[ironmine]

I alternate between HeadFit and Isone Pro. Both are great and there's no clear winner. With some sonic material I prefer HeadFit, while with other material I use Isone Pro.
 
Today I remembered how the author of HeadFit had advised to tune his plugin and I tried to apply the same tune-up procedure to Isone Pro. I switched off the right channel, set the Cue Strength to 90%, and played with Isone Pro settings trying to make it sound as close to the left speaker as possible (coming at me at 30 degree angle like a real speaker would). To my surprise, the best effect was when I set "Head Size" about 75%. (I had always thought that I had an average-sized head.) As for "Ear Size", I got an impression that it equalized the sound in different ways, and I really heard that with different ear size settings the sound became different, but I couldn't tell which one I liked best. So, I just left it at 50%. Then I returned the Cue Strength to 10% and this is how I like it currently.
 
So, I encourage people not to assume that they know which head sizes and ear sizes work best for them in Isone Pro just because they think they know which size their heads or ears physically are. It's wise to try different settings with only one channel working.
 
I also use FabFilter VST EQ after Isone Pro to correct the frequency response of my headphones to make it flatter. The actual frequency response of most popular headphones can be found at web-site www.headphone.com. For example, I have Denon D2000 and I added the following bell-shaped boosts:
2500 Hz +1.5 dB Q4
5000 Hz +1.5 dB Q4
8000 Hz +1.0 dB Q4
15000 Hz +1.0 dB Q4.
 
The sound is very unfatiguing and natural, it just flows into ears like honey The phantom image in the center could be a bit more sharper and laid back, though. However, in all other aspects the sound resembles speakers in a very nice way.

 

[dreamist]

This plugin is a godsend for my K702.  The image produced by Isone Pro really helps fixing their weaknesses.  As the K702 are known for their lean bass, dry sound, too wide sound stage, and sometimes a bit too pronounced at the top, Isone Pro brings the sound together, thus making the sound stage really believable, the bass more coherent and plentiful, adding warmth into the sound reducing its dryness, and tame the high a bit, doing all these while maintaining their original sound character.  It's still the K702, only better!
 
HRTF calibration is necessary for me though.  I ended up with 75% cue strength, 15% head size, 20% ear size.  Room characteristics are 1.5-meter speaker distance, 0.2s reverb time, and 30% room size.
 
But it's just a one time thing, and the improvement is HUGE! Only one minor gripe is that when I need to switch between speakers and headphones I have to keep toggling the plugin off and back on.  Would be great if there's a way to separate send channels to affect only headphones.  My monitors are on different outputs than my headphones, but foobar can't just have the plugin affecting only some channels.

 

[cravenz]

Quote:

This plugin is a godsend for my K702.  The image produced by Isone Pro really helps fixing their weaknesses.  As the K702 are known for their lean bass, dry sound, too wide sound stage, and sometimes a bit too pronounced at the top, Isone Pro brings the sound together, thus making the sound stage really believable, the bass more coherent and plentiful, adding warmth into the sound reducing its dryness, and tame the high a bit, doing all these while maintaining their original sound character.  It's still the K702, only better!
 
HRTF calibration is necessary for me though.  I ended up with 75% cue strength, 15% head size, 20% ear size.  Room characteristics are 1.5-meter speaker distance, 0.2s reverb time, and 30% room size.
 
But it's just a one time thing, and the improvement is HUGE! Only one minor gripe is that when I need to switch between speakers and headphones I have to keep toggling the plugin off and back on.  Would be great if there's a way to separate send channels to affect only headphones.  My monitors are on different outputs than my headphones, but foobar can't just have the plugin affecting only some channels.

You've got me interested now! lol

 

[Roseval]

I downloaded the demo version.
At first I was struggling a little with the interface.
Those rotary knobs look great but rotating them with the mouse won’t do.
It took a while before I discovered you should treat them as what they are, a horizontal scroll bar.
Maybe a fader is be more convenient.
Head size (and ear) leaves me a bit puzzled, what is a 100% head size? Who has one?
Anyway, these details aside, fooling around an evening with all those knobs yielded a soundstage I do think is pretty close to listening to a pair of speakers.
Finally stereo of the headphone sounds like stereo instead of STEREO
This is the first cross feed that really convinces me.
This is what DSP is about, mangling the bits to improve the sound at a bargain price.
I bought it, EUR 20,- well spend

 

[kostalex]

This is the first enhancer (either DSP or hardware based) I prefer to pure sound. Well done, I will buy it.

