sounds so good. However this technique has extremely limited practical application.

> However this technique has extremely limited practical application.

How so? I always wondered, why I didn't here more of this kind of recordings, since I heard a (fantastic) demo in the early 1990's.

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.

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.

> 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

WavesNX may have been a good idea, but it's badly-made, fights with drivers, resulting it being in an actively-antagonistic piece of Dell bloatware, unfortunately.

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.

It’s kind of the only way to establish a ‘sound stage’ with headphones.

https://amp.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/aouajt/what_hea...

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 tracking can't be supported, but there's a lot more flexibility.

- encode a potentially large number of discrete channels and their positions in 3D space (including reverb and room dynamics) and let the listener's system apply the HRTF. Would support head tracking, but the audio format would be super complex, as would be the rendering software. Reverb calculations in particular could eat up a lot of CPU.

- render in post-production to a discrete number of channels that will be placed in known positions around the listener. This supports theaters and home surround setups, can be implemented in headphones using an HRTF, and would support head tracking - all at the same time. The only drawback is that in headphones, it sounds like speakers around you. Because that's exactly what the HRTF is doing with the input signal.

It's easy to see why the last option is what we've landed on. It's the most flexible for the widest number of scenarios, it's a straightforward standard, and it's not too hard to emulate using an HRTF.

> 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...

I straight up blame Creative. They stagnated any innovators/challengers back in the sound card era, set the outline of how game audio apis work, then became irrelevant. Aureal was shipping technology superior to what we have today 25 years ago. It'd be trivial to do what they were doing in software today. I really wish someone like MS would step up here and show some leadership by just shipping a spatial audio API in directx that's closer to what's actually possible.

> That makes sense, since Atmos is a discrete set of channels designed for speakers in specific locations around the listener.

I think that's the issue as well; in a room with speakers all around, the sound has space to move and bounce about and merge so the individual speakers are less obvious, but in headphones it's pretty much a straight line into your ear. Might just need a bit of fine tuning and partial merging of multiple channels / directions.

So, there's another possibility, the road we didn't go down: use a sound field representation based on spherical harmonics. You'd get something roughly the quality of Atmos with just 4 channels. It's a shame cinema didn't go this route, as trivial circuits can fold it down to quad or stereo, but more elaborate setups can render it specific to any arbitrary speaker geometry that's desired.

I'm afraid that you're wrong about how Atmos works.

Previous Dolby standards worked as you describe, but Atmos is most similar to your alernative 2.

Atmos has up to 128 audio tracks which are each positioned and moved within a virtual 3D space.

The Atmos reciever then processes this 3D space and outputs a number of channels tailored to your specific speaker set up, wherever they are positioned (and however many* speakers you have). I don't know if Atmos for headphones currently includes HRTF processing, but there is no technical reason it couldn't.

*(I believe state of the art limit for home systems is 64, but this is a hardware issue, rather an a limit of the format)

Now that tactical shooters have gone from a hardcore gamer niche to arguably the primary way many teenagers hang out with peers, good spatial sound is a huge opportunity. If someone could make $200 headphones where you could easily perceive if someone was above you or below you in Fortnite or Warzone, you would have a billion dollar company. As it is, most of us need visual indicators to tell where a nearby gunshot on the same level as us came from.

Err. There are plenty of surround sound headphones in the <$200 range, like ones from Logitech, and they are a billion dollar company.

I think he's talking about the "virtual" surround that's mentioned in the article, rather than the "true" surround that's in most consumer headphones these days. The article mentions that the former is superior because they can simulate effects from other parts of your body (eg. chest/shoulders) and can be combined with head tracking.

I bought a $200 wireless Turtle Beach headset for my Xbox 360 in 2010 (released in 2008) that came with Dolby Surround 7.1 and Dolby Pro Logic IIx which is meant for creating surround sound from stereo sources. It has both a stereo RCA and Toslink inputs. You're over a decade behind the times.

Thief the dark project supports HRTF through OpenAL Soft[0].

