[johnn29]

When I get some time I'll give OOYH another install and get it working.

I was obviously making a big mistake trying to use a Harman Target curve with any HRTF. Flat is what's needed - you can use AutoEQ to compute a flat EQ for your headphones from various measurement sources - I found the sound bang on after that. No need to tweak EQ. What I was obviously doing before was using a curve that had a built in boost in the treble range, then EQing the treble down to make it sound right.

Darrin - might be worth suggesting that or building an EQ to apply the flat target in your software?

phoenixdogfan - I agree completely - Impulcifier's author has virtual room correction forthcoming. In principle a virtual room should blow away a real room.

 

[castleofargh]

not long ago someone showed me a demo of Spat Revolution from Flux, which is exactly what you're talking about in term of creating a virtual room. it's mostly virtual speakers to real speakers kind of simulations, but there are a few binaural options where it seemed that one could even import his HRTF file to use for the virtual speakers converted to headphone stereo instead of some standard HRTF used most of the time on surround stuff and basic head tracking solutions like Waves NX.
as I said somewhere else, it's a production tool, and the price isn't fun. but just to say that such solutions do exist already. now you have to use built in models or bring your own, which brings us to the second part: measuring sound VS making a model for 3D scan.
as far as I know, measurements are still the most effective/accurate way to go. probably in part because even 3D models must have been built based on acoustic measurements, putting them one step further in term of approximation of an approximation. but at some point obviously it will be the other way around as we ideally would get rid of issues with placement, noises, and mic calibration. it just doesn't seem like we're there yet.

 

[jaakkopasanen]

That attempt to capture real systems playing in real space which both OOYH and Smyth and now (I think) impulsifier are doing could be the real weakness of these systems. Think about it. Your headphones play full range without crossovers, and in most cases people are extremely happy with the sonic signature/voicing of those phones, and while they don't create the OOYH effect of something playing in a real room, they don't have the drawbacks regarding directivity/room interaction that all those real speakers have. So, why would you want to change the voicing of your phones by having them mimic a transducer which probably has a poor crossover, bad room acoustics, poor directivity, etc.

Isn't the next step forward to create a digital room and virtualize your own headphones with their exact sonic signature into that space with as many virtual speakers as you want? Moreover, why use in-ear microphones with their terrible S/N and distortion performance to capture your HRTF. HRTF is all about the topology of your head, ears, and body, and there is no theoretical reason why it can't be captured with the utmost precision with some kind of visual measurement system (and it would only have to be done once if we separate the HRTF from the speaker/room emulation).

A system modeled on these features could be a great deal simpler as well. Obviously headtracking would still be needed, and room virtualization and HRTF correction, and multichannel binaural mixing would be needed--but all that stuff is now available from one vendor or another. It just needs to be packaged as a single piece of software that runs on a Windows box and a MAC and sold along with a headtracking unit that connects to you pc via usb.

It's true that speakers imprint some of their problems to impulse response measurement but also some, like harmonic distortion, are negated quite well by the exponential sine sweep technique. I don't know what kind of effects crossover perfomance and directivity have on the impulse response and how these could be compensated for. Room acoustics on the other hand has direct effect on the impulse response and many of us don't have great rooms because certain compromises have to made when building a listening room. The nice thing about this is that you don't actually have own the room or the speakers if you know a place where you can go and do the measurement once, just like OOYH does. Another fortunate consequence of speaker and room virtualization is that cross-talk and causality are not problems for room correction. For example in a real room you cannot have separate equalization curves for left and right because both ears will hear sound from all speakers. In a virtualized system this is possible because impulse responses to each ear are separated and can therefore be equalized separately. It should even be possible to negate standing waves from the impulse responses with a bandpass filter which tracks the sine sweep although I haven't tried this yet so can't say if there will be practical reasons why this wouldn't work.

Genelec has actually just announced their service for generating a HRTF from a video which goes 360 around your head. There is a thread about it here: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/genelec-aural-id.903304/. Unfortunately it's 500€ plus VAT. While it might work quite well at least one problem remains: headphone compensation. Obviously HRTF generated from a video won't compensate for the frequency response of your headphones. Even an eq curve made from publically available curves won't solve the problem completely because headphones have variation between units and what worse variation between left and right side drivers of the same headphone. This might seem like nitpicking but we are not talking about how 3D model based HRTF could overcome the limitations of acoustical measurements so we can't ignore the unit variance.

