3DsoundSurge FAQ Manager v1.0: SPEAKERS: How does A3D technology handle the placement of sound to the side of the listener with a four speaker system?


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F.A.Q: Aureal Technology FAQ

All about Aureal's technology including the APIs (A3D 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), sound cards, chips (including the Vortex 2 and Motorola DSP), speakers and anything else you can think of with respect to Aureal's technology. For support questions check out our support FAQ.

32. SPEAKERS: How does A3D technology handle the placement of sound to the side of the listener with a four speaker system? - Top

To offer some additional context for this question in context here is a quote from Scott Willing of QSound that we received from one of our readers. Can you respond to this?

Scott Willing of QSound:

'For the creation of the side placement illusion, having real speakers and just using panning is actually a disadvantage. In the real world we're much better at judging side-to-side azimuth placement than front-to-back, because of the strong interaural time-delay and amplitude difference cues that are generated by actual sources to the sides. These approach zero for objects directly ahead and directly behind, so our front/back differentiation is not that good. Therefore, having real speakers behind really makes a difference for front/back differentiation, but actually works against the creation of convincing side placement without the use of 3D processing.'

In response to the question as to why Aureal didn't use 3D processing on both the front and rear speakers Scott Willing answered:

'For one thing it doesn't fit the HRTF model easily... they'd actually have to come up with a new idea! (Sorry, cheap shot.) For another it would be very expensive to implement.'

Aureal's Toni Schneider responds:

'I don't have any scientific data on this, but from my experience Scott's observations regarding weakened side placement on 4 speaker panning systems seems correct. That's one of the reasons why we decided to use HRTF 3D processing instead of simple panning. HRTFs make the side positioning more convincing (along with adding up/down cues). We don't use HRTFs on both fronts and backs because we found that the 'HRTF in front, panning in rear' model works very well. Another reason is that people tend to set up their rear speakers in weird spots (because of physical space limitations), which makes HRTF in the back pretty wasteful (HRTFs are more sensitive top speaker placement than panning).' - Updated: December 2, 1999

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All about Aureal's technology including the APIs (A3D 1.0, 2.0, 3.0), sound cards, chips (including the Vortex 2 and Motorola DSP), speakers and anything else you can think of with respect to Aureal's technology. For support questions check out our support FAQ.

32. SPEAKERS: How does A3D technology handle the placement of sound to the side of the listener with a four speaker system? - Top: To offer some additional context for this question in context here is a quote from Scott Willing of QSound that we received from one of our readers. Can you respond to this?

Scott Willing of QSound:

'For the creation of the side placement illusion, having real speakers and just using panning is actually a disadvantage. In the real world we're much better at judging side-to-side azimuth placement than front-to-back, because of the strong interaural time-delay and amplitude difference cues that are generated by actual sources to the sides. These approach zero for objects directly ahead and directly behind, so our front/back differentiation is not that good. Therefore, having real speakers behind really makes a difference for front/back differentiation, but actually works against the creation of convincing side placement without the use of 3D processing.'

In response to the question as to why Aureal didn't use 3D processing on both the front and rear speakers Scott Willing answered:

'For one thing it doesn't fit the HRTF model easily... they'd actually have to come up with a new idea! (Sorry, cheap shot.) For another it would be very expensive to implement.'

Aureal's Toni Schneider responds:

'I don't have any scientific data on this, but from my experience Scott's observations regarding weakened side placement on 4 speaker panning systems seems correct. That's one of the reasons why we decided to use HRTF 3D processing instead of simple panning. HRTFs make the side positioning more convincing (along with adding up/down cues). We don't use HRTFs on both fronts and backs because we found that the 'HRTF in front, panning in rear' model works very well. Another reason is that people tend to set up their rear speakers in weird spots (because of physical space limitations), which makes HRTF in the back pretty wasteful (HRTFs are more sensitive top speaker placement than panning).' - Updated: December 2, 1999