Very impressed with Panorama 5

[ADD]

Hi all,

After I listened to my first truly binaural recording via headphones, ordinary stereo recordings have never quite cut it. Some of the more recent recordings on SACD, however, are much more "headphone friendly" if you listen to the Redbook track. Examples of this are Telarc recordings engineered by Michael Bishop. Infact, if you have an SACD player and just listen to the suround channels on his recordings, you are effectively getting a binaural experience because he uses the Neumann KU 100 dummy head microphone for those channels.

Anyway, I've been searching for a VST plugin that could somehow transform stereo recordings into binaural. I tried a few and they all failed dismally. They either sucked the life right out of the music in converting to binaural or they just didn't create a cohesive sound stage (or both).

I then came across a rather expensive VST plugin called Panorama 5, made by Wave Arts:

http://www.wavearts.com/Panorama5.html

Now I have to say that a $200 piece of software was out of my budget, but I was curious to see how good it is. Well, the default setting was pretty horrible and I was about to uninstall the demo...but then I decided to plug away methodically and learn precisely what all the individual knobs and buttons did. After a couple of days mucking with it, I felt I had a good idea of what worked best, but it did take a lot of trial and error. The good thing is though, you can directly "A/B" in real time the original and altered waveform. You can also individually check the direct sound source, reflection and reverberation (just don't use the doppler option as it is more a sound effect than anything you would want to use to process music).

I've since been "converting" a number of CD tracks using Panorama and the results really are excellent. That "in your head" feeling completely disappears and with a good original recording it is really like listening to speakers - except you don't get the bone conduction or the physical vibrations. But the sound really does feel like it is 10 feet in fornt of you rather than around your head. I've been using a simple pair of CX300 IEMs and even with those, the sound seems to be coming from the across the wall behind my computer rather than eveloping my head.

There is a very small loss in transparency in the highest frequencies after the conversion (very high frequencies become a touch "harder"). There is also a very slight loss of "air" around individual instruments. But I think that is a very small price to pay for the massive improvement in soundstaging. OK, it is not a substitute for a true binaural recording, but it gets about 90% - 95% the way there depending on your "engineering" abilities, patience and wilingness to sit down and thoroughly learn the thing. If you have such a brilliant headphone setup that you never yearn for the listening-to-proper-speakers feeling then good for you

But personally the only headphones I have ever tried that seem to emulate speakers with stero recordings are not only incredibly expensive, but they require expensive amplification and are definitely not portable (or arguably even comfortable over long listening sessions).

Unfortunately it all comes at a steep price - $199 US and that doesn't include a host application if you don't already have one (Acoustica is fairly cheap though). Then again, it is also the cost of 10 full priced CDs shipped to my home, so that is another way of looking at it - especially as over the time I would be using it I would be converting well over 100 CDs that I already own so that I can get a better listening experience with headphones.

I am only using the demo at the moment - you can use it for 30 days before it either stops working or you register it. I am going to have to let it stop working for the time being because I just don't have the $200 at the moment - but as soon as I get an injection of funds, I will almost certainly buy this product.

I need to add the usual waiver - I have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Wave Arts or the Panorama product (nor Acoustica for that matter). I just thought it was worth mentioning it here, because many of us are dedicated headphone listeners and this product seems to be right up our alley.

 

[ooheadsoo]

How about sharing a screen shot of your settings?

 

[ADD]

This is my basic starting point. Any changes I make on a recording by recording basis are quite subtle - perhaps very slight changes in each of the slope and gain settings. I usually mute the Reflection and Reverb streams to begin with so that I can set the correct slope, length and gain for the main (direct) stream. Thr main thing here is to try and get the frequency and balance as close as possible to the original before working on the reflection and reverb. I have only tried this for orchestral classical music and classical recitals - however since I am basically emulating an averaged size listening room with stereo speakers, it might work for anything.