Hefio advertizes that they are working on "a new generation individualized headphone calibration technology that delivers greater tonal & spatial accuracy in sound reproduction than any other commercial solution available today." It's hard to say what this is exactly because they haven't announced anything yet. Earlier they built an IEM which does pretty much exactly what Nuraphone does so they certainly have the knowledge to build a headphone calibration system which could be used with 3D based HRTFs. Hefio was previosly (and maybe still is) partnering with Genelec and IDA Audio so this could actually be exactly what they are doing. Time will tell.

Until we have an affordable product which ties all this together, acoustic measurements serve as very good approximation of the speaker-room system with potential for virtual room correction that surpasses all physical rooms.

 

[arnaud]

Isn't the next step forward to create a digital room and virtualize your own headphones with their exact sonic signature into that space with as many virtual speakers as you want? Moreover, why use in-ear microphones with their terrible S/N and distortion performance to capture your HRTF. HRTF is all about the topology of your head, ears, and body, and there is no theoretical reason why it can't be captured with the utmost precision with some kind of visual measurement system (and it would only have to be done once if we separate the HRTF from the speaker/room emulation).

A system modeled on these features could be a great deal simpler as well. Obviously headtracking would still be needed, and room virtualization and HRTF correction, and multichannel binaural mixing would be needed--but all that stuff is now available from one vendor or another. It just needs to be packaged as a single piece of software that runs on a Windows box and a MAC and sold along with a headtracking unit that connects to you pc via usb.

I wish it were that simple. I can make HRTFs simulations rather easily but half the battle is the acoustic impedance of the surfaces (not just the geometry). Perhaps there are approximate values that can be used (maybe some published papers that validated ear canal SPL predictions against test data?) but I am not aware of them ( and I wonder if such impedance data also varies very much among individuals...).

 

[royster]

When I get some time I'll give OOYH another install and get it working.

I was obviously making a big mistake trying to use a Harman Target curve with any HRTF. Flat is what's needed - you can use AutoEQ to compute a flat EQ for your headphones from various measurement sources - I found the sound bang on after that. No need to tweak EQ. What I was obviously doing before was using a curve that had a built in boost in the treble range, then EQing the treble down to make it sound right.

Darrin - might be worth suggesting that or building an EQ to apply the flat target in your software?

phoenixdogfan - I agree completely - Impulcifier's author has virtual room correction forthcoming. In principle a virtual room should blow away a real room.

Hi, Can you explain how you applied a flat EQ to headphones using AutoEQ? Im using an hd650 btw, but im assuming its the same method for all headphones (provided you have measurements for the headphone)

 

[Ripley]

Hi, Can you explain how you applied a flat EQ to headphones using AutoEQ? Im using an hd650 btw, but im assuming its the same method for all headphones (provided you have measurements for the headphone)

I would also like to know how to do that.

 

[jaakkopasanen]

Hi, Can you explain how you applied a flat EQ to headphones using AutoEQ? Im using an hd650 btw, but im assuming its the same method for all headphones (provided you have measurements for the headphone)

After installing you would do:

python frequency_response.py --input_dir="oratory1990/data/onear/Sennheiser HD 650" --output_dir="my_results/oratory1990/Sennheiser HD 650 flat" --compensation="compensation/zero.csv" --equalize --parametric_eq --max_filters=5+5 --bass_boost=0

Bass boost should not be needed since good rooms have this naturally. If more bass is desided it can be boosted by --bass_boost=4 or any dB value.

Word of warning: flat is most probably not what is wanted here. Equalizing headphones flat will remove (among other things) the 3 kHz peak which is created by ear canal resonance and is not included in the HRIRs. I guess in some cases flat might sound better if the original HRIR happens to have wonky frequency response, like have way too much energy around 3 kHz. Normally Harman target would be the best guess, or perhaps diffuse field. However I don't know how OOYH HRIRs are measured and if they contain any headphone compensation of their own. If I were to publish HRIRs I would make sure they sound right with neutral headphones ie. Harman target equalized headphones.

