Out Of Your Head - new virtual surround simulator
Jan 8, 2014 at 11:35 PM Post #106 of 1,284
I got a chance to try it out yesterday, and I tried it again today but . . . it  sounds wonky no matter what speakers I use (either hollow, bloated, tinny, sound coming from wrong places).  I guess my HRTF is too far off.  In terms of positional accuracy Dolby Headphone wins for me.  In terms of actual quality Isone sounds better.  As such I can't justify it at this time.
 
The only opinion I can offer is more HRTF profiles that may fix the sound issue and less obtrusive DRM.  Yes, I echo the DRM concern.  The DRM is more crippling than Windows DRM.  It's not like the company has the almost guaranteed stability MS has either.  If the company goes under, is sold, or ends up abandoned for whatever reason (owner passing for example) then the DRM may very well be locked to a machine that can never be upgraded or fixed.
 
If the software gets popular, it will get cracked - that's just a fact.  This DRM though would turn me off even if it worked perfectly, and I imagine others would DL a cracked version out of spite.
 
Jan 9, 2014 at 1:35 AM Post #107 of 1,284
  I got a chance to try it out yesterday, and I tried it again today but . . . it  sounds wonky no matter what speakers I use (either hollow, bloated, tinny, sound coming from wrong places).  I guess my HRTF is too far off.  In terms of positional accuracy Dolby Headphone wins for me.  In terms of actual quality Isone sounds better.  As such I can't justify it at this time.
 
The only opinion I can offer is more HRTF profiles that may fix the sound issue and less obtrusive DRM.  Yes, I echo the DRM concern.  The DRM is more crippling than Windows DRM.  It's not like the company has the almost guaranteed stability MS has either.  If the company goes under, is sold, or ends up abandoned for whatever reason (owner passing for example) then the DRM may very well be locked to a machine that can never be upgraded or fixed.
 
If the software gets popular, it will get cracked - that's just a fact.  This DRM though would turn me off even if it worked perfectly, and I imagine others would DL a cracked version out of spite.

Hi Shike,
 
First, thanks trying Out Of Your Head. And thanks for your review, really. 
 
I always knew that since Out Of Your Head is dependent on HRTF compatibility, that there will be a segment of the population that it will simply not work well. I have listened to OOYH with some other people's HRTF which sound completely off to me, but I know they sound great to the person whose HRTF I as using.
 
That's why there is a trial version. If it doesn't work for you and you don't like it, that's totally fine and expected for some people. I wish there was a way to make it work well for everyone, but that's like saying I wish there was a way to make a pair of headphones that sounds good to everyone. Or using my "jeans" analogy again, I know there are people for which it will not be a good fit. One size does not fit all.

I really appreciate that you assumed it was an incompatibility with your HRTF rather than just saying it's bad software.
 
The only thing I ask is that people try it for themselves rather than hear that one person didn't like it, therefore it's no good or not worth trying.
 
At THE Show in Vegas this week, I can't tell you how many people that I gave demos to literally said, "Holy cr@p!!" when I played them a surround music track. Yes, a couple people were not impressed, but again overall, a majority of the people found that it worked well.
 
With regard to DRM:
 
DRM sucks! Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. So why should I have it if it sucks?
 
I would argue that the smaller the company, the more that piracy affects them. I know this has been said before, even in this thread, but every copy of my software stolen has a much bigger impact on my bottom line than a huge company like Microsoft. I don't buy the argument that someone who steals it would never have bought it in the first place. I think that if someone wanted it bad enough and they couldn't steal it, they would buy it.
 
Also, if someday my software gets popular enough and someone cracks it, that's OK because if it's popular enough to spend the time cracking it, I am probably selling enough copies such that a few stolen copies is not going to affect me as much as it would now.
 
Sure we could argue the pros and cons of DRM forever. It would not be the first time. But I decided it was important to me to try to protect my software. Will I potentially lose customers because of it? I am sure I will. But will I sell more copies because of it? I think so. Who knows, I could change my mind someday, but for now hopefully people will understand why it's there. Sure someone may steal it just to spite me or punish me for having DRM, but I don't know if that same person would voluntarily send me money if I made it donation-ware to reward me for the lack of DRM.
 