Head related transfer function is the.. modeling of how sound waves bounce of your body (shoulders, ears, breast). And it's a part of how we determine where a sound is coming from. Other part is the timing, as in the difference of phase of sound coming in one and in the other ear. Amplitude(volume) is also a part, probably, but we are much more sensitive to difference in phase then amplitude.

If you want to start researching in these things; the start is probably "impulse response" as well as.. a lot really (systems and signals is a heavy book that i should read one day). Just remember that everything is a spring.

As for practical modeling in 3D games and such. The problem is almost the same as global illumination. You would need to model the whole environment and how it responds to sound (absorption, reflection, idk probably even the speed of sound in various materials to be accurate). A great youtube person has a couple videos on whitepapers about this [1-2](the 2 is more practical). Valve bought a company that played with these things, but idk if anything came out of it (iirc it is part of the steam framework now).

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW-W3A2l5UE

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzsZ2qMtEUE

[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx8viOFKiIs

PS Headphones are better then 5.1/7.1 for surround sound, mostly because of room acoustics.

I began to write an acerbic comment at "everything is a spring". I then thought about it, and realised you're so right. Linear algebra is crazy. Thank you for the insight. (It struck me that all of quantum mechanics I've ever studied in university was about learning to solve more sophisticated harmonic osciollators.)

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.

I’m wondering to what extent do you modify the incoming streams. Is there a description of the process or a before-after sample?

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?

Not only on mobile. What would I get for a Steelseries headset?

Thanks for checking us out! I'm sorry about the confusion. Please try the Audio-Technica build. Despite the description, all the builds work with any pair of headphones. We do tune the EQ to improve the experience for specific headsets (hence the different versions). But in the Audio-Technica build there is a "Generic Headset" option. We will also be releasing tunings for more headsets very soon, but any of the builds should give you a good idea of what we're about.

Any plans to support a DT-1990 or HD-600s? I was wondering if the Beyer build may be better but I have no idea what drivers are in these; should I go with the AT build that you mentioned? (I'm mostly interested in gaming and media consumption, despite my cans)

Also I'm not entirely certain why I'd want a subscription as opposed to a one time purchase, do ears change very much over time? (Not saying your pricing is unfair or anything, just curious.)

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.

That sounds interesting! Whats the url on your website where I upload my right ear image, enter my cc details for a one time payment and get to download my HRTF in the standard AES69 format?

This comment may not be entirely serious, but there are people out there- myself included- who would pay for the described service.

Thanks for the comment. I do hope we can offer such a service someday. But for now, the direct to consumer sofa file market is not one that lends itself to building a sustainable business around. Eventually, when HRTFs are as commonplace as prescription glasses...

I realize this is, at least most directly, a 'me' problem, but I can't remember the last time I had so much trouble trying to get a website to work with uMatrix. I've given up twice now, to be honest.

Sorry to hear about the issues you're seeing. I've forwarded your comments to our web team. Thanks for bringing it up!

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.

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.

It depends on the engine and how you set it up. But the big engines all support attaching sounds to positions and mixing is done in real-time.

I remember a lot of effort went into making sounds feel right in the NFS games. Including mixing engine sounds recorded from different parts of the car to match the camera's position relative to the car. We even had an article about the process of recording those sounds:

http://www.speedhunters.com/2015/10/recording-the-sounds-of-...

Speaking to the sound engineers was one of those wonderful glimpses into a whole other field that I love about working in games.

A quick Google search gives me this: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support...

I can verify that at least parts of this list is correct. I remember getting jump scares when hearing monsters behind me in Dead Space 2, F.E.A.R., and as I mentioned earlier Left 4 Dead 2.

One thing I will say is that settings screens usually do a poor job at showing whether they're using surround sound. Games often just query the system for audio setup and show little more than whether you've selected headphones or speakers.

edit: since I thought it strange that your experience was so different from mine and that Fortnite wouldn't support it, I googled it and found an article from 2019 about how Fortnite, originally built for 5.1 surround sinds sound, now supports 7.1. My guess is there's some configuration issue with your PC.

