Ossic X 3D Audio Headphones To Bring Extra Immersion To VR

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stevenrix

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"From my perspective, the chimes remained in the same auditory space no matter which way I turned (even when I tilted my head), adding even more depth to the immersive experience." Sorry but i don't believe that.

 

heliontide

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What you believe is irrelevant. The headset has tracking so when you turn your head, you can focus in on sounds all around you in every direction. It's going to be huge for VR. Go to their Kickstarter page and watch their video where they go over how it works and what the features are. Maybe hold judgment until you try them yourself. Everyone who has tried them are saying they're incredible and unlike anything they've heard before. I couldn't be any more excited about these. Can't wait to get my hands on them.
 

stevenrix

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No, forgive my laziness, I meant i don't believe this sentence should have been articulated this way, that was my point, it make it sound like there is no immersion at all, this is why i said i don't believe that. I will try this headset in a few months of course.



 

eklipz330

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What you believe is irrelevant. The headset has tracking so when you turn your head, you can focus in on sounds all around you in every direction. It's going to be huge for VR. Go to their Kickstarter page and watch their video where they go over how it works and what the features are. Maybe hold judgment until you try them yourself. Everyone who has tried them are saying they're incredible and unlike anything they've heard before. I couldn't be any more excited about these. Can't wait to get my hands on them.
that seems largely unnecessary since the positional tracking within the headset not only assists with the visual, but also the auditory. I find it hard to believe that this pair of headphones is any better than a regular stereo headphone with good sound stage.
 

eklipz330

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What you believe is irrelevant. The headset has tracking so when you turn your head, you can focus in on sounds all around you in every direction. It's going to be huge for VR. Go to their Kickstarter page and watch their video where they go over how it works and what the features are. Maybe hold judgment until you try them yourself. Everyone who has tried them are saying they're incredible and unlike anything they've heard before. I couldn't be any more excited about these. Can't wait to get my hands on them.
so i went ahead and did a "ossic impressions" google search and came up with one answer: it's snake oil. Bi-naural audio is already amazing and all you need is a decent open back pair of headphones to simulate a large soundstage. you don't need 4 drivers per headset to simulate anything "magical". typical 7.1 marketing under a new nomenclature, "HRTF". what a load of bull. of course "gamers" eat this crap up.
 

wifiburger

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fancy, you can archive the same thing on MTK devices,
MTK have two 3D techs, you can daisy chain them through DSP addresses and DAC addresses, I had this mod on my last MTK device and it gives you a very 360 sounds that jumps across frequencies without any interruptions

, works with small high bandwidth magnets earphones,
 

wifiburger

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you can overwirte the PCM stream with, ONE example

IN_MTK_BLIVE_IN_MTK_SURR_OUT_Q1P16_OUT_Q1P32


Q1P16 is the 16bit DAC, Q1P32 might be the 32bit DAC too lazy to look at the source code
 
Headphones with more than one driver have been around for awhile now and the issues they had are not addressed in this article. First, getting each driver to work with each other is difficult. I can only imagine the processes they have to go through in the factory to sync the 16 drivers in each pair of these. One of these things out of sync will ruin the experience. 2nd issue is that smaller drivers generally don't have as wide a frequency response and aren't as accurate. I wouldn't expect these to be super detailed or to produce good sounding music.

"3D" sound has been around for awhile and has always failed to catch on due to the issues above. This headset doesn't fix any of those issues and has the gull to be priced the same as top-tier headphones. You have to ask yourself "Is 3D sound really worth all these tradoffs?".
 

alidan

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a long LONG time ago, my brother got me some crappy headphones and some crappy ear buds, a 3 pack for like 5-7$ at school for a christmas present, thought that counts i know, but they are the worst headphones i have ever owned.

im saying that because of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IXm6SuUigI

watch that, and close your eyes.

we are already able to track in 3d space with headphones currently, and in a game, if you had a vr setup on, and it was correctly done, you wouldn't ever need more then 2 sources for audio as every turn is tracked correctly and the audio should be adjusted in real time.

and just as a note, i have a pait of hd 598's, this sounds MUCH better through them, but the effect is doable on anything with 2 speakers.
 

Alan Pritchard

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I have been a follower of this project since pre kickstarter, and a first backer.
It sounds like any multi driver headphone, but it is not, the tests i have read reviews on have described it as mind blowing. more than your average gaming headphones.
The developers have tried their best to explain what they are doing, without giving too much away.
one thing they have expressed in interviews,is how very different sound, and positioning is to every person, and how this is processed differently for the individual.
yes, some of it is software, but some of it is hardware. I am yet to hear these but i have my faith in a product that i will be impressed with.
 

hdmark

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ya im very confused with this. So I understand that mapping the ear internals would give better audio, and of course multiple drivers is cool tech. However for the head tracking... so if im looking at my monitor, and I turn to the left... with normal headphones, it wouldn't know this so the sounds from the left are still coming from the left instead of moving. but why would that matter when using a monitor? 99% of the time.... im looking straight at my monitor so if I turn my head I don't really care.
and then what someone else said with a VR headset... if you turn your head with the VR headset, the headset has the tracking so even a normal set of 2.0 headphones should be fine for that too.

so im kinda confused as to the benefit of the head tracking. the ear scanning and the 360 degree sound (surround sound...) is cool though
 

phantomferrari

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While im still skeptical of this technology I do believe that we will soon see a pair of headphones like these that live up to their claim. The push of VR and making it immersive has really spurred many companies to push what can be done not just on the visual front but the auditory front as well.

