Show HN: Headphone Enhancer for Techno and 5.1 Movies

[super_tycoon]

Worth noting that this kind of processing has been present on some PC soundcards for a while.

Creative has its 'surround' processing for the Z series and a similar feature whose name I forget for the x-fi series. Processing done in hardware.

Dolby also has its own virtual surround processors that come with some of Asus' Xonar offerings. I'm not sure what degree of processing is done in hardware/software.

A lot of home theater receivers also support pro-logic.

I've bought a few x-fi's and a SBZ just for their surround abilities alone.

A youtube video I found comparing the above techs doing stereo->headphones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ROujJ8Ae8

I know the Creative cards can work off a multichannel input as well, not sure about the Dolby tech.

[fxtentacle]

Haha yes you're absolutely spot on. The knowledge on how to do this has been around since 1988: http://staffwww.itn.liu.se/~karlu/courses/TNM086-2011/papers...

I tried out Dolby's Headphone offering a while ago and I just didn't like the way it sounds. My guess is that they are using equalizers to fake the FIR filters without accounting for the delay-dependent part of the EQ. But that's just my speculation.

I didn't know that Creative was offering this, too.

BTW, I believe that the Razer Kraken 7.1 Headset is technically also just a stereo USB headset with an app not unlike mine.. but that is also just my speculation, as I didn't try out their product yet.

[fxtentacle]

I built this as a christmas fun project, so feel free to ask if you'd like me to explain something.

[douglasheriot]

Did you look at creating a user-space audio driver instead of the kernel one? 10.9+ only, but if you built this recently it probably makes a lot more sense. https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/samplecode/AudioDriv...

[bmsleight]

Have you got an example file - ogg/mp3 to listen ?

[not_a_test_user]

I got an extremely loud noise when I used it for the first time, so be careful after installing it.

[fxtentacle]

That shouldn't happen. Would you be so kind as to tell me your OSX version and Mac/MacBook model? I probably won't be able to spot and fix the bug right away (it's new years tomorrow, after all) but on the long term I of course want to squash this kind of bug.

[vsilves]

I'm still getting a non-cleared buffer played a bit louder/incorrectly/not-in-sequence when I start playing a AC3 music in .m4a files using the latest Hajo's 1.6.7 in Mac 10.10.1 in a MacBookPro 15 Retina. The buffered audio is clearly from whatever was playing when your engine was shut down because if I was playing a silent portion of a song when I closed the previous .m4a then opening the next .m4a with Quicktime X plays that silence (unnoticeably). But if I was playing a loud song before closing previous .m4a then opening the next plays an stray buffer with the previous song. So maybe you need to clear the buffer one more time when the engine detects that audio is coming into your genuine fake sound card (processing engine).

[fxtentacle]

Yes it seems that on some Yosemite machines, the ring buffer that I use to transfer the audio is being read before it is being written. That caused the noise in the beginning and that's probably also what's causing the high delay that dodysw reported. I'll work on the fix tomorrow and then report back. Happy new years, everyone !

[vassy]

Wow, I'm loving this. I was looking into something to improve the V shaped sound of my Sennheiser Momentums. Are you going to continue working on this? Or is it a one time project?

Also, would it be possible to add a currency converter on your website? 10 bucks should be about £6.50

[fxtentacle]

Since I've been using this myself for 2 weeks now and I still like it (and use it daily), I'll continue to maintain and (if needed) bugfix it. But at the moment, I don't have any intentions of adding more features. That said, what would you need?

I'll be on the bus to my new years party for the next 4 hours or so.. I'll look into the shop tomorrow. That said, I already got quite a few emails about sales from FastSpring, so in general it seems to work OK.

[mva]

Would be great if I could adjust the bass myself a bit. Some songs are now just a bit too much. Furthermore vocals are missing that spark and sound quite dull. I have the idea that you are boosting the mids which pushes high freqs a bit to the background.

[fxtentacle]

If you click the Icon and then on Sound Engine, you can select from different virtualization engines.

My default engine does a 1.5 gain on <200 Hz. If you don't like that, choose "Hajo's echo-free 5.1 system without bass boost" or one of the "(ear plugs)" NEW AUDIO TECHNOLOGY engines. Those don't apply my Headphone Equalizer.

