7 ms·

The rise of 8D Audio on YouTube

46 points by imartin2k 8y ago

Juliate 8y ago
It _can_ be nice, if properly used. The Queen example is lousy at best: instead of having the single audio source wander in space, it could have been used with a true mix to actually position (and move, properly) each voices/instruments in space. But of course, you'll need the original tapes to be able to do that. :p
- timrichard 8y ago
  I agree... going to be limited and annoying without at least the stems. I quite liked this demo, which shows a bit more potential for placement : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_vVU43Kz_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_vVU43Kz_w
- HocusLocus 8y ago
  There is a project that does attempt to disentangle musical instruments and voices in the waveform domain that is interesting, http://jordipons.me/apps/end-to-end-music-source-separation/ http://jordipons.me/apps/end-to-end-music-source-separation/ ...such that the results could be flanged and recombined separately. But as you hear in their demos, any recombined result would be a Picasso painting as compared to a photograph, maybe interesting though.
- notacoward 8y ago
  My thoughts exactly. I'd like to be able to hear the guitar here and the vocalist here and the drums over there. If the individual sounds move around separately that's cool. The Virtual Barber Shop example does a good job illustrating that, with a voice on one side and a phone on the other simultaneously etc. They even play with distance as well as direction. I have only a vague idea how that works, but it definitely adds to the experience. The Bohemian Rhapsody example, by contrast, is just crap. Panning the entire ensemble from left to right, over and over? Meh. Then it's not even stereo like it was originally. It's just sequential mono. It's reduced, not expanded. These effects generally require at least having the original separate tracks, if not specialized recording techniques. However, I still have hope that advanced signal processing can separate the parts well enough after the fact to get a satisfactory result. I'm no ML fanboi by any means, but I'm pretty sure those techniques could be productively brought to bear on the problem as well. I'll bet there's a grad student or two working on it right now, and I wish them great success.
mb_72 8y ago
"There are a few different ways you can make it, but it’s really distinguishable when someone makes 8D correctly. When it’s done wrong, the music doesn’t sound like it’s in the room with you. It just pans back and forth." That's what the few examples listed in the article sounded like to me; in fact I found the panning of the instruments and vocals a bit frustrating to listen to. Perhaps this works better on some people than others, i.e. non-musicians?
- almostarockstar 8y ago
  Agreed - a well mixed track will use stereo panning as an artistic feature. These tracks, at least in my opinion are gimmicky at best and actively detract from the original at worst.
- speedplane 8y ago
  Don't most people look at YouTube on their phone or crappy laptop speakers? I look forward to the day when people care about their "hi-fi" stereo again, but I don't see that coming anytime soon.
  - FractalParadigm 8y ago
    Unfortunately, I feel that the only ones who will "care" about it "again" are the only ones who care currently. There's a reason people don't have Hi-Fi setups anymore; they're completely unnecessary and a waste of time/money/space when >80% of the population will tell you they can't hear a difference between the EarPods that came with their phone, and a $10,000 top-of-the-line stereo hooked up to $2000 monitors. Anecdote time; friends of mine own(ed) a niche A/V store, their grandparents opened the store in the early '60s and their primary focus was to carry, sell, service, and most importantly demo everything from a $50 loudspeaker to the $10,000+ amp. Back then, every product was completely different from the next. A $50 amp and a $500 amp was like the difference between a CRT TV and a 4K OLED TV, same with speakers. About 25 years ago when their parents took over, it was already becoming evident (mainly with everything going digital) that the difference between a $50 amp and a $500 amp wasn't nearly as pronounced as it was 50 years ago. 5 years ago the business pivoted away from A/V, because nobody is going to spend $500 on an amp or receiver when they can pick up a $30 soundbar at Walmart and get 95% of the quality/experience. I've seen it myself; the family is still a bunch of die-hard audiophiles where money is absolutely not an object when it comes to audio, to the point they built a home theater and spent $30,000 on a custom-built 11.2-channel tube-based Atmos receiver, >$2500 per speaker (that's right, nearly $30,000 in speakers), and around $10,000 for each subwoofer. While most of our friend group will tell you it's unquestionably the greatest sounding thing on the planet, there's still a few who'll put in their dollar-store earbuds, load up a 360p song on YouTube, and tell you completely straight-faced it sounds no different.
ykevinator 8y ago
Even though its kind of gimmicky it's pretty amazing
- isoprophlex 8y ago