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.

Many (most?) PC games support surround sound. (Re another comment: Fortnite supposedly supports both 5.1 and 7.1. I have not tried it.)

But primarily via the analog audio outputs on the back of a PC motherboard.

If you've hooked your PC into your surround sound setup via HDMI, optical cable, or other single connection method, it is unlikely to work.

If your surround sound amp supports per-channel analog in and your PC has 5.1 or 7.1 out support, you can use 4 or 6 (5.1 / 7.1) 1/8" stereo to RCA cables to connect your PC to your surround sound system. Depending on your TV / surround sound system, you may need to mess with delay settings to get the audio to sync with the video. Having your TV and surround sound system set to "game mode" may help. Hooking your PC output directly to the TV may also help.

My understanding is using DTS, Dolby Atmos, etc to encode / decode surround sound requires paying licensing fees. These aren't paid by Microsoft as a part of Windows, by the gaming framework companies for their Windows games, etc.

I suspect Microsoft and Sony handle the fees for their consoles, but I do not know for certain. It's possible they require game makers to pay them.

Edited for clarity.

I use HDMI with 7.1 PCM for audio from my gaming PC. It requires setting up an A/V receiver as a second monitor, which is kind of annoying, but it can be a "clone" of the primary gaming monitor. I do get immersive 2D surround sound from games.

Like the other comments I'm confused, pretty much any game I've played for the past few years supports surround sound, most of them 7.1 even.

What I don't understand is why Dolby Atmos is not used much more for games. Xbox One and PC support it but only very few titles use it. PS4 and PS5 don't support it all for games (only for video content), despite all Sony's bragging about their dedication to PS5 audio. Dolby Atmos seems perfect for games, for developers because it effortlessly maps audio directly to any 3D position in space, and for users because it scales all the way from headphones to soundbars to full 7.4.2 setups.

I was royally pissed off to learn PS5 would not natively support Dolby Atmos, I have a full 7.4.1 home-theater setup with height speakers and movies and Dolby Atmos demo's sound absolutely awesome. Yet if I play games the best I can get is 7.1 which is nice, but the height speakers go totally unused. It's probably related to licensing costs, but it is extremely disappointing having waited for the PS5 for so long and not seeing any kind of upgrade to the audio.

I suspect it's due to cost and licensing to use that particular brand and technology.

It shouldn't even be necessary. If you look at the DirectSound channel listing from ages and ages ago, I think even in Windows XP, there are height channels listed. But I've never seen a sound card that used them or let you select any higher than 7.1 in the Sound control panel.

Sure, but why does the Xbox One support it then, but not the PS5? And wouldn't it be possible to somehow incorporate the licensing cost in the console by means of a paid software upgrade (like on Windows) or a 'premium' version of the console that has it by default?

As far as I know Dolby Atmos can be seamlessly mapped onto to 5.1 or 7.1, so from the developer perspective there should be no effort/cost to provide Dolby Atmos audio. I might be wrong about this but I assume the licensing cost would be for the playback device and not for the 'right' to bundle an Atmos audio track with your game?

Sure if you watch movies in EN you are on the lucky side when it comes to support of high audio bitrate atmos++ support. Once you watch localized movies you are out of content quickly. Why pay a licensing fee (dolby) for your games when the niche is high. Its like the same with supporting Linux for games. I had some hopes for that because Stadia requires Linux ports. But I also expected Stadia to fail on a large scale.

per other comments: It seems I am wrong on the support of 7.1 sound on PC games. I have to look into it again and see why it does not enable or show up in my game settings menu's

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.

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..

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

I think there needs to be a standard "demo" reel of audio quality, similar to the way TVs/displays have the multi-color grid/gradient thing for showing clarity of the pixels.

