MyEars Ears-On: Delivering 3D Audio via Stereo Headphones

[News Portal]

Whether it's to stop your neighbours calling the police, to get superb audio quality at a fraction of the cost of speakers or simply to keep your ears warm, many gamers rely upon stereo headphones to deliver their gaming soundscape. If you're part of this group, we'd like to introduce you to a piece of software that is going to change the way you hear your games. MyEars is an Australian software solution delivering full 3D Positional Audio over stereo headphones. We visited the company behind this exciting technology to discuss its development. More importantly, we also put it to the test - and you can too.

Read full article by Bennett Ring

[Artful-dodgeR]

Attempted, didn't work during setup with my PC... all sounds came out as static from the same location. Logitech G35 (USB input).

[Bennett Ring]

Attempted, didn't work during setup with my PC... all sounds came out as static from the same location. Logitech G35 (USB input).

The test audio signal is white noise (aka static). Make sure you close your eyes when doing the listening tests, concentrate only on the sound and really try to imagine where the sound is coming from. It's quite hard at first, but soon becomes natural.

[geckoslayer]

Tried with my Grado RS-1s - known for small soundstage and got very minimal results.

Switched out to my AKG k702's (well known for wide soundstage) with a nice tube amp (that is also known for wide soundstage) and got a wonderful result, +1 to these people.

Had a resident professor at our university here in Townsville from Caltech who did his PhD on positional audio, had him over my place as he was a mad audiophile and he showed me most of his research into positional audio. Good to see it's going from research work to a marketable product.

[Klas]

Any Audiophiles about to provide a little more technical information on how this works? The company don't provide anything substantial on their site, only marketing spin.

I'm interested but it seems like a total gimmick.

[geckoslayer]

Any Audiophiles about to provide a little more technical information on how this works? The company don't provide anything substantial on their site, only marketing spin.

I'm interested but it seems like a total gimmick.

From what I remember, the front positional audio is done simply by changing left/right mix in audio, and up and down is done by heightening and lowering of the mixed audio frequencies (I can't remember the specific way I was told how the z-axis positional working, but it had something to do with that)

To get it behind, I remember being told it used a trick in the human brain, that they discovered after a bit of testing.

A good site about it is here:

http://www.nonoctave.com/holofonika/algorithms.html

[Mythor]

Setup-Sara is creepy.
All the sounds in the setup phase seemed to be coming from behind me to varying degrees, even when they were supposed to be in front of me.
The 7.1 demo worked okay-ish though. The "centre-front" sounded inside my head but the left/right distinction was nice.
Using a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium FATAL1TY Pro.

Attempted, didn't work during setup with my PC... all sounds came out as static from the same location. Logitech G35 (USB input).

The G35s do positional sound anyway.

As does my X-Fi. And a much better job of it.
The tuning idea is neat but the result is inferior so far. Hopefully the association with the FMOD guys will help them improve the system in the months ahead.

[Bennett Ring]

Retry the profile - X-Fi works on exactly the same principle, but a much simplified version.

[Frontl1ne]

Doesn't work for me. Sound only comes out the right headphone All that time spent setting it up!

[>Scorch<]

@Mythor: I have the exact same card, and the positional audio setup worked fine for me. It was hard to distinguish the sounds and where they were coming from, but they were coming from where they were expected to be.

I wouldn't be surprised if people found that they have underlying problems with their sound setup which is causing the sound to come from behind/not where expected, I have had silly issues like that in the past.

The only thing that is annoying me is that when I start up MyEars Connect I have a very loud distortion for a split second, then a constant slight humming coming from the right speaker. Probably won't be noticeable in-game, but with silence I can hear it.

I will give this a go in a few games to see how it is, but it looks promising.

+1 to Sara being creepy, especially the whisper bit at the start.

[Mythor]

Retry the profile - X-Fi works on exactly the same principle, but a much simplified version.

The very first setup stage the sounds all appear to come from behind. Some of them need to sound like they're coming from the front else it won't work.
I'm done twiddling with it until they announce an update. I'll take the simple-but-working version!

I wouldn't be surprised if people found that they have underlying problems with their sound setup which is causing the sound to come from behind/not where expected, I have had silly issues like that in the past.

It's not my setup, use it all the time for Team Fortress 2 and regularly annoy Spies trying to sneak up behind me. Maybe I could sort it out with enough mucking about but I'm not spending hours on it when it already works for me without the MyEars thing.

Probably more useful for people who aren't already getting positional audio to work? Would seem a clear upgrade over plain stereo, that's for sure.

[steve_rogers42]

considering dolby headphones generally comes with, well headphones, or audio equipment as a sort, and this is a software solution that requires a bit of processing power, $60 is a bit weird, especially when its a yearly subscription...

what are the benefits to subscribing other than updates? their better of selling it to Asus or a gamer headphones mob inorder to cash in a lot more than a subscription scheme...

What I'm basically saying is that i'd pay $60+ if it was bundled with a decent set of headphones, but i wouldn't buy the software alone.

Be interesting to see some real world data, see if the program effects lag. If its causing concern on non-quad core systems, thats ringing a few bells, and is it using the audio card/audio controller or is it a pure software solution?

pretty cool tho, never really trusted '5.1' surround headphones as such.

[jerichosainte]

Tried it with the logitech G35 with surround on as nowhere in the setup did it mention what equipement/setup is needed, they need to work on this. Didn't really find too much difference with BC2, actually found a bit of lag in the sounds, was only miliseconds but could notice the difference from standard. Will re-run setup in a week or so as I have just got over a cold which can affect your 3d sound awareness.

Can anyone confirm whether the setup is to be done in stereo or surround??

[InAUGral]

I tested this a few days ago, and now use it all the time, it would be exceptionally different for ppl who have normal headphones, as in ones that dont do 5.1. Mine do natively but it still had better more direct sound. Especially in STALKER it sounded a lot more like i was there( damn i thought it was immersive before). FPS games benefit greatly from this, i notice in bad company 2 and CSS i was easily able to pinpoint where people were. I could do that before with 5.1 but now more so because its tailored to my ears. The test thing is really simple and easy to do.

It is only for Headphones, or earphones atm i believe. They are working on an iPhone, X360 and PS3 version as well. Imagine an those iPhone earphones with awesome sound lol.

EDIT: for some reason this doesn't work with crysis, does for everything else though. It has a crysis nanosuit on the page so its odd thats the only games sound that doesn't work with this.

[Instinx]

every sound is coming from my head - the sounds are too short and i cannot pinpoint them well enough I use Sony MDR-XB300s