  I'm listening to the Owl City track on a train, and had to take off my headphones to make sure the music wasn't blasting from my phone. Pretty cool.
  - mcmalware 8y ago
    Had the same reaction though. Even if it is a bit gimmicky I'd like to see new songs that try to maximize the effect. Could be a pretty cool trend
  - nmeofthestate 8y ago
    It's actually even more annoying than an Owl City song that doesn't oscillate from left to right behind my head. I think one aspect of it that adds to the annoying experience - it's as if the music is lurking around in your personal space right behind you, which is really irritating when a person does it.
pizza 8y ago
For more on how the brain positions sounds in space, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization
mr_sturd 8y ago
In 2018, the world rediscovered stereo.
- jen729w 8y ago
  Or QSound. I remember my tape version of The Immaculate Collection sounding pretty fancy on my JVC boom-box. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSound http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/q-sound.12511/ http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/q-sound.12511/
lloeki 8y ago
Hmm, when a guy approached me the other day boasting about 8D music I laughed so hard, it sounded so much like snake oil. I did some cursory research though but did not find anything. Now that there's this Queen demo, I recognise the kind of rendering effect this is achieving, and such schemes making the sound more realistically spatial with headphones has been existing for years (decades), such as Dolby Headphones[0] or binaural audio[1] either beforehand or via post-processing (e.g Bauer stereophonic to binaural[2] a.k.a BS2B). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1bgMX4UCjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1bgMX4UCjw [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording [2]: http://bs2b.sourceforge.net/bs2b_lib.html http://bs2b.sourceforge.net/bs2b_lib.html
Oras 8y ago
Listened to one of these two weeks ago and I really like it. It's worth mentioning though that not all of them are the same quality or give the same feeling of moving sounds around.
mprev 8y ago
I read the article and I listened to the samples and I fail to see where the "8D" comes in. Early virtual surround sound examples always seemed impressive, if gimmicky: a plane would fly over your head and you'd hear it move from back to front. But the examples in the article sounded like someone had discovered the stereo pan knob on a mixing desk and was slowly going from left to right.
- da_murvel 8y ago
  And I think your example of the plane is where this technique is applicable. In a cinema for example, imagine yourself watching a horror movie and you can hear the evil demon sneak up behind your back. shivers. In a concert setting however, the source of the sound is (usually) static, while I might move my head slightly from time to time and pick up the sound from different angles. If that could be simulated using headphones, that would be pretty cool! But again, I fail to see what purpose it would serve in a normal stereo setting where the sound is produced the same way, from stationary speakers. Then of course there are other factors like the venue layout, design and material. As well as speaker placement, mixing of the sound and even the crowd itself. Which all contributes to the sound and the "feeling" of listening to the music.
  - filmor 8y ago
    Well, the source may be static, but it may be distributed. Think of a big symphonic orchestra.
    - da_murvel 8y ago
      Of course, but that doesn't equal the sound "moving around", the violin section will always remain in the same place for example, which is the feeling I get when listening to one of those 8D Audio videos on youtube. The sound moving around that is.
  - soylentcola 8y ago
    > I might move my head slightly from time to time and pick up the sound from different angles. If that could be simulated using headphones, that would be pretty cool! This could surely be done (and probably has been done) using a VR headset or even just IR lights and cameras a-la TrackIR. If latency was low enough, you could process the sound to model the changes caused by head position/orientation.
Sholmesy 8y ago
This is absolutely amazing, and is one of the first things in a while where technology has made my jaw drop. A lot of these vids are a bit gimmicky, and over doing it, but this is so cool.
- mprev 8y ago
  Genuine question: which part, specifically, was amazing? I'm wondering if there's something some people perceive (such as yourself) and others, like me, don't.
  - Sholmesy 8y ago
    I'm familiar with directional audio (when playing games, 7.1 sound or w/e) and stereo sound (when listening to music), there is something that feels super immersive from some of the tracks. I've just spent 30 minutes listening to as many as I can, some are terrible and some are great, maybe try more tracks. I can totally empathize with people saying that this is annoying/distracting, and I can't see myself doing it for a long period of time, but as a tech demo/cool thing, I find this awesome.
StreakyCobra 8y ago
It is fun to listen to a few songs, mainly to see what is possible for sound localization with stereo headphones. But I really don't want to listen to music like this, i.e. moving left and right behind my head, all the time. Quite perturbing for me, but all brains are different (speaking knowingly, I have aphantasia), so maybe some people really like it.
