Moving sound outside the stereo field

farss wrote on 2/28/2004, 12:46 PM

I've been facinated by what it seems you can do with QCreator and I know this sort of trick is also pulled in a number of consummer boom boxes etc.
Normally I'd shy away from such audio gimmickry but I have an instance where it'd be quite appropriate.
I'll probably buy the program, at the price how far wrong can one go?
Just wondering if anyone has tried it, can SF7 do the same trick and are there products that do a better job?

Comments

Rednroll wrote on 2/28/2004, 1:21 PM

I'm not quite sure what your question is. What do you mean by "moving sound outside the stereo field". Outside to what? If you're talking about stereo to surround, then yes this is possible. With your boombox analogy, I have to assume you're taking a stereo and make it appear surround like with only using 2 speakers. Well, this is kind of possible too, but not really. If you're looking for a surround listening experience without adding speakers then this is closer than listening to just Stereo. Our Harman/Kardon processors have a surround mode called "Vmax", which is for this type of thing. It's not a gimmick, if it is then the technology slipped through the company after being evaluated by quite a few trained listeners. I'm not sure what technology the boombox is using, but there is many techniques you can use to trick the ear to make it seem like audio is coming from other locations, besides the speaker itself.

farss wrote on 2/28/2004, 5:19 PM

Hi Red,
Well firstly I've heard some very impressive surround sound coming from just one speaker. Pretty freaky stuff. Well when I say one speaker it was actually about 100 of them mounted in the one unit. That was a very expensive box though that had a lot of processing behind it.

But what caught my attention was a very cheap bit of software called QCreator from a banner ad over at Acid Planet. It can create the illusion of moving a mono source almost to behind you, results obviously must be dependant on type and placement of speakers and the source material and also just how you use it. It's only $20 so even if what it does is only a gimmick it's worth it.

Guess I was just trying to work out how the illusion is created. I know a fair bit about how real stereo imaging works (using dummy head mics etc, learnt a lot from Prof. Bose).

I'm well aware there are ways to do decent job of getting realistic surround from only a pair of speakers but I imagine that does require correct setup to get working properly, I'm sure a lot of R&D has been expended and the reults are pretty amazing, I wasn't being derogatory about the stuff at that level, just the stuff that's in the el cheapo boom boxes although at time if you've got your head in the sweat spot even they can sound quite remarkable.

Bob.