Dolby headphone demos

I was ready to come in here guns blazing about how Bit need to stay out of audio reviews, as they are cocked up every time, but the fact that you only posted the audio samples rather than attempting to review them is very nice.

Using a Pioneer SX-205 running Beyer DT770s, the sound of these samples is...horrific. Most of the time, "surround" stereo is achieved by using the brain rather than the ears. In a video game, if you hear footsteps and there's no one in front of you, it's assumed that they are behind you, and your brain fakes itself into hearing that. As has been said, these samples simply sound overprocessed, not "surround".

However, as has been posted, there are ways of recording directional stereo by setting a very proper soundstage. The sample posted right above may be the best sample I've ever experienced.

 

I have used three types of headphones. ordenary pc headphone, a Beyer DT770 and AKG K240DF studio monitor headphones. None of them was able to "emulate true suround". Not one of the demos could emulate a sound far in front of me. All sounds where comming from the rear left to rear right, or visa versa.

There is nothing better then a real DD or DTS 7.1 suround setup in your living room. Where you can actualy hear sounds in front of you going to the rear of the room, or around it. Another thing is if you have a good subwoofer, you can actualy feel the sound as well. For example a shockwave from a explosion.

As a sidenote: my living room produces more db and better suroundsound then most movie theaters i have visited over the years. Only the ones build in the last 5 years have awesome soundsystems where you can actually feel the movie. And that is what makes a movie enjoyable.

 

For being created from a surround track, it's pretty good.

 

I'm confused. though the video played fine, I got absolutely no sound, through speakers or headphones. I have a 5 year old laptop and ten year old crap headphones. would these be incapable of reproducing these wavelengths? They work fine for other sound and video. I am using vlc and have quicktime codecs. I see no reason why I shouldnt be hearing anything.

 

I couldn't get the sound to play in VLC either, but it worked fine in media player classic.

 

There was an demo of a bloke walking around a room shaking a box of matches that was waaaay better than this. Don't think it was dolby either but I can't remember for sure

 

Its on the first page...
http://thenicetech.com/Binaural Goodness.mp3

So so freaky..

 

now that is brilliant! even works up and down!

 

I see this a different way.
I use headphones purely because they are better than my speakers for the tiny detail you usually lose by ambient noise, speaker to ear distance etc etc. it makes me feel very intimate with the source music (although this is comparing electrostatic headphones to cone based speakers, but the same used to apply to my hd-650's)
What you do not get though is the same presence with speakers and you can never replicate the soundstage you can achieve with speakers. Binaural and the like are great but you still have a small narrow soundstage around your head.
Not a fantastically deep, wide (and tall sometimes) soundstage you can achieve with speakers.

So i use headphones for one thing and speakers for another.

With reference to the article...
I have never been impressed with anything Dolby based and this has again proved my point. Sound is such a delicate thing. You must do the least possible to it as possible. Any post processing of the sound is a bad idea in my book.
Headphones are headphones not speakers. Stop trying to make them something they can not achieve by playing with the audio signal with lots of nasty digital processing.

 

Linkey
Or you could just get these headphones if you don't have a surround sound setup. Only downside is lack of bass, 50Hz

 

Soundstage and surround sound and completely different things.

 

now that was different and it worked.

 

care to explain a little? and why do people get them mixed up?

 

Surround sound is sound all around you produced by multiple speakers (more than 2) which gives audio all around you.

Stereo provides a soundstage which can give a very accurate image of the original soundstage (the area where the music was performed).
A soundstage has depth and breadth and can sometimes give height. Not many people here will have heard this properly as it involves setting your speakers up to your room properly.

Although you can achieve a much better soundstage yourself by separating your speakers by as much as possible (at least a 1m) and sitting a fair distance from them, unlike almost every PC audio system i see which involves some speakers 0.5m apart with the listener 0.3m away from them.

The reason surround sound can not have an accurate soundstage is due to rear speakers and a centre speaker. As soon as they produce any noise at all they kill a nice accurate stereo image or soundstage. If you have a 5.1 setup try using it in stereo (front L and R only) with the speakers apart and you a far distance from them. Then listen to the same piece of music (a simple piece of music would be best or classical) with the centre channel outputting sound too.


So, basically:
Surround sound produces music all around you which is unrealistic to the original performance. When do you ever sit in the middle of a band with them circled around you?
A stereo soundstage is an accurate image of the original performance.

 

Kunstkopf

Really nice recording. Sounds a lot like a Kunstkopf recording?

Have you guys ever heard the Stephen Kind Kunstkopf audio book? Bloody brilliant!

more nice links:
http://www.soundman.de/deutsch/audio_examples_de.htm
http://www.hobbythek.de/archiv/331/#12
especially:
stereo mic vs. kunstkopf
http://www.hobbythek.de/archiv/331/st_bahnhofshalle.mp3
http://www.hobbythek.de/archiv/331/kk_bahnhofshalle.mp3

 

http://www.binaural.com/binfaq.html