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Comment by mprev | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Well, the source may be static, but it may be distributed. Think of a big symphonic orchestra.

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.

> 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.

>I read the article and I listened to the samples and I fail to see where the "8D" comes in.

"these go to eleven"

It's just a happy nerd smiley

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