I'm not sure if the HRTF setting is effected by the soundcard or not, but my guess is since all the calculations are made in software, the only influence the soundcard would have is probably the digital to analogue conversion and line amplification for monitoring purposes. I have found that only CIPIC 018 works for me. Perhaps others will work for other people and it may be computer dependant. Either that or I possess a very strange head (model)

Incidnetally, according to the manual, the higher the "length" settings, the more accurately the HRTFs are applied. I think there is some bug with the program (or perhaps a problem with Acoustica) in that I can't change these settings on the fly. So once I have come up with the setting I then change the lengths, save the setting, close Panorma then re-open. Not really a show stopper. Although increasing lengths is supposed to be very computationally expensive, it's still quite fast on my Athlon 3800 machine, but perhaps not for real time monitoring.

 

[SonicDawg]

I have tried the demo long ago. When the novelty wore off, I simply cannot stand the tradeoff of the tonal change and muffling of the high frequency. It's only good for movies and such.

 

[ADD]

I can understand that. I actually forgot about it as well because I just wasn't getting results I was happy with. The tonal changes and the "hardening" were too significant. Then I went back to it a few days ago (I was actually about to uninstall it). That was when I found that spending a lot of time finding a setting was actually worthwhile. And increasing the HTFR filter lengths to maximum, changing the original source to 96Khz / 24 bit before eidting, etc, all reduce the impact of the program on things that should be preserved. I suspect that the better the equipment, the less satisfactory the effects of this program would be, because they would emphasise it's shortcomings and expensive equipment won't benefit as much from the binaural effect.

However, for me personally, I think it will be worthwhile because the good it does outweighs the bad.

I don't think Wave Arts are doing themselves any favours with all the presets though. They are all absolutely terrible for music and would put anyone off it instantly

 

[SonicDawg]

If you really want "outta head" feel with minimal distortion, you should consider using Headplug. It has a wide range of options to tailor your own preferences.

 

[ADD]

That was one of the ones I actually tried earlier. I agree that it does not seem to take as much away from the original source material, but on the other hand to my ears it does not create anything like the external loadspeaker effect that Panorama does. Each to their own I guess.

 

[Artemus GF]

Hi there,

sorry for my bad english

I'am using the demo of panorama to convert stereo-sound to binaural-sound in realtime from foobar2000.


my setup(all VSTs i have used a free or available as demo):

>>>>> dont forget this image: http://upload.paul-doege.de/files/13...57b2a1c7_2.png (head-fi dont allowed me to display more than 4 images) <<<<<

http://upload.paul-doege.de/files/20...7fd6bcab_6.PNG

http://upload.paul-doege.de/files/82...8099a6e2_7.png

lows are processed by one entity(?) of panorama optimized for lows, highs are processed by one entity of panorama optimized for highs. mids are only processed by one entity of panorama if there is a different beween the left and the right channel, sounds who are at the same volume on the left an right channel a processsed by "bauer stereo-to-binaural"-vst (on my settings similar to chu moy crossfeed). Sounds who are partly or completly at the right or left channel going (partly) through panorama.
all who can speak german schould look at this to understand what +matrix did: MS-Stereofonie - Wikipedia (i cant find this at the english wikipedia)

my setup is the result of approx. 100h work (reading through reams of websites, listening to reams of different setups and adjusting a lot of parameter/settings) so if you publish a setup based on mine i would like to see a "based on Artemus GleitFrosch's Setup", if you talk about it you can also call it "Artemus GleitFrosch's Setup"^^

at the moment my cpu (AMD 64 3000+) has not enough power to use more VSTs or to increase the legth-setting of the 3 panorama-entitys so i orderd a new one.

Finally, how did my setup sound?
Summing up, I can say: o.0 What? ^^
-musical instrument are way more separated
-the sound is out of my head
-highs are IMO less bothersome
-the bass is deeper
-spatial-effect is highly realistik ?[and dont processed at sounds where it dont would sound good.]? (i hope its understandable^^)
-the music is not destroyed in order to get a high spatial-effect




@ADD: o.O o.O o.O -3.3dB reverb and a 125ms delay o.O o.O o.O are you crazy???