Fastjack
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2003
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Sorry if this is old news but I only dicovered it yesterday and thought it might be of interest to some people here, this being a headphone-site and all
Current versions of ffdShow (a video and audio decoder filter for Windows-based media-players) now include a headphone virtual spatialization filter that seems to work pretty much like Dolby Headphone. It mixes 5.1 surround sounds down to a stereo signal intended for headphones, supposedly using some kind of HRTF (but I couldn't really find any infos on that).
I have tried it with a few different players and a number of movies and demo-files with 5.1 AC3 sound. It is definitely a great improvement compared to the simple stereo-downmix that ffdShow also offers. Unfortunately I was not able to do a direct comparison to Dolby Headphone yet but I will try that later.
For those who would like to try it:
You can download ffdShow here: http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Filters/...w-20041012.exe
To configure it for use with headphones start the audio filter configuration tool of ffdShow and tick the Mixer checkbox. In the output speaker config then chose "headphone virtual spatialization". You may also have to take a look at the Codecs section and enable the decoding of e.g. AC3 by ffdShow (liba52 in that case).
BTW: I think the headphone virtualizer was taken from the VLC meadia player of VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org/). For people running Linux and/or are looking for a player that comes with all necessary decoder filters, saving them from having to install tons of stuff for video playback, VLC may be worth a try. Come to think of it: Is there any other Linux video player with headphone virtualization?
Also: does anybody here have additional info on that filter? what it does etc. and how it compares to DH. As in many open source projects documentation is pretty much nonexistant.
Current versions of ffdShow (a video and audio decoder filter for Windows-based media-players) now include a headphone virtual spatialization filter that seems to work pretty much like Dolby Headphone. It mixes 5.1 surround sounds down to a stereo signal intended for headphones, supposedly using some kind of HRTF (but I couldn't really find any infos on that).
I have tried it with a few different players and a number of movies and demo-files with 5.1 AC3 sound. It is definitely a great improvement compared to the simple stereo-downmix that ffdShow also offers. Unfortunately I was not able to do a direct comparison to Dolby Headphone yet but I will try that later.
For those who would like to try it:
You can download ffdShow here: http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Filters/...w-20041012.exe
To configure it for use with headphones start the audio filter configuration tool of ffdShow and tick the Mixer checkbox. In the output speaker config then chose "headphone virtual spatialization". You may also have to take a look at the Codecs section and enable the decoding of e.g. AC3 by ffdShow (liba52 in that case).
BTW: I think the headphone virtualizer was taken from the VLC meadia player of VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org/). For people running Linux and/or are looking for a player that comes with all necessary decoder filters, saving them from having to install tons of stuff for video playback, VLC may be worth a try. Come to think of it: Is there any other Linux video player with headphone virtualization?
Also: does anybody here have additional info on that filter? what it does etc. and how it compares to DH. As in many open source projects documentation is pretty much nonexistant.
