Hello
@Rob Watts, im a grateful Qutest owner.
I have been reading quite a lot in the Chord dac forums here and have seen you talking being amazed by how the ear/brains are so well at resolving space perception. Pinpointing the origin of sounds. Which can only be poorly achieved by record and play.
I wonder what your thoughts are on HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) and research about it. Now i've been reading several interesting postings about how the brain uses reflections of sounds on ones ear shells and torso to calculate space perception based on phase and timing differences on direct and degraded reflected signals entering the ear canals. Normally these personal reflected signals are not taken into account when recording and playing. But if reproduced acurately on headphones it can sound real close to the reality where someone can actually hear things far away or behind, under, above the head.
For example just try this demo film made with a Realspace plugin in Unity software.
This demo software can be downloaded and run on a PC to try too.
(Yes i know its far from a good quality recording being a lossy youtube film but is about the technique)
Key is that ones OWN ears and torso must be used in the reflections reproduction in order to get it right. Simply using a standard model gives maybe only a few percent of what can be achieved.
In the simulation they used a 'average' virtual head model so its not too close to reality but the sense is really noticable, specially when entering the 3rd room where, on the lift, i can easily hear under and above me.
Further i came across the Realizer from Smyth research where they developed a 16 channel virtual room processor for use with headphones with which they can emulate sounds in any environment where they 'recorded' the ambiance, like a recording studio in london or a church.
They say to get it 'right' by measuring the HRTF reflections of a person using 2 tiny microphones placed inside ones ears folowing by playing calibration signals through a speaker setup. Then store this personal HRTF file to be used by this person for creating the realism.
It seems they are even selling virtual environment files for use with their equipment to recording studios.
I'm just unlucky that i could'nt have a demo myself of it yet calibrated on my own ears, but will if i get the chance.
Also i quietly guess they can improve on the DAC processing used on their product. (Assuming they use 'standard' chips)
Bottom line is that i think that reproducing the signal perfectly as the analog original is not the only condition needed to get real space (and depth) perception in replayed recordings.
Thanks for reading,
Rick