sn41 8y ago
ASMR is also mentioned in the article. I find it pretty effective at evoking sensations.
LandR 8y ago
I don't like this at all. I listened to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuDkhSJoryI&feature=player_embedded_uturn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuDkhSJoryI&feature=player_e... And it's just too distracting, it doesn't feel like being in the room with the music at all. It just feels like it's going from the left ear to the right ear. It just sounds really weird. It doesn't invoke the feeling of being at a concert at all, as the sound is constantly "moving" in space. Maybe it would be like being at a concert where I'm in some sort of car circling the stage... With the source of the music constantly changing.
- mnw21cam 8y ago
  Agreed. You're sacrificing the actual sound of the music, making it muffled and otherwise poor quality, adding in the "amazing" swing-it-around-your-head effect (which by the way you could do decades ago), and calling it better. I listened to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Nothing else matters", and compared to the originals. The originals were much better. Maybe if you're listening on rubbish earbuds anyway, the effect sounds cool. But on my reasonably expensive headphones it just kills it.
  - mnw21cam 8y ago
    So, I listened to some of the other linked tracks, and they're much better than the Bohemian Rhapsody one, although they still just sound like someone discovered the pan control. The virtual barbershop was cool, but that's specifically because they recorded it with the proper equipment.
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  I think the problem with these manufactured "spatial" videos is that because there's no spatial information in the original track, they're pretty much forced to swing it around your head to demonstrate how "cool" it is. If they'd separated the various instruments and laid them out like a real, intimate gig, that would be impressive.
- simias 8y ago
  Uh yeah, that's pretty bad. It would make more sense if you could get/extract the individual instruments and voice tracks and then "place" them in various locations of 3D space. But then if the location doesn't change I guess it'll just sound like a new mix and that's quite mundane. But then I don't get ASMR videos either (I find them rather unpleasant and a bit creepy usually) so I suppose I'm a bit of a snob.
SuperNinKenDo 8y ago
Mixed results. Mostly unimpressive. The Mura Masa mix was a bit of a more interesting experience: you could tell they'd put some thought into it. Edit: From the comments I'm starting to wonder if certain people perceive this effect differently. I'm very much on team "so you discovered the pan nob?" but the way people are talking, I have to assume that there's two groups of people having two wildly different experiences.
- HocusLocus 8y ago
  This is a young generation who grew up hearing cellphone speakers, trashy computer speakers placed close together (because the manufacturer thought 3' wire was cheap enough), and earbuds that deliver sound but fail to isolate environment noise, so the brain is assaulted with near-mono information. These people have never experienced true stereo: wide separation. So flanging has been rediscovered and is considered amazing, just as when it was applied to guitar signals in the '70s.
  - smcl 8y ago
    Come on, the majority of people regardless of their generation will have grown up playing music on dodgy speakers, whether that's 8 track player in a car, a portable transistor radio, a boombox running on D-cells or a CD player with builtin speakers. Yes I think it's dumb when people listen to music on their phone speakers. No this doesn't mean they're any different from the rest of us. This is just "pssh, kids these days!" spread out over a few sentences.
    - HocusLocus 8y ago
      Yes I'm an old codger saying keep off my lawn, but it's more than that. These kids were cheated in the quality department. Audio experience delivered to consumers has degraded across the spectrum because of diminished expectations and mass production choices. I have a mono '70s portable radio with a 6" permanent magnet speaker cone that delivers such impressive bass you forgive the distortion. Boom boxes of the 70s with even simple crossovers and dual/triple speakers per channel were magnificent, but large. The irony is that as the quality of magnets and materials improved, the industry was already on a track that emphasized smallness and thinness over everything else. I could sketch a graph that shows general improvement of quality over time for everyone, because that was the expectation. Then it plateaus right around the time mass production was shifted from Japan to China, and a separate overlapping curve which represents those who can discern quality and are willing to pay arises. Today if you can discern quality of sound reproduction you are part of a small captive audience and despite improved technology and materials, your choices are limited unless your funds are unlimited. Simpler put, 'high fidelity' has become a boutique item. And as expectations fall, it's going out of fashion.