 

[chinesekiwi]

I know we aren't meant to swear on Head-fi but my impressions = holy sh______
 
That is all. Slight tweaking is needed, particularly for HRTF as all our heads and ears are different but once that's done.....gees, it's crazy that this is only 20 Euro. Insane. It firmly belongs in the KSC-75 value bracket of audio purchases. 
I got it the 'naughty' way but it was far too good to not let go on my cash for it for a legit licensed version. It's a steal at 20 Euro. S-T-E-A-L. With high detail headphones like my DT880/600, it's a whole new realm. Yes, I'd admit, the differences are greater with some tracks more than others but gees, overall, a huge difference from any crossfeed I've used. This is in a different league tbh. All the others sound so toyish and unrealistic compared to Isone Pro. Can I game with this?
Tbh, using this actually increase the detail in songs as you hear stuff masked by a lack of instrument / soundstage separation / lack of HRTF factors.    

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

I know we aren't meant to swear on Head-fi but my impressions = holy sh______
 
That is all. Slight tweaking is needed, particularly for HRTF as all our heads and ears are different but once that's done.....gees, it's crazy that this is only 20 Euro. Insane. It firmly belongs in the KSC-75 value bracket of audio purchases. 
I got it the 'naughty' way but it was far too good to not let go on my cash for it for a legit licensed version. It's a steal at 20 Euro. S-T-E-A-L. With high detail headphones like my DT880/600, it's a whole new realm. Yes, I'd admit, the differences are greater with some tracks more than others but gees, overall, a huge difference from any crossfeed I've used. This is in a different league tbh. All the others sound so toyish and unrealistic compared to Isone Pro. Can I game with this?
Tbh, using this actually increase the detail in songs as you hear stuff masked by a lack of instrument / soundstage separation / lack of HRTF factors.    

It's dramatically better than all the crossfeed out there because it goes far beyond what a typical crossfeed does. It's also a serious professional audio product that simulates speaker cabinets, distance, room size, and so on. For audio professionals, this tool is incredibly useful because now mixing and mastering engineers don't have to burn a copy of the project they're working on and then run around to the living room stereo, the car stero, the boom box, the flat panel TV...etc to hear how the project sounds on those various consumer devices--Isone Pro does it all without you ever leaving your chair.
 
It really is an astonishing bargain for what it does. I personally think it's grossly under-priced (especially when you compare it to the much more expensive Redline Monitor, which doesn't sound nearly as good and doesn't do nearly as much), but I think that's also one of the reasons it might sell so damn well, because now even non-audio professionals and budget-conscious hobbyists and audiophiles can afford it and it will sell a lot more than if it was priced out of the reach of most people. By being so amazing and costing so little, it takes on the aura of a "secret little gem" that would create a buzz in any community that discovers it, like it has here.
 

 

[ironmine]

Recently, when tweaking the settings of Isone, I noticed that I tend to prefer to switch off Cue Strength adjustment (turned counterclockwise to "none") when I listen with Denon D2000. However, when I use IEM (Creative EP-630), I like Cue Strength to be positioned somewhere around 50-80%. Now let us remember that Cue Strength knob, according to the manual, changes the strength (effect size) of the HRTF elevation cues, which the Ear Size knob is responsible for. (Cue Strength  has no control over Head Size knob.)
 
Accidentally, I read 3 days ago an online book on this website: www.ambiophonics.org/AmbioBook/Chapter8.html. I came across the following words (let me quote):
 
"Binaural theory says that if you sit in the concert hall with small microphones in your ear canal, record the concert, and then later play it back with in-the-ear canal earphones you will experience an almost perfect "you are there" recreation.
 
But let us consider, briefly, why this recording method can otherwise produce an awesome reality.  First of all, the sound from the stage and the hall during such a personal binaural recording reaches your ear canal (and the imbedded microphones) after being filtered by your pinna and your head shape. Since the playback earphones we are using are an in-the-ear-canal type the sound only passes through the pinna or around the head once. Also the pinna used to make the recording are your own, not those on some dummy head carved in wood or plastic. The two channels are kept separate throughout and the left ear playback earphone signal never leaks into the right ear or vice-versa. Thus we can state one of the basic rules of realistic binaural recording technology. In any binaural recording or reproduction chain there should be one and only one pinna function and it must be your own."
 
Something clicked in my brain. The pinna is the visible part of the ear that resides outside of the head. Therefore, when using head-sized circumaural headphones (and probably supra-aural phones), the sound gets processed by our own pinna once, and, based on the rule stated above, we should not apply any Ear Size processing again! It means that Cue Strength should be set to "none".
 
However, when we use in-ear headphones firing the sound directly into our ear channels, our pinnnae do not "process" the sound because they are bypassed, and, with this type of headphones, Cue Strength should be turned on and Ear Size knob should be adjusted.

