MyEars Beta - Headphone surround virtualisation for any sound device

Uriel

Uriel

Uriel

Soldato
Joined
15 Jan 2006
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Derbyshire
Fancy trying 7.1 surround on any set of stereo headphones with any soundcard, DAC or onboard sound device?

http://myears.net.au/

Something for you all to have a play with. At the moment it's a free beta. It will become a subscription service from September if I understand all the readmes

Basically put on your headphones, do some calibration tests and it lets you download a driver with a custom HRTF for your own use. You can calibrate to different sets of headphones and save separate profiles if you like.

First impressions - it works. It seems to give me better results than CMSS-3D. Compared to Dolby Headphone it perhaps gives less sense of distance to the virtual speakers but resolves with more depth. I still think I prefer Dolby Headphone, at this stage though.

Quick testing in Deus Ex and DIRT 2 indicates it's working fine for games. I also got it working in Foobar2000 by setting the Virtual Audio Cable it installs as the output device.

The driver works using a virtual audio cable. If I understand the way it works, it could be used to pass multichannel audio from any sound device to another. You could, for example, install a Xonar and and X-Fi in the same system. This might allow you to render gaming audio on the X-Fi and then use the Xonar to output it as Dolby Headphone. I don't have a Xonar at the moment to test this hypothesis but it's tempting to grab a Xonar DG and give it a crack.

Edit: further testing indicates that the virtual audio cable is limited to 8 channel 16 bit 96 khz. That may limit its use. Try and change any of that and the whole schebang stops working.

Further edit: Did some extended music listening on Foobar. It's nowhere near as good as Dolby Headphone for music.
 
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Interesting. Sounds rather intriguing. I'll give it a whirl later, if I have time, if not then tomorrow hopefully. Only just noticed the thread. :p

Thanks Uriel. :)
 
Just to add - it currently works by simulating a 7.1 speaker system. They are intending to update in future to do full game environment simulation, like an X-Fi does in compatible games. That could be pretty cool and would allow effects such as elevation to be used. I understand that may be pretty CPU intensive though.
 
That demo sounded good! Any idea on the cost though?

Does other methods such as CMSS-3D & DH get updated continually - making it sound better & implemented through driver updates? Or once it is implemented in Xonar & Creative drivers thats it?
 
I think it'll be AUS $60 per year once it gets going and the beta finishes.

Dolby Headphone and CMSS-3D headphone are essentially fixed technology sets, and use generic HRTFs. You're somewhat reliant on getting a good match so it's luck of the draw with them. The advantage of this is it allows some tailoring of the HRTF to the individual. Even so - it just doesn't sound as good as Dolby Headphone to me.

Edit: Asus have changed other features on Xonar through. DS3D-GX originally only allowed legacy gaming support for Vista, then they added EAX emulation in an update.

Further Edit: Creative have recently launched some X-Fi soundcards with THX Trustudio Surround. See http://www.creative.com/oem/technology/thx.asp. I've not heard this but I'd be willing to bet it's just a rebranded version of CMSS-3D Headphone or CMSS-3D Virtual for cards with THX certification.
 
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