[fxtentacle]

Actually I also just remembered that I do, in fact, reduce the highs a bit on both "Hajo's" virtualization engines to make them sound closer to my living room stereo system. The "NEW AUDIO TECHNOLOGY / Music" engine should give more highs at the expense of also introducing a bit more room echo.

[fredkelly]

I was skeptical but this is actually really noticeable - great work! :)

[acrefoot]

So, is this crossfeed, or something more magical? Forgive my ignorance.

PS. This thread led me down a rabbit hole for simulated surround sound and other tech (I'm on linux, so I wanted to see what my options were), ending with this cool demo of Cetera: http://juneja.info/binaural/v-i-r-t-u-a-l-_-b-a.mp3 It's pretty neat (try it with ordinary stereo headphones).

[nXqd]

this is really interesting, there is no need for the enhancer to works. I just works @@ What is the magic behind this ?

[bburky]

I want to see someone implement surround sound with head tracking. Some Googling turns up some research projects that have done this with either face tracking or accelerometers. And at least one (expensive) commercial product.

I wonder if someone could do it with a software implementation that just takes 5.1 input and uses only a camera or some inexpensive hardware?

[vsilves]

Also noticed that when playing 5.1 music in .ma4 files using Quicktime X the engine does not shut down immediately when pressing the pause button in Quicktime X, but it does shut down a few seconds later (~ 15 sec).

It would be nice if it shut down the engine immediately like it does when you close the .m4a in Quicktime X (or any other player I suppose).

[fxtentacle]

Sadly, I cannot do that because I have to wait for OS X to release the audio stream. And if you only pause the playback, it takes a while for OS X to sleep the sound card. So when that happens isn't exactly my decision ;)

[neardark]

The installation failed. The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

[fxtentacle]

That should only happen if: 1. the driver cannot be loaded 2. the app doesn't start

I included two drivers in the installer, one unsigned for OSX 10.7 and 10.8 and a signed for OSX 10.9 and 10.10.

Which OS X version are you using?

[Sone7]

I've been looking for something like this for so long. And now it's here, and it is gnarly good. Thankyou.

[fxtentacle]

I made it to sound the way I like ;) but you may or may not agree with my taste.. If you click the Icon and choose Sound Engine, you can choose one of 6 different virtualization engines.

Also, please tell me if there's easy that I could do to improve the app :)

[fxtentacle]

just a quick note.. it's really late here so I'll go to sleep. But i'll come back to answer more questions/comments tomorrow morning.

[aa_memon]

Does something like this exist for iOS, iPhone?

[fxtentacle]

I'm not aware of any solution. The problem for building an iOS app to deliver this is that you'll need to provide the 5.1 player inside the same app as the virtualization engine. My engine works on iOS and Android, in case you know someone who has a working 5.1 movie player app for iOS ;)

I'm also already discussing the possibilities with one Android app developer company for getting my headphone enhancer engine into their music player (because their player is what I personally use on my S4 mini).

[benbristow]

Are there any Windows versions of this?

[fxtentacle]

I only built a Mac app because I mostly use Mac and so it'd be hard for me to make a well-tested windows version. I heard that Razor has a similar software for Windows, although I don't like the sound quality of their implementation. Also, with my cooperation partners at NEW AUDIO TECHNOLOGY, I built a professional Windows app that works similarely:

http://www.newaudiotechnology.com/products/spatial-sound-car...

But that one is targeted towards learned audio professionals, so the GUI is more complex and it has many more features and a different audio engine and is also way more expensive.

[dyscrete]

I can't figure out how to get this to work, if I set my output device to Hajo I get nothing

[fxtentacle]

Is the app running? I.e. can you see the Headphone icon in your menu bar (top right corner)? If the app is running and has detected that headphones are plugged in, it should show the Headphone icon with an empty plus sign. If it has additionally also detected that music is playing, the plus sign will be filled.

Maybe try changing volume through the volume keys on your keyboard. That usually triggers the Apple "click sound" to demo the new volume, so then you should see that the Apps icon switches from an empty plus to a filled plus sign.

[dodysw]

The latency kills the videos.