 

[Lunatique]

Quote:

Something clicked in my brain. The pinna is the visible part of the ear that resides outside of the head. Therefore, when using head-sized circumaural headphones (and probably supra-aural phones), the sound gets processed by our own pinna once, and, based on the rule stated above, we should not apply any Ear Size processing again! It means that Cue Strength should be set to "none".  
However, when we use in-ear headphones firing the sound directly into our ear channels, our pinnnae do not "process" the sound because they are bypassed, and, with this type of headphones, Cue Strength should be turned on and Ear Size knob should be adjusted.

I think it's best to ask Jerone himself regarding this. You don't want to guess at these type of things so it's best to ask the creator of the plug-in. I don't know if he's still following this thread but I'll ask him.

 

[ironmine]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lunatique /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
I think it's best to ask Jerone himself regarding this. You don't want to guess at these type of things so it's best to ask the creator of the plug-in. I don't know if he's still following this thread but I'll ask him.

 
I would be glad if he could confirm what my ears and my understanding of the binaural process told to me already.
 

 

[ironmine]

I wonder whether Isone does any internal upsampling/oversampling or not?
 
If not, it would probably make sense to take advantage of its max 384 kHz processing capability and upsample the signal first 44.1 kHz > 176.4 or 352.8 kHz (e.g., using SOX or other upsampler) using an integral number (x4 or x8), then downsample it back to 44.1 kHz and then dither it to 16 bits.
 
Those who can playback 24/88.2 or 24/176.4 files should downsample/dither to these values, of course.
 
Certainly, upsampling/downsampling is not recommended normally, but here we deal with some very serious computations inside Isone. So, the benefit of improving the accuracy of these computations with increased sample rate may outweigh the drawbacks of the upsampling/downsampling processes. Also, if we upsample/downsample using an integral number, it makes these calculations more precise.
 

 

[JeroenB]

@Ironmine:
 
You touched upon a very interesting and important aspect of binaural technology.
Indeed, with headphones, some effects of the pinna can be foreseen, and even
with in-ear models, there will be a resonance created by the 'tube' of the
ear canal which is situated between the transducer and the eardrum - this will
typically give a strong resonance at around 4 kHz.
 
For good binaural reproduction, we need two aspects:
- Given the position and acoustic coupling of the transducer and the ear, the
signals at the eardrum should have similar acoustic features as those obtained
with 'real' sound sources.
- Because the anthropometric properties of individuals can differ considerably,
it typically works best if the acoustic features are 'matched' to your own ears.
 
For in-ear headphones, the pinna is excluded from the acoustical pathway
and thus should be modelled in the signal processing chain.  For head-sized
earphones, there is still a considerable difference in pinna effects compared
to a far-field sound source. The latter can be modelled as a planar wave entering
the pinna.For headphones, this is not the case, and the effect of the pinna
will be much less pronounced than for far-field, real sound sources.
 
In both cases, there is still a need to introduce some pinna cues, but the
amount may depend on the type of headphones and personal preferences. This is why a dedicated
control is available to modify this. Additionally, it may be the case that the
simulated pinna cues do not match the ones of the actual listener, and in such
case one may prefer to omit pinna cues all together (set the cue strength to zero).
 

 

[leeperry]

 

I wonder whether Isone does any internal upsampling/oversampling or not?
 
If not, it would probably make sense to take advantage

There's several oversampling wrappers you can try(that's the only way to oversample in a VST plugin architecture AFAIK): http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=oversample+vst
 
My fav. VST plugin also does it, its designers said they had to as working on 44.1/48 wasn't accurate enough. 96kHz is not oversampled.

 

[kostalex]

I use two DSPs sequentially in Foobar:

• Resampler (PPHS), set to 96 kHz
• George Yohng's VST wrapper (set to Isone)

 
Then I direct Foobar output to WASAPI: USB DAC (Nuforce Icon HDP), set to 24bit / 96 kHz.
 
Is this setup correct?

 

[SP Wild]

 
Quote:

I use two DSPs sequentially in Foobar:

• Resampler (PPHS), set to 96 kHz
• George Yohng's VST wrapper (set to Isone)

 
Then I direct Foobar output to WASAPI: USB DAC (Nuforce Icon HDP), set to 24bit / 96 kHz.
 
Is this setup correct?

nope.  If you're gonna use cpu upsampling - set it to the maximum your input will accept - I think that is 48khz with the Nuforce - upsampling to 96 with computational cpu - only to have hardware downsample it back to 48khz so your dac can see the signal makes zero sense. 
 
I'm not sure if you have 1 and 2 in the correct order either - maybe someone else has an opinion, I'm leaning towards reversing that order.