[ninjikiran]

I was on a gaming forum earlier and out of the blue I was thinking about the psyko audio surround headphones.  They randomly popped into my mind due to their solution to surround sound headphones which is to introduce small pipes to induce the same kind of latencies our ears experience with a real 5.1 system.  Unlike other kinds of surround sound headphones which stick every driver into your ears.   Honestly I am not a fan of these kinds of solutions even though I have never tried this particular one, but it got me to thinking about the idea of pipping sound in a similar fashion. (for reference, http://www.psykoaudio.com/)
 
I am a stereo headphone kind of guy even for gaming, nothing can come close to touching them especially these kinds of phones.  But like all headphones sharp channel separation can be a problem, since the natural properties of speaker sound don't exist in headphones.  That is unless you have something liek the K1000's which in terms of open headphones make all others look as if they were wearing bathing suits while those are completely in the nude.
 
But lets say we could use a similar sound pipe style tech to mimic that natural speaker sound through out closed and open headphones.  Then these sound pipes came to mind,  I don't know how it would work but it could mimic the latency and left hears right and right hears left that we can afford on speakers. Without the need of software cross feed.
 
I bring this to the sound forum for two reasons, if its completely impossible you guys around these parts can make compelling arguments

.  At the same time if it is possible I might possibly get someone to ponder testing and experimentation which I neither have the fund or expertise to figure through

.

 

[kboe]

I would think that if you want true cross feed, speaker are the only way to go. Headphones simply don't recreate this effect. Headrooms and Jan Meiers cross feed try to recreate this delayed effect, but not as well as sound moving through an open space will do. That's just the nature of headphone playback. Different.

It would be interesting to see, but I bet it's already been tried in many manufactures labs, and there's probably some reason why it isn't done.

 

[xnor]

Exactly, crossfeed is just an approximation. Nevertheless, I find it to be very helpful to reduce unnatural separation and fatigue.
 
You cannot get the "true thing" with headphones, because to be able to exactly locate sound sources you have to be able to move your head relative to the sound source. Now with headphones resting on your ears you can move your head as much as you want... Read up on HRTF.
 
Well, it actually is possible but to expensive. The military has been doing it for ages. What you need is your personal HRTF and sensors to track your head's position. As simple as that.

 
 
As for crossfeed, I think that using pipes instead of a software based solution would just bring a lot of problems and harm sound quality.

 

[ninjikiran]

Yea possibly, they actually have headphone systems such as you stated for home use.  Like beyerdynamic but it cost over $2000 and isn't attached to headphones of your choosing.
 
I have been messing with crossfeed as well, it actually doesn't really harm the SQ very much.  Just been having an urge for speakers but living in an apartment using them would be difficult at night without getting the police called on me haha.