 

[martyp87]

I've switched computers since last using this software and had issues on OS X (10.14) whereby the audio would become distorted after say 15 mins of use.

Currently have this software installed on 10.15 although only have the trial running (will need to email for new keys) which works ok for the first 2 mins until the notice pops up. However, just wondering if I'd be better off running this app in Windows 10 instead? I love the software for watching movies/TV shows so I've been missing it for a while since upgrading computer.

 

[darinf]

I've switched computers since last using this software and had issues on OS X (10.14) whereby the audio would become distorted after say 15 mins of use.

Currently have this software installed on 10.15 although only have the trial running (will need to email for new keys) which works ok for the first 2 mins until the notice pops up. However, just wondering if I'd be better off running this app in Windows 10 instead? I love the software for watching movies/TV shows so I've been missing it for a while since upgrading computer.

Hi @martyp87,
First, just to let everyone know, we actually have a workaround for the distortion issue with USB DAC's on macOS. I was hoping to release a new version of Out Of Your Head that integrated the fix but haven't quite finished that version.
In the meantime, I will try to post the fix on our website. (I am out of town at the moment.)

I will post here once I get back home and post the instructions for the fix.

With regard to your question, sound-wise, Windows ans Mac are the same. However on Windows we don't have the USB DAC distortion issue.
But you should try it on your Windows computer, and if possible just to make sure everything works with your setup.

Once you decide what to do, then you email us and we can issue you a new license file for your computer. All we need is the Out Of Your Head UUID value from the computer you want to license.

Thanks,
-Darin

 

[martyp87]

Hi Darin,

That's great news on the workaround for the DAC issue under MacOS. As I spend most of my life on the Mac (especially when travelling), I've just sent off an e-mail for new keys for this machine.

Look forward to implementing the solution for this issue when available!

 

[whazzup]

Hi @martyp87,
First, just to let everyone know, we actually have a workaround for the distortion issue with USB DAC's on macOS. I was hoping to release a new version of Out Of Your Head that integrated the fix but haven't quite finished that version.
In the meantime, I will try to post the fix on our website. (I am out of town at the moment.)

I will post here once I get back home and post the instructions for the fix.

With regard to your question, sound-wise, Windows ans Mac are the same. However on Windows we don't have the USB DAC distortion issue.
But you should try it on your Windows computer, and if possible just to make sure everything works with your setup.

Once you decide what to do, then you email us and we can issue you a new license file for your computer. All we need is the Out Of Your Head UUID value from the computer you want to license.

Thanks,
-Darin

Always been curious about your background. You're an audiophile that learnt to code? Or you have some engineering background? Don't mean to pry though.

 

[darinf]

Always been curious about your background. You're an audiophile that learnt to code? Or you have some engineering background? Don't mean to pry though.

Hi @whazzup,
I am a professional photographer and videographer "by day" and have been for the past 20 years.

I do have a physics degree from UC Berkeley.

I have a programmer that does most of the coding. I know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to do it myself.

I am an audiophile though. I got that from my dad. I remember when I was a kid and he said, "I found out that our stereo is only mid-fi. We want Hi-fi! " as he unveiled a Mark Levinson preamp and amp and Celestion speakers.

 

[darinf]

Hi everyone,
I finally got around to posting the workaround for the macOS version of Out Of Your Head when using USB DAC's.
As mentioned before, there is a bug which causes cumulative timing/sync errors with USB DAC's which caused progressively worse distortion over time.
Here's a link to the workaround instructions on our website:
https://fongaudio.com/out-of-your-head-macos-workaround-for-usb-dacs/

Hopefully we will have a new version soon that will incorporate a fix.

Thanks,
-Darin

 

[darinf]

It's that time of the year...
Happy Thanksgiving to US residents. Everyone else still benefits!

 

[whazzup]

It's that time of the year...
Happy Thanksgiving to US residents. Everyone else still benefits!

Awesome! But is there a reason why the title says '(Sale Ended)'?