Headphone Surround Sound and Loudspeaker Virtualization

[Bdht]

So I know the Smyth Realiser and Darin Fong's Out of Your Head have been mentioned on this forum, but I haven't seen it mentioned that when using OOYH it's important to equalize the headphones to have a relatively flat response due to a double HRTF that accentuares 2-6khz resulting in a significantly brighter and leaner sounding experience. The Realiser does this as a HPEQ( headphone equalization).

Just wanted to encourage those interested in headphone surround sound and loudspeaker virtualization to give this a try. I recommend Equalizer APO if using Windows, it's a very high resolution parametric eq.

I had stumbled upon the program a couple years ago and it started my hifi journey from a pair of JVC Rx-700s and pc motherboard builtin sound. I don't think I need to convince this forum the benefit of upgraded DACs and digital/power conditioning, but it made a huge huge difference in the realism of the virtualized rooms. I use the program 100% of the time now when listening to music on my desktop systems.

 

I attached a couple examples of the EQs I use on my various headphones.  I don't use these EQs with normal listening only with OOYH.
 

[STC]

Never heard of FongAudio before. Just installed the trial version. BTW, have you compared Smyth with OOYH? Smyth works on actual measurements of your HRTF while OOYH doesn't. 

 

 

[Bdht]

The presets in OOYH are made using a Smyth Realiser A8.  Personal measurements are amazing with perfect accuracy and no coloration, but using someone elses PRIR is often ok with little coloration and still good accuracy.  For instance for me one of the presets the stage is shifted to the right a bit, but by reducing right channel output volume a bit I'm able to center it.  

[Bdht]

I thought I'd add this for those interested: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/out-of-your-head-new-virtual-surround-simulator.689299/page-73#post-14691857

 

A user on HeadFi captured the output of OOYH, converted to DSD, and played back on an iBasso DX200 with Audeze LCDi4s.  Portable virtual hifi loudspeaker system ;]