Or if you are worried about the future of me or my company, you could wait until we release something on the App Store or the Google Play Store. Then you could feel secure that Apple or Google will be around to help you with your licenses if I die. :wink:
 
But seriously, thank you for taking the time to give Out Of Your Head a try. That's all I ask.  I think negative feedback is the best way to improve and grow and learn.
 
Jan 9, 2014 at 1:51 AM Post #108 of 1,284
Darin, I'm interesting in buying this but I can see from the previous posts that there are some issues with the software e.g. clipping on explosions. Will you be tweaking/ optimising it some more and, if so, would I get any updates for free? And if a gaming version is released would I need to pay for that separately?

Hi John,
 
Sorry I just saw the bottom of your post.
 
The issue with clipping is there. But there was also an issue with the levels being to low. So, I decided to adjust the levels up higher by default so overall most of the time it will work better.
 
For those situations where you do experience clipping, you can usually just lower the output level from your media player and then the signal level will be lower when fed to Out Of Your Head and avoid the clipping.
 
Alternately if that doesn't work, you can lower the input levels on the Out Of Your Head control panel interface. Whenever you set those levels, the settings are automatically saved so they will remain there in the future.
 
I felt that it was better to have to adjust the levels down once in a while instead of having the levels too low all the time just in case there was a loud explosion at some point.
 
It's not ideal, but as you can imagine, trying to get a setting that can accommodate all movie soundtracks and all music is tough if not impossible. 
 
I do have several ideas of thing I could implement to help with the clipping issues. Maybe some kind of limiter that could be switched on?  Maybe JRiver or Foobar already has a way to add a limiter?
 
As far as a gaming version goes, since there isn't one, I haven't really figured out how I would charge or not charge for it. When I have thought about alternate versions like a gaming version or a high bit rate version, etc. I thought I would be able to make it a new preset rather than a whole new version of the software. So, I would release, say, a gaming compatible preset which you could purchase if you wanted to play games. Same goes for a high bit rate preset, etc.
 
I have to be totally honest, I don't know. I can say for sure that I would not make you "start over" and buy a whole new version if you already bought the software. There would be some kind of upgrade path. Sorry I can't give you a definite answer at this point. 
 
Jan 17, 2014 at 7:10 PM Post #109 of 1,284
Hi folks,
 
I have been following the Smyth Realiser and other such solutions for years, then I stumbled on this thread a few weeks ago.
 
This led to my trying and buying OOYH.
 
I did have quite a series of issues with the DRM, however Darin Fong helped out repeatedly until we had it sorted out (apparently we found a bug?).
Given that this was happening during CES and he was responding late at night, I truly appreciate the time and effort put it.
 
Good service and great product!
 
This is the biggest single upgrade to my listening in quite some time
 
thank you Darin
 
bye for now

David 
 
Feb 3, 2014 at 3:01 PM Post #110 of 1,284
Tried Darin Fong's Out of Your Head demo.  Works very well.  Even has AIX Records Preset.  But there is a significant delay to audio in my set up, I really notice it when watching movies and the audio being out of sync with people talking.  On my system (4GHz Sandy Bridge) it's using about 5% CPU.
 
Comparing it to my SVS Realiser with AIX Records Profile, the Out Of Your Head version is very veiled sounding.  Like cotton balls stuffed in my ears.  That's where the personal PRIR measurements for the SVS Realiser really make the difference.
 
But overall, Out Of Your Head is very impressive, and sounds better than all the other systems out there.  I wish he made a USB sound card that would run his virtual driver as an actual driver, and fix the audio delay.
 
Darin.  What kind of "Head" did you use with your microphones when measuring sounds at each venue?  A Neumann dummy head with ears?  Your own head?  A custom made Head with ears?  Or did you just use open mics with a barrier in between?
 
Feb 3, 2014 at 3:19 PM Post #111 of 1,284
  Tried Darin Fong's Out of Your Head demo.  Works very well.  Even has AIX Records Preset.  But there is a significant delay to audio in my set up, I really notice it when watching movies and the audio being out of sync with people talking.  On my system (4GHz Sandy Bridge) it's using about 5% CPU.
 
Comparing it to my SVS Realiser with AIX Records Profile, the Out Of Your Head version is very veiled sounding.  Like cotton balls stuffed in my ears.  That's where the personal PRIR measurements for the SVS Realiser really make the difference.
 
But overall, Out Of Your Head is very impressive, and sounds better than all the other systems out there.  I wish he made a USB sound card that would run his virtual driver as an actual driver, and fix the audio delay.
 