bsaul 8y ago
Having worked on that field a long time ago, there is absolutely no way the binaural effect can work well for everybody on every kind of headphone. The way the fake front / back / top / under positioning is done is by simulating frequency alteration depending on sound origin (for example, your ear geometry filters higher frequencies this way when they come from the front, and this other way when they come from the back). The problem is that not only your whole body is sensitive to sound waves, but also every person's body is different. If you want a good effect, you need to calibrate the frequency alteration to work with your body, using your sound equipment.
pdkl95 8y ago
> binaural audio By far the best use of binaural audio I've heard is the simulated voice-hearing of psychosis that Ninja Theory used in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. [trigger warning re: psychosis, other mental health issues for all of Hellblade] The very impressive - and disturbing - opening of the game (headphones required): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-SRoil79g0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-SRoil79g0 Dev diary about designing and implementing the voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQ2Jm2dgXk&t=0s&list=PLbpkF8TRYizaT6GfMcKBG-RoUOQ6BJRXp&index=25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQ2Jm2dgXk&t=0s&list=PLbpkF...
jorvi 8y ago
More so than ‘8D’ I wish more music was recorded in 5.1; I realize the vast majority of people doesn’t have a 5.1 setup so its probably not worth the money and mixing effort (minimal by the way, instruments and voices are already recorded individually). If you do have 5.1 and an Apple TV hooked up, search for ‘surround speaker check’ in the App Store and play the 5.1 test. You’ll be amazed how nice 5.1 music sounds.
pttrn 8y ago
Is this a joke? This just pans the audio from left to right. People are (choosing my words carefully) easy to please these days.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bnastic 8y ago
Pan pot automation is now 8D? ‘Cos I can’t hear anything else going on in there
h4l0 8y ago
IMO, Virtual Barber Shop was more impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
ahoka 8y ago
I would be much happier if record companies brought back dynamics to music.
p0nce 8y ago
The thing with binaural is that the listener isn't "safe": the singer can go sing very near one's ear, violating expectations of personal space. So there might be rejection when used unfairly. I think binaural is a great opportunity for more access to emotions when used well. We made a tool for this kind of effect: https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Panagement.html https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Panagement.html
dsego 8y ago
You probably need a good pair of headphones with a good soundstage to experience as intended. The effect on my TFZ series 2 isn't very pronounced or immersing.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  I notice that while I get the effect with my Bose QC25s, it's even more pronounced with the noise-cancelling (and amp) turned on than with it turned off.
userbinator 8y ago
I suspect "8D" is an emoticon instead of actually referring to a mythical 8 dimensions --- an expression of surprise and amazement when they heard what can be done using stereo.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rasz 8y ago
  I suspect its a 4chan prank, 8-D
mikece 8y ago
I haven't felt this annoyed by something I've heard since the time ten years ago my boss tried to argue us into writing VB.NET instead of C#. At least the audio of that conversation was received normally...
RandomInteger4 8y ago
"8D audio", or in other words "Nothing new with added marketing spin"
maeln 8y ago
Going back and listening to the example again, I can see (well ... hear really) how the music feels like it "surround" you (it a bit difficult to identify where the sound is "coming from"). But for the most part, you just ear the music panning left and right.
Koshkin 8y ago
It’s always fascinated me why we are sold 7.1 audio when we only have two ears.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Because the world is 3D, and our two ears can discriminate in amazing ways. We hear through bone conduction and tactile response and even some ultrasound and, oh, also through our ears.
sunnyP 8y ago
Sounded like some idiot teenager had found the pan control.
nvahalik 8y ago
This reminds me of one of the demos that used to come with Sound cards back when I was in high school. You could make anything sound like it was inside of a concert hall, a bathroom, or a street... You could even "position" yourself to make different tunes comes from different angles.
alpaca128 8y ago
To me this feels like moving a photograph in front of someone's face and calling it 3D. Pretty underwhelming, and I wonder if the creators of such effects ever listened to high-quality recordings on good headphones.
alok-g 8y ago
HN, please fight back and prevent this from being called "8D". Non-technical people are getting fooled by this. If the term continues to get used, it will become a standard, perhaps even making its way into dictionaries.

