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To be used in conjunction with "looking behind you in
arcade horror shooters" and "Wireless Additional
Rumble
Pack For Video Game Consoles", this headset has
speakers that wrap around the back of your head.
Now,
you aren't simply limited to hearing something in your
left ear or hearing
it
in your right ear. If something
happens behind you, the sound will *come* from
behind
you, literally.
Lobot
http://www.google.c...ved=1t:429,r:12,s:0 [21 Quest, Jan 22 2012]
Like this?
http://www.turtlebe.../ear-force-z6a.aspx The frst I found when I searched (I knew headphones like this existed) [neutrinos_shadow, Jan 23 2012]
Some discussion of Aureal's 3D Vortex Sound
http://hardforum.co...hread.php?t=1374224 I so miss them as a company. Creative sucks in comparison. [RayfordSteele, Jan 24 2012]
One of the early demos...
http://vimeo.com/3843200 Listen and close your eyes. [RayfordSteele, Jan 24 2012]
[link]
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Aureal recreated 3D sound quite effectively with just headphones back in the late 90's on their soundcard offerings. This seems like a step backwards. |
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My Xbox 360 and 7-channel Denon receiver amp do this
without the nine-pound brain cancer halo. What's that
behind you? It's a Boston Acoustics sattelite speaker, and
it's got a knife! RUUUUUUUUN!!
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Not quite the same thing... though it is close. |
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//I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader how the brain can actually perceive 'behind' from two point microphones [sic - read as headphones]//
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Exercise A)
Posit a system that can recreate the experience of percieving forward and rear sounds within the simulcra of a twin-eared being.
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By concealment of a gyroscopic set of controls in a headpiece (worn with headphones, this setup wouldn't work in a static-speaker setup - at least, not one with only two speakers) the volume to each individual speaker is adjusted depending on which ear is oriented closer to the virtual sound source. By this method, coupled with a person's natural 'scanning' motion of turning their head to one side to better judge positional information from environmental sound should provide analogous results under artificial circumstances. |
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In the Aureal 3D sound system you could distinguish not only behind you, but pinpoint the precise location in 3D space from where the sound seemingly originated. Slightly above your line of sight at 3 feet away and 20 degrees to the left, behind you and below you, etc. It was frequency, amplitude, and interference based and dead on for precision.
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There was a demonstration that had a bee which the user could move around to experience the differing positions, as well as move their body location with respect to several virtual sound emitters.
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Dang I miss my Turtle Beach soundcard. |
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In fact, it ought to be possible by now to take some images of your ear, and have software convolve a spatial audio field with a model of the ear's acoustic properties, creating totally convincing directional sound. This would work best with ear-canal speakers.
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The old-school way of doing this would be to take a cast of your head, place microphones in its ear canals, and record stuff.
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These methods would produce a sound tailored to one individual's ears, rather than to some generic ear. I don't know how much difference it would make, but in theory it should be an improvement. |
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Like I said, Aureal did precisely that 10 years ago. The suits at Creative sued them into oblivion to destroy the competition. |
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But see my last paragraph ^, simulposted with your last comment. Surely the Aureal 3D didn't take into account your personal ear shapes. |
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Don't know how much of an improvement would be necessary. What they pulled off soundwise through my cheap PC headphones was incredible. |
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[bigsleep] Again, I'm well aware of head-related transfer functions, I'm just pointing out that the existing implementations don't take into account the differences between my head and your head, but with recent technology, they probably could.
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As for the law suit, it looks like Creative got away with (corporate) murder. From Wikipedia:
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A3D uses a subset of the actual in-game 3D world data to accurately model the location of both direct (A3Dspace) and reflected (A3Dverb) sound streams (A3D 2.0 can perform up to 60 first-order reflections). EAX 1.0, the competing technology at the time promoted by Creative Labs, simulated the environment with an adjustable reverbit didn't calculate any actual reflections off the 3D surfaces.
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Creative Labs sued Aureal for patent infringement in March 1998 [1], and Aureal countersued for patent infringement and deceptive trade practices. Aureal won the lawsuit brought by Creative in December 1999. However, the cost of the legal battle caused Aureal's investors to cease funding operations, forcing Aureal into bankruptcy. Creative then acquired Aureal's assets in September 2000 through the bankruptcy court with the specific provision that Creative Labs would be released from all claims of past infringement by Creative Labs upon Aureal's A3D technology. While Creative Labs has not chosen to support the A3D API, the underlying advanced features of A3D technology is making its way into Creative Labs' newer EAX incarnations. |
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