Read Me: About the Surround Headphones[xi] Files

I spent most of yesterday afternoon creating samples of the Headphones[xi] process for 11 tracks of various genres. Today’s post is the README.txt that I should have added to the folder. I know some of you have already downloaded the tracks…and the response/comments have been uniformly positive. If you have a reasonable set of headphones and want to experience something the attempts to “place” the music outside of your head, it’s worth downloading a few…or all… of the examples.

There are 11 Headphones[xi] examples on the FTP site (if you haven’t yet requested the access credentials, please click here). They are:

1. Mosaic – Guitar Noir AIX 80018 Laurence Juber, acoustic guitar/ Domenic Genova, acoustic bass/Steve Forman, percussion

2. The Gypsy Life – The Gypsy Life AIX 85053 John Gorka, vocals & guitar/Amelia K. Spicer, background vocals/Susan Werner, piano & BGV Russ Rentler, mandolin/Michael Manring, fretless electric bass

3. Say A Prayer For You – Hanna/McEuen AIX 80048 Jamie Hanna, vocals and guitar/Jonathan McEuen, vocals & guitar/TJ Russell, electric bass/Jesse Siebenberg, drums

4. Primavera – Primavera AIX 80050 Destani Wolf, vocals/ The Banda Brothers

5. On the Street Where You Live – Tormé Sings Tormé AIX 83042 Steve March Tormé, vocals

6. Mujaka – The Latin Jazz Trio AIX 80011 Luis Conte, percussion/David Garfield, piano/Dave Carpenter, acoustic bass

7. Libido – Threads AIX 85063 James Walker, flute / Bryan Pezzone, piano / Tim Emmons, electric bass / Mike Packer, drums

8. The Kerry Dance – I Play The Piano AIX 85059 Terry Trotter, piano

9. Goldberg Variations Acoustica – The AIX All Star Band AIX 86060 Dean Parks, guitar/Laurence Juber, guitar/Jim Cox, piano/Alberto Lopez, percussion/Kevin Axt, electric bass/MB Gordy, drums

10. Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 – Allegro BWV 1050 – Bach – Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 & 5 1338AX The G. Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra

11. The Pines Of Rome – The Pines of the Appian Way – Beethoven and Respighi – Symphony No. 6 and The Pines of Rome AIX 80006 The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra/Zdenek Macal – Music Director

I have processed about 2 minutes of each of these tunes through the Smyth Realiser and digitally captured the output as a two-channel file. To demonstrate the effect of the processing, I switched from the Surround Virtualization to the normal headphone mix a couple of times during the playback. There should be a dramatic shift in the sound between these two options.

The room is my surround mixing room and the filtering in my own.

In listening to these files during the transfer process yesterday, I preferred the “processed” version to the normal version. In the Oppo Headphones, I found the difference to be very dramatic and I had a very hard time listening to the normal stereo version. This is not universally the case. Some listeners like the normal “inside-your-head” version better. Not a problem.

The future of audio reproduction is going to be multichannel and the Headphones[xi]™ processing allows convincing surround playback using headphones. It certainly is different than normal headphone listening. But as I stated a couple of days ago, this is not the only way to bring surround sound to headphones. I’ll tackle Headphones X, Astound Sound, Darin Fong, Beyer Dynamic and new Korg processes in future posts.

BTW The tunes that I have uploaded in Headphones[xi] format are the same ones that are available as High-Resolution stereo tracks…the only difference is the processing and the upper sampling rate limit of 48 kHz. The Symth box is limited to 48 kHz at the present time.

My plan is to make Headphones[xi] versions of all of the surround tracks available on iTrax.com as part of the 2.0 version of the site.