46 points by imartin2k 8y ago

It _can_ be nice, if properly used. The Queen example is lousy at best: instead of having the single audio source wander in space, it could have been used with a true mix to actually position (and move, properly) each voices/instruments in space. But of course, you'll need the original tapes to be able to do that. :p

timrichard 8y ago
I agree... going to be limited and annoying without at least the stems. I quite liked this demo, which shows a bit more potential for placement : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_vVU43Kz_w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_vVU43Kz_w
HocusLocus 8y ago
There is a project that does attempt to disentangle musical instruments and voices in the waveform domain that is interesting, http://jordipons.me/apps/end-to-end-music-source-separation/ http://jordipons.me/apps/end-to-end-music-source-separation/ ...such that the results could be flanged and recombined separately. But as you hear in their demos, any recombined result would be a Picasso painting as compared to a photograph, maybe interesting though.
notacoward 8y ago
My thoughts exactly. I'd like to be able to hear the guitar here and the vocalist here and the drums over there. If the individual sounds move around separately that's cool. The Virtual Barber Shop example does a good job illustrating that, with a voice on one side and a phone on the other simultaneously etc. They even play with distance as well as direction. I have only a vague idea how that works, but it definitely adds to the experience. The Bohemian Rhapsody example, by contrast, is just crap. Panning the entire ensemble from left to right, over and over? Meh. Then it's not even stereo like it was originally. It's just sequential mono. It's reduced, not expanded. These effects generally require at least having the original separate tracks, if not specialized recording techniques. However, I still have hope that advanced signal processing can separate the parts well enough after the fact to get a satisfactory result. I'm no ML fanboi by any means, but I'm pretty sure those techniques could be productively brought to bear on the problem as well. I'll bet there's a grad student or two working on it right now, and I wish them great success.

mb_72 8y ago

"There are a few different ways you can make it, but it’s really distinguishable when someone makes 8D correctly. When it’s done wrong, the music doesn’t sound like it’s in the room with you. It just pans back and forth." That's what the few examples listed in the article sounded like to me; in fact I found the panning of the instruments and vocals a bit frustrating to listen to. Perhaps this works better on some people than others, i.e. non-musicians?

almostarockstar 8y ago
Agreed - a well mixed track will use stereo panning as an artistic feature. These tracks, at least in my opinion are gimmicky at best and actively detract from the original at worst.
speedplane 8y ago
Don't most people look at YouTube on their phone or crappy laptop speakers? I look forward to the day when people care about their "hi-fi" stereo again, but I don't see that coming anytime soon.
- FractalParadigm 8y ago
  Unfortunately, I feel that the only ones who will "care" about it "again" are the only ones who care currently. There's a reason people don't have Hi-Fi setups anymore; they're completely unnecessary and a waste of time/money/space when >80% of the population will tell you they can't hear a difference between the EarPods that came with their phone, and a $10,000 top-of-the-line stereo hooked up to $2000 monitors. Anecdote time; friends of mine own(ed) a niche A/V store, their grandparents opened the store in the early '60s and their primary focus was to carry, sell, service, and most importantly demo everything from a $50 loudspeaker to the $10,000+ amp. Back then, every product was completely different from the next. A $50 amp and a $500 amp was like the difference between a CRT TV and a 4K OLED TV, same with speakers. About 25 years ago when their parents took over, it was already becoming evident (mainly with everything going digital) that the difference between a $50 amp and a $500 amp wasn't nearly as pronounced as it was 50 years ago. 5 years ago the business pivoted away from A/V, because nobody is going to spend $500 on an amp or receiver when they can pick up a $30 soundbar at Walmart and get 95% of the quality/experience. I've seen it myself; the family is still a bunch of die-hard audiophiles where money is absolutely not an object when it comes to audio, to the point they built a home theater and spent $30,000 on a custom-built 11.2-channel tube-based Atmos receiver, >$2500 per speaker (that's right, nearly $30,000 in speakers), and around $10,000 for each subwoofer. While most of our friend group will tell you it's unquestionably the greatest sounding thing on the planet, there's still a few who'll put in their dollar-store earbuds, load up a 360p song on YouTube, and tell you completely straight-faced it sounds no different.

