Revisiting speakers vs headphones in light of BACCH and Smyth Realiser

[Theoretica Appl. Physics]

And the Bacch can capture a 24 channel Atmos or DTS-X surround system, like the Smyth A16?

The headphones module of BACCH-dSP emulates only two speakers over headphones. The BACCH-3dm module (which is a 3D mixer) can reproduce the audio of any surround sound configuration (up to 20 speakers) from two loudspeakers, using a surround-to-binaural downmix and rendering through a BACCH filter (for speakers) whereby the listener will perceive the sound as if coming from (up to 20) virtual speakers surrounding him or her.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

The headphones module of BACCH-dSP emulates only two speakers over headphones. The BACCH-3dm module (which is a 3D mixer) can reproduce the audio of any surround sound configuration (up to 20 speakers) from two loudspeakers, using a surround-to-binaural downmix and rendering through a BACCH filter (for speakers) whereby the listener will perceive the sound as if coming from (up to 20) virtual speakers surrounding him or her.

Which is hardly the same thing as reproducing an object based codec such as Dolby Atmos or DTS-X, and the user has to "roll his own."

 

[Justin Maynard]

Isn't two speakers with BACCH XTC the ideal configuration though? Whether with actual speakers or simulated via headphones. Would adding more speakers (virtual or real) add anything positive to the sound quality?

 

[Theoretica Appl. Physics]

Isn't two speakers with BACCH XTC the ideal configuration though? Whether with actual speakers or simulated via headphones. Would adding more speakers (virtual or real) add anything positive to the sound quality?

Yes indeed for listening to music - that is what we believe.

BACCH is focused on stereo and getting the most out of stereo. We have two ears only and we therefore, in principle, need only two channels to get the cues needed to correctly locate sound in 3D. This is the binaural approach (as opposed to object-based Surround Sound approach) to 3D sound.

Multi-channel Surround Sound (i.e. Dolby 5.1, 7.1, Atmos, Auro3D, etc.), wether channel or object based, is not of interest to us. It is not a focus of research and development at Theoretica (nor is it a topic of academic research in spatial audio, where the main three approaches are: binaural, higher-order-ambisonics, and wavefield synthesis). It just happens that the HRTF-based BACCH-3dm 3D mixer module of BACCH-dSP Pro, along with a BACCH filter can reproduce (quite realistically) Dolby Atmos from 2 loudspeakers. This requires for input the streams of the Dolby-decoded audio for each channel. The result is an emulation of the speakers surrounding the listener at the positions required to reproduce the format in question. This works equally well for both object-based and channel-based surround.

While a few BACCH-dSP users (who have the Pro edition) have implemented such a setup for home theater listening, most of our customers do not care about Surround Sound.

 

[Hipper]

Interesting about needing a pair of speakers to emulate listening to speakers.

I listen to stereo speakers but in a darkened (not completely dark) room and sometimes with my eyes partially or fully closed!

 

[Theoretica Appl. Physics]

Interesting about needing a pair of speakers to emulate listening to speakers.

I was referring to using a pair of speakers to emulate listening to multiple speakers.

 

[Hipper]

I was referring to using a pair of speakers to emulate listening to multiple speakers.

....using a pair of speakers to emulate listening to multiple speakers through headphones?

 

[whazzup]

Hadn't had the fortune of listening to the smyth, but when using the next best thing, the Out of your head software (with its many Realiser-recorded filters), I find that a key component to successfully mimicking speakers in headphones, is that with the good ones, you do not feel the pressure / sensation of the headphone driver firing into your ears. Which in turn heightens the illusion of speakers playing.