On 1 Nov 2012, at 23:07, Stefan Schreiber <st...@mail.telepac.pt> wrote:
> The next and valid question is if stereo via headphones actually works so > well at all... (Many people have problems, such as in-head effects, lack of > perceived "real space", etc.) > > If you would fix these problems, then you could probably also reproduce > convincing binaural surround via headphones. Of course stereo doesn't work through headphones! That's why there's a difference between stereo and binaural, because stereo assumes speakers being IN FRONT of the listener, not perpendicularly left and right of the listener. That's why there are head phone processors which in essence transcode regular stereo into binaural stereo. Sennheiser sold such a processor for a while, I still have it somewhere. It worked rather well, except that the electronics were of inferior quality using cheap, low-power components. So then I had the choice of listening to super-clean audio from my Metric Halo headphone output, but have "in head" stereo, or to listen to grungy, muddy sound, with the proper sound stage. That's also EXACTLY why UHJ needs to be decoded to binaural, because being stereo compatible, without decoding it works just as well or just as badly as regular stereo works on headphones. A mobile device music player app can solve these issues for both UHJ and regular stereo by doing the proper binaural decoding/transcoding, and since it's an app and not a hardwired appliance, it's easy to let users select different HRTF in the app's preferences, or even let advanced users load personalized HRTFs. Ronald _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