ykevinator 8y ago

Even though its kind of gimmicky it's pretty amazing

isoprophlex 8y ago
I'm listening to the Owl City track on a train, and had to take off my headphones to make sure the music wasn't blasting from my phone. Pretty cool.
- mcmalware 8y ago
  Had the same reaction though. Even if it is a bit gimmicky I'd like to see new songs that try to maximize the effect. Could be a pretty cool trend
- nmeofthestate 8y ago
  It's actually even more annoying than an Owl City song that doesn't oscillate from left to right behind my head. I think one aspect of it that adds to the annoying experience - it's as if the music is lurking around in your personal space right behind you, which is really irritating when a person does it.

pizza 8y ago

For more on how the brain positions sounds in space, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization

mr_sturd 8y ago

In 2018, the world rediscovered stereo.

jen729w 8y ago
Or QSound. I remember my tape version of The Immaculate Collection sounding pretty fancy on my JVC boom-box. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSound http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/q-sound.12511/ http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/q-sound.12511/

lloeki 8y ago

Hmm, when a guy approached me the other day boasting about 8D music I laughed so hard, it sounded so much like snake oil. I did some cursory research though but did not find anything. Now that there's this Queen demo, I recognise the kind of rendering effect this is achieving, and such schemes making the sound more realistically spatial with headphones has been existing for years (decades), such as Dolby Headphones[0] or binaural audio[1] either beforehand or via post-processing (e.g Bauer stereophonic to binaural[2] a.k.a BS2B). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1bgMX4UCjw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1bgMX4UCjw [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording [2]: http://bs2b.sourceforge.net/bs2b_lib.html http://bs2b.sourceforge.net/bs2b_lib.html

Oras 8y ago

Listened to one of these two weeks ago and I really like it. It's worth mentioning though that not all of them are the same quality or give the same feeling of moving sounds around.

mprev 8y ago

I read the article and I listened to the samples and I fail to see where the "8D" comes in. Early virtual surround sound examples always seemed impressive, if gimmicky: a plane would fly over your head and you'd hear it move from back to front. But the examples in the article sounded like someone had discovered the stereo pan knob on a mixing desk and was slowly going from left to right.

da_murvel 8y ago
And I think your example of the plane is where this technique is applicable. In a cinema for example, imagine yourself watching a horror movie and you can hear the evil demon sneak up behind your back. shivers. In a concert setting however, the source of the sound is (usually) static, while I might move my head slightly from time to time and pick up the sound from different angles. If that could be simulated using headphones, that would be pretty cool! But again, I fail to see what purpose it would serve in a normal stereo setting where the sound is produced the same way, from stationary speakers. Then of course there are other factors like the venue layout, design and material. As well as speaker placement, mixing of the sound and even the crowd itself. Which all contributes to the sound and the "feeling" of listening to the music.
- filmor 8y ago
  Well, the source may be static, but it may be distributed. Think of a big symphonic orchestra.
  - da_murvel 8y ago
    Of course, but that doesn't equal the sound "moving around", the violin section will always remain in the same place for example, which is the feeling I get when listening to one of those 8D Audio videos on youtube. The sound moving around that is.
- soylentcola 8y ago
  > I might move my head slightly from time to time and pick up the sound from different angles. If that could be simulated using headphones, that would be pretty cool! This could surely be done (and probably has been done) using a VR headset or even just IR lights and cameras a-la TrackIR. If latency was low enough, you could process the sound to model the changes caused by head position/orientation.

Sholmesy 8y ago

This is absolutely amazing, and is one of the first things in a while where technology has made my jaw drop. A lot of these vids are a bit gimmicky, and over doing it, but this is so cool.

mprev 8y ago
Genuine question: which part, specifically, was amazing? I'm wondering if there's something some people perceive (such as yourself) and others, like me, don't.
- Sholmesy 8y ago
  I'm familiar with directional audio (when playing games, 7.1 sound or w/e) and stereo sound (when listening to music), there is something that feels super immersive from some of the tracks. I've just spent 30 minutes listening to as many as I can, some are terrible and some are great, maybe try more tracks. I can totally empathize with people saying that this is annoying/distracting, and I can't see myself doing it for a long period of time, but as a tech demo/cool thing, I find this awesome.