Darin.  What kind of "Head" did you use with your microphones when measuring sounds at each venue?  A Neumann dummy head with ears?  Your own head?  A custom made Head with ears?  Or did you just use open mics with a barrier in between?

Hi @Edwood . I responded to your post on the Realiser thread before I saw your post here.
 
But to answer your questions:
 
I do not have a dummy head. I have been trying to find a Neumann head to test, but they are expensive. For my measurements, I use real heads. I use my head of course, it's pretty much a "dummy head". But I also try to use other people's heads too when I can. So you will hear differences from one preset to the next since they have different HRTF's. If the AIX preset doesn't work as well for you, you might see if the Mi Casa preset is better. That is a different person's head than the AIX preset.
 
Of course, you can always e-mail me your favorite PRIR/HPEQ files and I can create a custom preset to use in Out Of Your Head which should work better for you. I would be willing to create the preset as a trial for you. In addition to the Out Of Your Head software license, the PRIR conversion service/license fee is $150 per PRIR conversion.
 
Mar 7, 2014 at 6:18 PM Post #113 of 1,284
In theory the dynamic range of each headphone channel is N/2 times of each speaker channel. N here is the number of total channels. So compared with the stereo setup,  7.1 configuration has a 300% dynamic range.increase that has to be handled correctly by both digital and analog sections of the whole system in order to keep S/N ratio and avoid the clipping. 
 
Mar 7, 2014 at 6:37 PM Post #114 of 1,284
My understanding is that the delay is caused by certain DSP algorithm that needs the "future" inputs in order to perform the simpler arithmetics in frequency domain instead of more complex convolution in time domain. If CPU is fast enough, doing the computation in time domain may minimize the delay. 
 
Mar 16, 2014 at 7:32 PM Post #115 of 1,284
I've tried out the trial software, and I could tell that I was listening to speakers, but other than that it didn't sound very good. Maybe it would be better if you focused more on 2.0 setups to avoid having to "virtualise" stereo inputs to 7.1?
 
Mar 16, 2014 at 8:22 PM Post #116 of 1,284
  I've tried out the trial software, and I could tell that I was listening to speakers, but other than that it didn't sound very good. Maybe it would be better if you focused more on 2.0 setups to avoid having to "virtualise" stereo inputs to 7.1?

FYI, there is no "virtualization" to 7.1 channels. Most of the presets can handle up to 7.1 channels of audio, but only if your source is 7.1 audio.
 
If you feed it 2.0 channels of audio, that's what is output via Out Of Your Head. You will hear sound coming from just the left and right virtual speakers. There will be no sound from an of the other speakers. 
 
Out Of Your Head does not "up-convert" to more channels. "What you feed it is what you get", so to speak.
 
Mar 25, 2014 at 6:04 PM Post #118 of 1,284
  Is there a list of presets and what they are based on?  I have no idea what some of them are supposed to be.

There is a complete list on my website in the FAQ, it's the 7th question down, "What speaker measurement presets are available?" (Not sure as MOT if I am allowed to link to my website, but you can find it easily.)
 
The presets are not "based on" these speakers and rooms, the presets are actual measurements of these speakers and rooms. I am not generating or simulating those speakers. I am just "playing back" the sound signature and acoustics that I "recorded".
 
