glitchsoc - Link to source
Hi everyone, I have something slightly different to share, it's part of a project I've been working on during my downtime, because I guess this is rest for me or something haha. I've created a reaper project (can easily be made into just an effects chain) which first upmixes stereo audio into 7.1.4 surround sound before then downmixing it back to stereo, but doing so in such a way were all 12 of the surround sound speakers are positioned using HRTF! In other words, it causes standard stereo music to sound like it's playing all around you in 3d, quite a fun listening experience! a lot of time, pacients, multiple pairs of headphones, hundreds of tracks tested and uncountable minor parameter adjustments went into making sure that there are as few hrtf or other artifacts in the output audio as I could achieve given my experience level and ears. I used a much younger and more simple version of this effects chain for the New years Any Audio streams, and an older but similar concept in my Starwar audio production. This chain combined with a virtual audio cable or app2clap allows you to binauralize audio from any windows application, it was pretty fun listening to a 3d internet radio station today! I made it for my audio productions, but discovered that it's also great for entertainment. If you're a curious audio nerd who owns a copy of Reaper and have a few extra minutes to install a couple plugins, feel free to check this out if you're interested, feedback is welcome/appreciated and I hope you enjoy! samtupy.com/music3d.zip

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in reply to TheFriedChip

glitchsoc - Link to source

Sam Tupy

@flyingpenguinMwauthzyx @vick21 This is a very good question. The short of it is that DearVRPro2 does a bit too much virtualization than we want specifically for music. As an example - actually the main one, DearVRPro2 applies air attenuation to it's virtualized output. This is very beautiful when you want to position an object in 3d space, but you can't easily turn it off without for example moving the sound very close to the listener then reducing the object's direct gain, and even that is questionable. This air attenuation makes it all the harder to preserve the music in as much detail is possible / makes it more complicated to not, for example, start losing out on the high frequencies in the tracks. DearVRPro2 was my first attempt at this actually, but I could never quite become satisfied with the sound being produced. ReaSurroundPan lets me simply upmix the incoming audio without attenuating or further processing it, and generally allows the equasion to contain fewer variables. We need to use 7.1.4 surround rather than the direct HRTF provided by DearVRPro2 because otherwise the stereo music is only mixed into 2 binaural sources (one for left channel and one for right) and no LFE control, rather than the 12 sources it's mixed into now. VRPro can mix into 7.1.4, but we're still left with the air attenuation problem as well as a single stereo width control rather than ReaSurroundPan's ability to manually set the scene coordinates of any input channel. In the end I love DearVRPro2 and use it all the time for actually positioning a *object* in 3d space. It just does a little too much that we can't easily turn off for this sort of stereo widening for music or ambiences. It does mostly work for that, but it just doesn't sound this good or is a lot harder to get it to do so.
@victor tsaran @TheFriedChip
in reply to victor tsaran

glitchsoc - Link to source

Sam Tupy

@vick21 @jcast432 Well, I've tried this with anything from Orchestral or other royalty free instrumentals to Andre Louis's shorts to various Christian music and more, and it almost always sounds better than the original stereo version, even if a bit different at first. The one note is that the wider the original stereo image of the track used, the cooler it'll sound binauralized. The more of the input track that is just flat out mono or has most of it's material near the center, generally the less flavorful will be the binaural result.
@victor tsaran @Jason Castonguay
in reply to Martin

glitchsoc - Link to source

Sam Tupy

@mcourcel @FreakyFwoof @vick21 @jcast432 When I downloaded these, I downloaded the complete plugins bundle from that page which contained DearVRMonitor, it also might be in the DearVRMix package. I don't have much time at the second but I'll look in to that so I can make the instructions more clear in the future. Sorry about that!
@victor tsaran @Jason Castonguay @Andre Louis @Martin
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