StreakyCobra 8y ago

It is fun to listen to a few songs, mainly to see what is possible for sound localization with stereo headphones. But I really don't want to listen to music like this, i.e. moving left and right behind my head, all the time. Quite perturbing for me, but all brains are different (speaking knowingly, I have aphantasia), so maybe some people really like it.

sn41 8y ago

ASMR is also mentioned in the article. I find it pretty effective at evoking sensations.

LandR 8y ago

I don't like this at all. I listened to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuDkhSJoryI&feature=player_embedded_uturn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuDkhSJoryI&feature=player_e... And it's just too distracting, it doesn't feel like being in the room with the music at all. It just feels like it's going from the left ear to the right ear. It just sounds really weird. It doesn't invoke the feeling of being at a concert at all, as the sound is constantly "moving" in space. Maybe it would be like being at a concert where I'm in some sort of car circling the stage... With the source of the music constantly changing.

mnw21cam 8y ago
Agreed. You're sacrificing the actual sound of the music, making it muffled and otherwise poor quality, adding in the "amazing" swing-it-around-your-head effect (which by the way you could do decades ago), and calling it better. I listened to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Nothing else matters", and compared to the originals. The originals were much better. Maybe if you're listening on rubbish earbuds anyway, the effect sounds cool. But on my reasonably expensive headphones it just kills it.
- mnw21cam 8y ago
  So, I listened to some of the other linked tracks, and they're much better than the Bohemian Rhapsody one, although they still just sound like someone discovered the pan control. The virtual barbershop was cool, but that's specifically because they recorded it with the proper equipment.
zimpenfish 8y ago
I think the problem with these manufactured "spatial" videos is that because there's no spatial information in the original track, they're pretty much forced to swing it around your head to demonstrate how "cool" it is. If they'd separated the various instruments and laid them out like a real, intimate gig, that would be impressive.
simias 8y ago
Uh yeah, that's pretty bad. It would make more sense if you could get/extract the individual instruments and voice tracks and then "place" them in various locations of 3D space. But then if the location doesn't change I guess it'll just sound like a new mix and that's quite mundane. But then I don't get ASMR videos either (I find them rather unpleasant and a bit creepy usually) so I suppose I'm a bit of a snob.

SuperNinKenDo 8y ago

Mixed results. Mostly unimpressive. The Mura Masa mix was a bit of a more interesting experience: you could tell they'd put some thought into it. Edit: From the comments I'm starting to wonder if certain people perceive this effect differently. I'm very much on team "so you discovered the pan nob?" but the way people are talking, I have to assume that there's two groups of people having two wildly different experiences.

HocusLocus 8y ago
This is a young generation who grew up hearing cellphone speakers, trashy computer speakers placed close together (because the manufacturer thought 3' wire was cheap enough), and earbuds that deliver sound but fail to isolate environment noise, so the brain is assaulted with near-mono information. These people have never experienced true stereo: wide separation. So flanging has been rediscovered and is considered amazing, just as when it was applied to guitar signals in the '70s.
- smcl 8y ago
  Come on, the majority of people regardless of their generation will have grown up playing music on dodgy speakers, whether that's 8 track player in a car, a portable transistor radio, a boombox running on D-cells or a CD player with builtin speakers. Yes I think it's dumb when people listen to music on their phone speakers. No this doesn't mean they're any different from the rest of us. This is just "pssh, kids these days!" spread out over a few sentences.
  - HocusLocus 8y ago
    Yes I'm an old codger saying keep off my lawn, but it's more than that. These kids were cheated in the quality department. Audio experience delivered to consumers has degraded across the spectrum because of diminished expectations and mass production choices. I have a mono '70s portable radio with a 6" permanent magnet speaker cone that delivers such impressive bass you forgive the distortion. Boom boxes of the 70s with even simple crossovers and dual/triple speakers per channel were magnificent, but large. The irony is that as the quality of magnets and materials improved, the industry was already on a track that emphasized smallness and thinness over everything else. I could sketch a graph that shows general improvement of quality over time for everyone, because that was the expectation. Then it plateaus right around the time mass production was shifted from Japan to China, and a separate overlapping curve which represents those who can discern quality and are willing to pay arises. Today if you can discern quality of sound reproduction you are part of a small captive audience and despite improved technology and materials, your choices are limited unless your funds are unlimited. Simpler put, 'high fidelity' has become a boutique item. And as expectations fall, it's going out of fashion.

