I just don't get crossfeed!
Jul 6, 2010 at 8:13 PM Post #31 of 36
A very good headstage for me isn't triangular, but one in which the separation of channels disappear.

 
my cd1k(same drivers/construction as the cd3k) has angled to death drivers, I don't think I could get a phantom center channel w/o it feeling like it's in front of me? the HD800 drivers are also angled(maybe not as much), what xfeed plugin/implementation did you use?
 
xfeed in multichannel movies is much easier, as I only xfeed the rear channels...but in stereo, there ain't much data to play around w/
 
Jul 6, 2010 at 8:30 PM Post #32 of 36

Quote:
my cd1k(same drivers/construction as the cd3k) has angled to death drivers, I don't think I could get a phantom center channel w/o it feeling like it's in front of me? the HD800 drivers are also angled(maybe not as much), what xfeed plugin/implementation did you use?
 
xfeed in multichannel movies is much easier, as I only xfeed the rear channels...but in stereo, there ain't much data to play around w/


I use hardware crossfeed provided by my Ultra Desktop Amp.  However, the sort of imaging I'm referring to is way more a product of the recording, gear and HD800's, rather than the use of crossfeed.  I find the crossfeed benefit to be subtle and cannot fix marked issues with headstage and imaging.  Neither can it create great imaging or headstage where it doesn't already exist without crossfeed.  Not in my experience with it anyway.
 
I should try one of the Meier products when I feel inclined one of these days.  Either their DAC or their crossfeed  box.  I haven't tried a software crossfeed.  I don't think there's such a plugin for iTunes (I'm a Mac user so no Foobar).
 
Jul 6, 2010 at 8:34 PM Post #33 of 36


Quote:
That doesn't really make sense to me. Crossfeed isn't really built into the mix per se, the music is either mixed with speakers as monitors or headphones as monitors. Generally though music is mixed with speakers unless it's binaural, in which case, yes, crossfeed just ruins it. But otherwise, I've never seen (or heard) of  "crossfeed" being mixed in. Therefore, when my music isn't binaural, the crossfeed stays on. It just feels so much more natural.

I might have misspoke, or rather you didn't understand my reasoning.
 
Crossfeed is indeed part of the mix if the whole event is captured by two (or more) microphones. Classical music and live rock music is a great example. The microphones that capture the event are likely to capture a bit of every instrument or section of the orchestra. The left microphone captures a bit of the right, and the right microphone captures a bit of the left. There may be a more technically correct term for this but it's essentially what crossfeed accomplishes.
 
In studio albums, I was referring to instruments that are not hard-panned to one channel. An example of this would be a guitar solo that's mixed with higher volume on the right than the left. I prefer this type of mixing than hard-panning for headphone listening.
 
Sorry for any confusion.
 
Jul 6, 2010 at 8:53 PM Post #34 of 36
I haven't tried a software crossfeed.  I don't think there's such a plugin for iTunes (I'm a Mac user so no Foobar).


There's always Canz3D for Mac, but getting it to work in iTunes might be complicated...if even possible.
 
Crossfeed isn't really built into the mix per se, the music is either mixed with speakers as monitors or headphones as monitors.


There's been quite a lot of albums in the 70's that had some binaural instruments mixed in. Lou Reed made a bunch of them, like "Street Hassle", "Take No Prisioners" and a few others: http://www.arrakis.es/~e.miquel/rnranimal/officialcd.htm
 
they sound great on speakers *and* headphones
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Jul 7, 2010 at 11:26 AM Post #35 of 36


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Well, you could simultaneously watch two different scenes w/ each eye...but this is still highly unnatural, the brain is meant to use its two eyes on the same scene to get a feeling of the 3D "depth" of what it's seeing, and use its two ears to geolocalize each sound by measuring their delay between the 2 ears...that's how the human brain has been working since the beginning of times.
 
sure you could listen to two different audio streams while watching two video streams as well....but the brain hasn't been engineered to do that, so prepare yourself for some unforeseen consequences, hah
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That reminds me of a woman that had some brain surgery going bad, and they broke the link between the 2 hemispheres of her brain...one hand took a blue shirt in the wardrobe, the other one put it back
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Nice analogy (really liked it), although it applies to drastic stereo panning tracks, and in those cases you are right, it is as unnatural as it gets (and it gets me dizzy), and crossfeed shows its maximum help in this tracks.
 
For not extreme stereo panned tracks... thanks Punnisher for what you said, I agree with him, and I was referring to those kinds of tracks when I said that some people adapt to headphone listening better than others, because even if there is crossfeed in the recording, there is no crossfeed as in speakers even in this case. A more appropiate analogy would be vision goggles like this. Each of your eyes technically speaking is seeing a different separate image with no "light crossfeed", nonetheless the similarity between the images (the record crossfeed) helps you see something coherent. And even then I've seen people (like my sister) who hates the things.

 
Quote:
There's always Canz3D for Mac, but getting it to work in iTunes might be complicated...if even possible.
 


You can use Audio Hijack Pro.
 
 
(I wanted to post yesterday, but just noted how bad the site is for mobile browsers, at least Safari on iPhone)
 
Jul 7, 2010 at 11:38 AM Post #36 of 36
Good! I though there was a port of Jack from Linux but couldn't find one, this one should do the same thing apparently.
 
Well, it boils down to the diff between balance and panning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panning_(audio)
 The balance control takes a stereo source and varies the relative level of the two channels. The left channel will never come out of the right speaker by the action of a balance control. A pan control can send the left channel to either the left or the right speakers or anywhere in between.

 
Indeed, the mixing sound engineer uses panning and not balance, but on the song I used for my experiments the drums were way too far on the right end, this greatly upset my brain that thought my left ear was faulty
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I guess this is only a real problem for the days when music was still music(read <1980), these days they just use some slight pan, fire up Antares Autotune and call it a day...xfeed might not be required indeed 
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