Here is a list of the speakers that have been measured and are currently available. (We are always adding to the library of speakers.)
  •  Acoustic Zen: Crescendo Speakers ($16,000/pair MSRP)
    a 7.1 configuration. Ribbon tweeters and dynamic mids and woofers.2.0
  • Magico: Q3 Speakers ($39,000/pair)
    7.1 configuration.  They are made of aluminum instead of wood. Some think are the best sounding speakers in the world. These speakers are in a dealer’s showroom
  • Genelec Recording Studio
    A high end recording studio with Genelec speakers in a 7.1 speaker configuration
  • The Egyptian Theater
    This preset reproduces the sound as if you were sitting in the middle of the Egyptian Movie Theater in Los Angeles., California. This is a 5.1 speaker configuration.
  • Home Theater
    A high end 7.1 home theater system in a private home
  • Janszen Speakers ($8750/pair)
    electrostatic speakers in a 7.1 configuration. Small in size, but big in sound. 2.5 way, (Woofer – Tweeter – Woofer) configuration.
  • Sonus Faber: Elipsa Speakers ($12,000/pair)
    Elipsa speakers in a dealer’s listening room. This is a 7.1 configuration.
  • AIX Recording Studio
    This preset was made at the AIX Recording Studio in Los Angeles, California. AIX specializes in audiophile multi-channel recordings.
  • Focal: Scala Utopian Speakers ($29,950/pair)
    They are a flagship, floor standing speaker. This is a 7.1 configuration.
  • Wilson Audio: Sasha W/P ($29,000/pair)
    Amazing  floor standing dynamic speakers in a 2.0 channel configuration
  • Prototype Ribbon Speakers
    Full range ribbon speakers. These are prototype speakers which are still in the experimental stage. 7.1 configuration
  • Cello: Stradivari Premiere Speakers ($18,000/pair)
    Originally designed and built by Mark Levinson. 7.1 configuration
  • Acapella: Spharon ($325,000/pair)
    They have two huge horns for the tweeter and mid range. The bass has four 15inch woofers per channel. The speakers are 7.5 feet tall and weigh 1,364 pounds each!
  • Jan’s DIY Speakers
    These speakers were custom built by the owner. They have a 15 inch woofer, dynamic mid, and ribbon tweeter. The drivers are each driven with separate amps and a DSP for the crossover.
  • Mi Casa Recording Studio
    This preset was recorded at the Mi Casa Multimedia recording studios in Los Angeles, CA.  This studio has Genelec speakers in a 7.1 configuration.
  • Quad:ESL Speakers
    The legendary Quad ESL electrostatic panel speakers. This preset is 2.0 channels and is great for critical music listening.
  • Magnepan: Mini Maggie Speakers
    This 2 channel preset has two small desktop electrostatic speakers known as “Mini Maggies” with a subwoofer to handle the low end.
  • Revel: Ultima Studio Speakers
    a private home with a pair of Revel Ultima Studio speakers. 7.1 speaker configuration.
  • Acoustic Zen: Adagio Speakers Experimental
    Prototype speakers based on the Acoustic Zen Adagio Jr. speakers, but they are MUCH better. 7.1 speaker configuration.
  • Marten: Coltrane Momento Speakers ($165,000/pair)
    Dynamic spakers with wood and carbon fiber body. It has four 9-inch ceramic woofers, four 9-inch passive radiators and one 7-inch ceramic midrange driver and a 1-inch diamond tweeter.
  • Acapella: Triolon Excalibur MK V Speakers ($175,000/pair)
    Two subwoofer towers, each with four 10-inch subwoofers, two 31-inch horns, two 19-inch horns, and ion tweeter. The speakers are 7 feet tall and weigh 880 pounds each! 7.1 channel configuration.


 
Mar 25, 2014 at 7:14 PM Post #119 of 1,284
Thanks I didn't see that.  The price is kinda steep for software, but it does sound good from the movie demos I downloaded.  I'll have to think about it hard.   So the 325k speakers preset doesn't necessary mean that it sounds the best right? I'd probably only use it for movies and tv shows so I have to think about it.  
 
Mar 25, 2014 at 8:24 PM Post #120 of 1,284
  Thanks I didn't see that.  The price is kinda steep for software, but it does sound good from the movie demos I downloaded.  I'll have to think about it hard.   So the 325k speakers preset doesn't necessary mean that it sounds the best right? I'd probably only use it for movies and tv shows so I have to think about it.  

It's really up to you to figure out which preset sounds best. For Out Of Your Head, that is why I have a lot of presets. Everyone has different tastes and you will find that some presets just work better than others for your ears. The presets are somewhat dependent on your ear shape.
 
I always recommend people download the trial so they can hear each preset with their own equipment and their own ears and your own music/movies. Most people find that one or two presets stand out above the rest for their ears.
 
I realize that software pricing can seem pretty arbitrary since there are no obvious costs like with hardware. However, development costs can be significant. Also as my first product in a niche market, I have to factor in how many copies I could possibly sell to recoup my investment. There are SO many factors when setting pricing. I think I need an MBA to figure it out!
 
If you consider the fact that the only other way to get similar performance is to buy a $3000 piece of hardware, $149 seems pretty reasonable. Or consider the time and expense involved in buying and setting up a 7.1 home theater system. Installing software and paying $149 seems a lot easier.
biggrin.gif

 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top