bsaul 8y ago

Having worked on that field a long time ago, there is absolutely no way the binaural effect can work well for everybody on every kind of headphone. The way the fake front / back / top / under positioning is done is by simulating frequency alteration depending on sound origin (for example, your ear geometry filters higher frequencies this way when they come from the front, and this other way when they come from the back). The problem is that not only your whole body is sensitive to sound waves, but also every person's body is different. If you want a good effect, you need to calibrate the frequency alteration to work with your body, using your sound equipment.

pdkl95 8y ago

> binaural audio By far the best use of binaural audio I've heard is the simulated voice-hearing of psychosis that Ninja Theory used in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. [trigger warning re: psychosis, other mental health issues for all of Hellblade] The very impressive - and disturbing - opening of the game (headphones required): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-SRoil79g0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-SRoil79g0 Dev diary about designing and implementing the voices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQ2Jm2dgXk&t=0s&list=PLbpkF8TRYizaT6GfMcKBG-RoUOQ6BJRXp&index=25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQQ2Jm2dgXk&t=0s&list=PLbpkF...

jorvi 8y ago

More so than ‘8D’ I wish more music was recorded in 5.1; I realize the vast majority of people doesn’t have a 5.1 setup so its probably not worth the money and mixing effort (minimal by the way, instruments and voices are already recorded individually). If you do have 5.1 and an Apple TV hooked up, search for ‘surround speaker check’ in the App Store and play the 5.1 test. You’ll be amazed how nice 5.1 music sounds.

pttrn 8y ago

Is this a joke? This just pans the audio from left to right. People are (choosing my words carefully) easy to please these days.

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bnastic 8y ago

Pan pot automation is now 8D? ‘Cos I can’t hear anything else going on in there

h4l0 8y ago

IMO, Virtual Barber Shop was more impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA

ahoka 8y ago

I would be much happier if record companies brought back dynamics to music.

p0nce 8y ago

The thing with binaural is that the listener isn't "safe": the singer can go sing very near one's ear, violating expectations of personal space. So there might be rejection when used unfairly. I think binaural is a great opportunity for more access to emotions when used well. We made a tool for this kind of effect: https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Panagement.html https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Panagement.html

dsego 8y ago

You probably need a good pair of headphones with a good soundstage to experience as intended. The effect on my TFZ series 2 isn't very pronounced or immersing.

SyneRyder 8y ago
I notice that while I get the effect with my Bose QC25s, it's even more pronounced with the noise-cancelling (and amp) turned on than with it turned off.

userbinator 8y ago

I suspect "8D" is an emoticon instead of actually referring to a mythical 8 dimensions --- an expression of surprise and amazement when they heard what can be done using stereo.

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rasz 8y ago
I suspect its a 4chan prank, 8-D

mikece 8y ago

I haven't felt this annoyed by something I've heard since the time ten years ago my boss tried to argue us into writing VB.NET instead of C#. At least the audio of that conversation was received normally...

RandomInteger4 8y ago

"8D audio", or in other words "Nothing new with added marketing spin"

maeln 8y ago

Going back and listening to the example again, I can see (well ... hear really) how the music feels like it "surround" you (it a bit difficult to identify where the sound is "coming from"). But for the most part, you just ear the music panning left and right.

Koshkin 8y ago

It’s always fascinated me why we are sold 7.1 audio when we only have two ears.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Because the world is 3D, and our two ears can discriminate in amazing ways. We hear through bone conduction and tactile response and even some ultrasound and, oh, also through our ears.

sunnyP 8y ago

Sounded like some idiot teenager had found the pan control.

nvahalik 8y ago

This reminds me of one of the demos that used to come with Sound cards back when I was in high school. You could make anything sound like it was inside of a concert hall, a bathroom, or a street... You could even "position" yourself to make different tunes comes from different angles.

alpaca128 8y ago

To me this feels like moving a photograph in front of someone's face and calling it 3D. Pretty underwhelming, and I wonder if the creators of such effects ever listened to high-quality recordings on good headphones.

alok-g 8y ago

HN, please fight back and prevent this from being called "8D". Non-technical people are getting fooled by this. If the term continues to get used, it will become a standard, perhaps even making its way into dictionaries.