Jump to content

Cool Article in the most recent Atlantic on "3D" audio


AmanGeorge

Recommended Posts

Odd, I thought headphones are really good at crosstalk cancellation (especially closed headphones) and that's the whole point of crossfeed, to add crosstalk and give a more natural feeling of soundstage. After all, real life has crosstalk, the delay between one and the other ear of a sound is how you can judge location... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization

Right now, to me it sounds like he's tripping balls.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can't imagine it working without extremely precise room setup and positioning of the listener. Probably wouldn't lend itself well to lounging with buddies watching a movie. For binaural recordings in a dedicated audio room, I'd think the sweet spot would be not much bigger than the size of a human head.

It sure would be cool if it were more flexible though.

Edited by acidbasement
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sounds like he's using "reverse crossfeed" -- in other words, using crossfeed to cancel the sound from one speaker to the other ear, rather than what it usually does.

And yes, that video does a good job of explaining the exact answer to my question. Although he skipped "the third thing", which I suspect is frequency response.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The left speaker only contains cues for your left ear and the right speaker only contains cues for your right ear? That's so wrong. Maybe if you record everything with the binaural dummy head, but what about all the current music? Currently a 2 speaker setup is basically multiplexing however many original mics down to the two speakers, whereas if you do crosstalk cancellation it ends up being two non-ideal point sources at fixed locations, one for each ear. Again I go back to closed headphones as a great example of how normal recordings would sound with crosstalk cancellation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, they design crossfeed and all sort of tricks, digital or analogue (as in the Phonitor) to get your headphones sounding like speakers, then this guy designs a trick to get your speakers sounding like headphones, which supposedly improves 3D imaging. Amazing :blink:

Excellent point! Maybe he should call his headphone speakers the Oxymorons.

Edited by Voltron
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The left speaker only contains cues for your left ear and the right speaker only contains cues for your right ear? That's so wrong. Maybe if you record everything with the binaural dummy head, but what about all the current music?
Exactly, I can't imagine he found a process to convert normal speaker imaging to binaural, then produce that from speakers.

And I also agree about the earlier point about narrow sweet spot -- I bet it's painfully small.

Also: Torpedo -- well put.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is one of the things I love about my Polk SDA CRS speakers (Stereo Dimensional Array) which has the extra set of drivers to eliminate crosstalk by canceling out the left speaker signal reaching the right ear, and visa versa. It works beautifully.

I also once owned a Carver unit with a "Sonic Hologram" circuit that tried to do the same thing electronically with conventional speakers, and it also worked quite well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.