Ill give you an example. Guitar emulation software for cabinets, amps, effects. etc. was absolute junk in the early 2000's. Fast forward to today and some of the software offerings are scary good.I feel like good 3d positional headphones will come out before the end of this decade
 

Alan Pritchard

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I think the point is....if you are hearing highly accurate sound locations...and you move your head...but the sound doesn't...even the tiniest bit...the whole effect collapses. Listen to a sound and move your head just a fraction. You can track that fairly easily
 

hdmark

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okay so i guess that's premium feature for 2d gaming/experiences? but don't HMD's with head tracking already solve this issue?


 

Alan Pritchard

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Rift is supposed to have 3d audio. Not sure what vive offer apart from earbuds I think. Ossic are pushing the hrtf bit as being a big deal. I couldn't comment as I haven't experienced it. I pledged though as I'm sold on the product. I remember mind bring blown by areal 3d cards back in the day..
 

hurnii

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The first hint of snake oil was the fact that they did testing at Abbey Road studios.

Was this really necessary? Are they competitive with industrial anechoic chambers either financially or performance-wise?

Next snake oil alert was jumping from interfacing with HTC Vive for positional data to the implication that it can interface with all different makes/models of HMDs for positional data. Shurely different API sets are used?

Will need to hear these before buying.
 


Sounds like they got you with their sales pitch. At the price of these things you can buy headphones right now that produce sound where you can tell exactly where it comes from.
 

thezooloomaster

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This is almost certainly a gimmick. The magic happens in the software, not the hardware. You could have $5 cheap-phones or a pair of HD800s, but the results will be the same if the audio was not recorded properly, or (in the case of a video game) if the software wasn't designed to create a 3D sound experience.
See this video to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
This works for anyone with a pair of headphones.

Mod edit for racism
 

Alan Pritchard

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Sounds like they got you with their sales pitch. At the price of these things you can buy headphones right now that produce sound where you can tell exactly where it comes from.

Perhaps... Im basing my assumptions on a relatively good understanding of Audio, and being a relative enthusiast.
you can buy a good quality gear, which can present positional audio to a reasonable standard.
But the testimony's i have read/watched from various people have tried to explain how very very different the experience is.
I tried describing to a friend what a rift was like... he didn't get it...a few months later he tried a smartphone VR app and HMD... his mind was blown...
I can take a risk and buy a potentially quality pair of headphones at a budget under some of the headphones i already have, or i could have something mind blowing very under price.
 

Pedasc

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This is almost certainly a gimmick. The magic happens in the software, not the hardware. You could have $5 cheap-phones or a pair of HD800s, but the results will be the same if the audio was not recorded properly, or (in the case of a video game) if the software wasn't designed to create a 3D sound experience.
See this video to understand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
This works for anyone with a pair of headphones.

Please leave the racism out of your comment, it stands without it.

The point of this is that the hardware is able to measure your anatomy and apply the HRTF to improve the positioning. From what it seems the science is actually there that says what they are stating is correct. Your anatomy actually has an effect, the question is how well does their hardware work and is the difference worth the premium. There are also a number of other technical challenges that they need to overcome that we don't have all of the details of.

I think everyone is right to be skeptical. This is a pretty big claim and we already can do fairly good 3D audio with just software as you mentioned.
 

DboneU68

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At $400 a pop, they can keep it. with VR I predict several other options becoming available with equal or better quality for a lower cost. That's how things always work. I smell sales of less than 10,000 total. FAIL
 

hughJ

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The point of this is that the hardware is able to measure your anatomy and apply the HRTF to improve the positioning.

HRTF + 3 component vector + audio sample = positional audio. There is no industry standard 3D audio API anymore with which to interface to get that vector and audio sample, so they're going to have to build their own API/middleware and get that integrated into any/every game engine they want to provide support for. That's assuming that the hardware and HRTF algorithm are meaningfully better than the existing offerings, which is anyone's guess.

In the case of VR, trying to calculate a personalized HRTF is going to be more or less impossible because you're not talking about a static head+body model, but a head that's continuously moving relative to the arms, shoulders, chest. In a perfect world you would be able to get an HRTF model that's perfect only when your body is in a particular position, and to varying degrees of wrong or completely wrong in others. Real time audio spatialization is still as firmly in the "meh - good enough" category as it was 15-20 years ago.
 
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