EAX (or other 3D output) DSP in foobar2000 ?

[Sduibek]

Is this possible? It would be really super freaking awesome to have surround-sounding output on my headphones. Well or speakers for that matter, either one. I assume there's gotta be a way to output music as EAX but maybe i'm way off on that.

[hadouken]

EAX has nothing to do with emulating surround sound for your headphones, EAX is basically a collection of hardware accelerated sound effects that are used in games. What you're looking for is the Dolby Headphone DSP plugin:

foobar2000 3rd party components

You will however, need to find the Dolby Headphone DLL file (DOLBYHPH.DLL), this is included with certain commercial DVD software players for Windows, I think both Cyberlink PowerDVD and InterVideo WinDVD include the dll in their installations. You could try downloading the trials for these programs and seeing if the dll is included with them, I know it's included with the full software but not sure about the trials.

[Sduibek]

Originally Posted by hadouken

EAX has nothing to do with emulating surround sound for your headphones, EAX is basically a collection of hardware accelerated sound effects that are used in games. What you're looking for is the Dolby Headphone DSP plugin:

foobar2000 3rd party components

You will however, need to find the Dolby Headphone DLL file (DOLBYHPH.DLL), this is included with certain commercial DVD software players for Windows, I think both Cyberlink PowerDVD and InterVideo WinDVD include the dll in their installations. You could try downloading the trials for these programs and seeing if the dll is included with them, I know it's included with the full software but not sure about the trials.

Cool! This may be exactly what I was/am looking for. Thanks! I don't have time to try it right now () but I will when I get home later tonight.

I know EAX is for games, but for some reason my card (X-Fi Prelude) lets you enable EAX even in Audio Creation Mode so I wondered.


Oh, BTW and FWIW:
Google is your friend




EDIT: Oh, sorry. Meant to say WOW! Awesome link. Simply fantastic, thank you for that.

[Rempert]

Music is not 3D audio, regardless. In a game with 3D sound, each sound has a discrete location of which there could be many possible. With music, there are 2 locations which always stay the same, and no effect will change that. You can turn on CMSS 3D while listening to music, which will be a similar affect to that of the Dolby Headphone. And/or you can turn on EAX effects, which would allow you to choose hardware accelerated reverb/EQ presets. But in any case, there is no 3D positional information in the music stream that the soundcard could process and put things in the sound field like it does with certain games.

[Sduibek]

Have any of you messed around with this yourself? The profiles or presets for EAX effects might be interesting... for example applying a Concert Hall effect to compressed recordings, things like that.

I have now intrigued myself and will check it out


EDIT: Still haven't tried the Dolby DSPs and that from the link that hadouken provided above; I should be able to get to that later this evening.

[satshanti]

May I suggest my post in this thread, in which I explain how I have implemented Dolby Headphone. Like this, it IS actually possible to have all spatial cues that are present in a stereo mix transferred into a binaural surround sound via headphones. I've been using this for a long time now, and occasionally I switch it off, just to experience how almost everyone listens to headphones, and I switch it back on pretty fast. It makes such a huge difference. And because all phase shifts and processing is done in the digital domain at 32-bit float within Foobar, to my ears at least, no distortions of the original sound can be heard, other than the placement of those sounds within a 3D sound stage. Just give it a try!

[iriverdude]

Great if if Dolby Headphone works, would that still work through ASIO4ALL and digital output? Got it working but is there a simple way of enabling/disabling on the main screen, perhaps a headphone icon?

[satshanti]

Originally Posted by iriverdude

Great if if Dolby Headphone works, would that still work through ASIO4ALL and digital output? Got it working but is there a simple way of enabling/disabling on the main screen, perhaps a headphone icon?

The DSP chain happens before the output, so has no influence on ASIO4ALL. These DPS's are limited however to CD sample rates of 44.1KHz. The output can be truncated or dithered to 16 or 24 bit, depending on your DAC. Theoretically one could even upsample at the end of the DSP chain if needed.

The simplest way I know how to switch back and forth between with and without Dolby Headphone is to create two DSP-chain presets within Foobar, one empty and one with VI/VST-bridge and DH-plugin. I hope that answered your questions.

[ROBSCIX]

Originally Posted by Sduibek

Have any of you messed around with this yourself? The profiles or presets for EAX effects might be interesting... for example applying a Concert Hall effect to compressed recordings, things like that.

I have now intrigued myself and will check it out


EDIT: Still haven't tried the Dolby DSPs and that from the link that hadouken provided above; I should be able to get to that later this evening.

Concert Hall and other presets like that are more or less just basic Reverb DSP effects.
If you want to test with those go ahead. DSP effects such as these are used extensively in music -usually when recording but a dash of reverb can add some ambience to your music.
Some use DSP with their music and some would never consider it. Your ears so you decision...

[Sduibek]

Originally Posted by satshanti

May I suggest my post in this thread, in which I explain how I have implemented Dolby Headphone. Like this, it IS actually possible to have all spatial cues that are present in a stereo mix transferred into a binaural surround sound via headphones. I've been using this for a long time now, and occasionally I switch it off, just to experience how almost everyone listens to headphones, and I switch it back on pretty fast. It makes such a huge difference. And because all phase shifts and processing is done in the digital domain at 32-bit float within Foobar, to my ears at least, no distortions of the original sound can be heard, other than the placement of those sounds within a 3D sound stage. Just give it a try!

Great post, thanks for your input.

Wow! That is a huge OP on the linked thread... I will go through it though when I have an hour or two free for such things... look like you put a lot of time and tweaking in this

Thanks again, i'm pretty particular about tweaking things to sound "right" as well, so this should be quite a treat once I get it working!

[Sduibek]

Cool. I am currently using the Dolby DSP, set to DH3-Movie Theater, Dynamic Compression enabled and 50% amplification (Grados so they don't require much power... without reduction in volume they get LOUD)

Very nice. I was using DH2-Live for a while but I like the (illusion of) increased soundstage of the Movie Theater filter. It's cool on stuff like prog rock because you really get a feel of all the different instruments. To me it sounds like they are playing in a recording studio and i'm standing in the room. Not sure if that makes any sense. I guess a better description would be that you feel the boxiness that the filter adds to the sound, but it also makes the instruments stand out and sound more seperated in a good way.

Anyway, fun stuff! Just wanted to give an update on my current setup.

[Sduibek]

What exactly does Dynamic Compression do to the actual quality and nature of the sound output anyway? All I think I notice is a change in volume..........

[satshanti]

I think dynamic compression is built into Dolby Headphone due to the fact that it was designed for movie watching. It does what is says: it compresses the dynamic range. Loud passages will sound softer and soft ones louder. Since most modern recordings (besides classical music I guess) is compressed to a large extent anyway, I would leave this setting off. That way an unnecessary filter is circumvented, which in theory should mean a "cleaner" sound.

[Sduibek]

No, it's a checkbox. GEEZ I already said that.

:P