It's hard to compare when a person goes into one shop and hears an action movie, but in another one he hears a concert/symphony on a different speaker/headset.

so a frequency response graph? eg. https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tests/sound-quality/raw-fr...

oh yea, that's pretty much it!

Now we just need to turn the graph into 1-5 numbers which consumers can understand.

The problem is that audio quality is subjective at the end of the day. Maybe you like the Harman target, someone else prefers Olive-Welti, and I might prefer the diffuse field target. You can't say one is better than the other, just one is better for a specific person.

So it ends up that most places just post the measurement curves and expect you to learn how to read and compare them yourselves.

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.

Just because a brand isn't "mainstream" doesn't mean they're small.

the root of the issue is audio is highly subjective so what sounds good for you may sound awful for me. Confound that with other variables such as amps and dacs (tubes, class A, "warm" vs "cold") and it's a total mess.

Second headphones ARE measured with a clear metric, you have frequency response graphs and distortion graphs which paint a objective picture about how the headphones sound.

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

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.

For an article posted to Hacker News, this is disappointingly low on technical details. So there is some "heavy signal processing" involved. And there are a few brands that sell it. Um ok. But how do they work? How do they simulate those clues tht the ears get through physical phenomena?

As-is, the article is more like a mix of product history and sales pitch than something a hacker enjoys/expects.

Imagine an article about brtfs just mentioning when it started and that it procides snapshots. Yeah .. sure, but how? That's what interests a hacker.

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.

An old laptop of mine (a Compaq Presario) had some Aureal A3D demos pre-installed on it. The one I remember the best was a spatial audio thing that let you walk around a forest with beehives everywhere. It was really good.

Of interest, Sennheiser with dearVR provides a free vst plugin for spatial audio which is really fun to play with! https://en-de.sennheiser.com/ambeo-orbit

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

The AirPods Pro can do that

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.

Yes, it is amazing. I do see it mentioned in reviews, or at least from user reviews especially about first experiences.

Speaking of, my first time in a virtual room with the Index was super convincing because of the sound, less so my poor 970 struggling to keep up. I could move around and hear the sound sources stay fixed in a physical (virtual space). Lean towards a speaker on the desk and it gets louder exactly as you move your head. Sound is definitely underrated for creating a physical presence!

If you don't want to use Airpods Pro, the Smyth Realiser can do it with any over-ear headphones of your choice. It's been around for at least 10 years in various configurations and supports many source inputs:

https://smyth-research.com/

I would like to SEE the HRTF function in action. Is there maybe a web app where one could see the HRTF function while tinkering with different sound directions?

darn it, just tell me what to buy.

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 probably the most versatile (and expensive) of the bunch:

https://smyth-research.com/

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.

Aren’t you thinking of the AirPods Max?

Yes, they work as stereo headphones from any bluetooth source. I was speaking in the context of surround sound in headphones... AirPods Pro's spatial audio feature only works with a few surround sound formats and only with an iPad and iPhone. Spatial Audio is not supported on Apple TV or any other bluetooth device (for now).

To use a lighting to 3.5mm connection, I think you meant the AirPods Max, not the AirPods Pro. On that note, the AirPods Max have the same spatial audio support/restrictions as the AirPods Pro.

Good headphones. Even without HRTF they are worth it.

They all sound like shit. I am blind and my years keep me alive on a Daly.

Obviously an outlier here, but I have as much desire to hear sounds behind my ears as I do to see images around my butt.

Best case scenario I've ever had is that it's distracting as hell.

In some games like tactical first-person shooters, having the ability to pinpoint accurately and with precision the footsteps or gunfire can make the difference between a kill or be killed.

Most of them do better with 2 speaker output. It's competitive, having a realistic sound is usually worse than one that is easily distinguishable.

It is for immersion, and distracting when it is not done. Having audio location decoupled from the audio source is immersion breaking, and distracting. This is a no-brainer for VR and 3d applications, but more nuanced for video. For a movie, do you want the action happening on the screen in front of you, or immersive with a sense of it going on around you? I think this is where opinions start differing.

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