- Joined
- Apr 11, 2010
- Messages
- 1,007
Starting a separate thread on Binaural Mixing of Surround with head tracking.
Why? Because (once you go beyond 7.1) it becomes challenging for people with home theatre systems to get audio from their computer to their system.
Sure, there are pro Audio devices with more than 8 outputs, but most upmixers aren't going to have AVRs with more than 8 line ins.
HDMI "Should" be the solution, given that the spec (these days) is for 32 channels of un-encoded audio, but sadly I've never seen a computer audio hdmi driver supporting more than 8, and very few AVRs support more than 8 (un-encoded) channels via HDMI.
When it comes to encoded audio via HDMI, there is a solution, coming from me, for windows, but that will be another thread (program is ready but documentation is not).
So that leaves us with using headphones to monitor via virtual surround (Binaural). Turns out there are quite of few products for that these days, some free, and most commercial products starting at around $80 US and going up to the Smyth Realiser A16, at well over $4K US.
In this thread we can discus what we've tested, what we like, and how much it costs, with my goal being hoping to find something that works "good enough" for surround/immersive surround up-remixing, at the lowest possible price, as a fair bit of upmixers are retired, etc.
I'd also like to limit the discussion to those that offer headtracking, as to me that is a critical component to the realism of monitoring surround with headphones. So discussion of head tracking hardware is also on topic. There seem to be a few of those, from build it yourself for less than $20 to the sky is the limit as well.
I've tested a few free plugins, and will write about those, and am currently testing DearVR Monitor (although it may turn out that you also need DearVR Spatial Connect, to get the headtracking (which kicks it out of the budget range), and APL Virtuoso.
I'm using this build it yourself headtracker, in my tests: https://github.com/trsonic/nvsonic-head-tracker which works fine (with some drift over time) and I will be building a second one to see if the drift is any better.
Many plugins refer to this hardware: https://supperware.co.uk/headtracker-overview so I may get one of those to test as well.
Somewhere I have one from Waves: https://www.waves.com/hardware/nx-head-tracker which I bought years back with Waves NX, but stopped using because the camera based headtracking that is part of Waves NX worked better for me.
I guess it needs to be said that how some of these plugins perform for you will be based on your own head and ear shape, as the free and lower priced solutions do not offer self made custom profiles (like the A16 does). Some offer the ability to you a custom profile (SOFA format) if you have one, but getting one made is costly in itself (?).
Why? Because (once you go beyond 7.1) it becomes challenging for people with home theatre systems to get audio from their computer to their system.
Sure, there are pro Audio devices with more than 8 outputs, but most upmixers aren't going to have AVRs with more than 8 line ins.
HDMI "Should" be the solution, given that the spec (these days) is for 32 channels of un-encoded audio, but sadly I've never seen a computer audio hdmi driver supporting more than 8, and very few AVRs support more than 8 (un-encoded) channels via HDMI.
When it comes to encoded audio via HDMI, there is a solution, coming from me, for windows, but that will be another thread (program is ready but documentation is not).
So that leaves us with using headphones to monitor via virtual surround (Binaural). Turns out there are quite of few products for that these days, some free, and most commercial products starting at around $80 US and going up to the Smyth Realiser A16, at well over $4K US.
In this thread we can discus what we've tested, what we like, and how much it costs, with my goal being hoping to find something that works "good enough" for surround/immersive surround up-remixing, at the lowest possible price, as a fair bit of upmixers are retired, etc.
I'd also like to limit the discussion to those that offer headtracking, as to me that is a critical component to the realism of monitoring surround with headphones. So discussion of head tracking hardware is also on topic. There seem to be a few of those, from build it yourself for less than $20 to the sky is the limit as well.
I've tested a few free plugins, and will write about those, and am currently testing DearVR Monitor (although it may turn out that you also need DearVR Spatial Connect, to get the headtracking (which kicks it out of the budget range), and APL Virtuoso.
I'm using this build it yourself headtracker, in my tests: https://github.com/trsonic/nvsonic-head-tracker which works fine (with some drift over time) and I will be building a second one to see if the drift is any better.
Many plugins refer to this hardware: https://supperware.co.uk/headtracker-overview so I may get one of those to test as well.
Somewhere I have one from Waves: https://www.waves.com/hardware/nx-head-tracker which I bought years back with Waves NX, but stopped using because the camera based headtracking that is part of Waves NX worked better for me.
I guess it needs to be said that how some of these plugins perform for you will be based on your own head and ear shape, as the free and lower priced solutions do not offer self made custom profiles (like the A16 does). Some offer the ability to you a custom profile (SOFA format) if you have one, but getting one made is costly in itself (?).
