Virtual Barber Shop (Audio...use headphones, close ur eyes)
Why Hacker News recommends it
It is the classic demo HN people point to for showing positional 3D audio working on ordinary headphones.
What it is
A binaural audio demo, the 'Virtual Barber Shop', that places a barber moving around your head. It works best with headphones and closed eyes.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2013 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends deletes · 2014-03 · on “Sony announces Project Morpheus, a virtual reality headset coming to PS4”
60 Virtual speakers What does that even mean? It sounds like clever marketing talk. I bet they have just regular stereo and software. Here, take a pair of good stereo headphones and try this 3d demo. And don't forget to close your eyes. Virtual barber shop: [this video]
Recommends oberstein · 2015-11 · on “24/192 music downloads make no sense”
Here's a classic "OMG I can hear him moving around" recording that works with the cheapest of headphones: [this video] Most of the audio experience quality comes out of the production phase, and artists can put as much or little effort into that as possible and consider several mediums of listening (headphones, TV, surround, concert, vinyl) and make tradeoffs for the medium's particular experience. I don't know about double blind trials but people do tests on their own. It's further complicated though because the hardware you use could be optimized for certain types of music, e.g. have a read through [LINK]
Recommends kuschku · 2016-06 · on “The Daredevil Camera”
> I wonder how much people can see in the dark through listening to sound sources by moving their heads for motion parallax. Listen to this with headphones: [this video] It’s amazing how much you can geolocate just in even a recording.
Recommends aaomidi · 2021-06 · on “Spatial Audio”
Because it adds another dimension to the sound you're experiencing and gives you a whole new appreciation for the medium. This combined with binaural audio should be the future of audio storytelling. Give this a try with any normal headphone: [this video]
Cites garethadams · 2013-10 · on “Songs of Diridum: Pushing the Web Audio API to Its Limits”
I like this! A great demo of new standards working in browsers. As far as 3D audio goes it would be amazing to see an example which delayed audio to one ear based on the different distances from each ear to the source of the sound. This example just pans the audio - which is still a great effect, but I remember how much I was wowed by the binaural virtual barbershop[1] [1]: [this video]
Cites speeder · 2016-06 · on “USB-C and Lightning headphones aren't great news for everyone”
Dedicated soundcard, and drivers with direct access to hardware have nothing to do with audio professionals. It is about processors on the card (that back then had about half of the amount of transistors that the PC main CPU had, so they could pack quite a punch in processing power) that could do realtime audio calculations. I am not talking just about "effects" from the audio professional sense, I am talking about realtime creation of audio according to the scene geometry and stuff happening, for example A3D could calculate actual reflections, not just simulated reverb/echo. If you want to see an example of this in real life: go near a window that has a barrier in front of it of some kind,
Cites Stevvo · 2020-06 · on “MakeSpace – Virtual Spatial Chat”
It's a somewhat limited approach. For more convincing positional audio you can use a HRTF; [LINK] Example: [this video]
Cites The_rationalist · 2021-04 · on “Surround Sound in Headphones”
It's been 14 years since the last state of the art 3D audio experience: [this video] has anybody done as good since then ? What's this Cetera algorithm ?