this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
91 points (83.2% liked)
Technology
59429 readers
2813 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Nah, I'm not ignorant, just cynical.
I make digital music myself. I've had that moment myself, where for a quick moment I thought, surely there could be some 'proper' way of rotating an audio source around your head.
And well, there is not, it is always just an effect thing.
As in, even in reality, our hearing is literally stereo, because we've got precisely two eardrums, two membranes that do the detection. Yes, the ear flaps shape the sound, but you can do the same shaping with just effects. Make it a bit more muffled when it comes from behind, for example, and hope you don't need to also portray that something muffled comes from the front. And of course, always slap a heavy virtualizer effect on there.
In the end, it's smokes and mirrors that our brain then interprets as something spatial. I don't have a problem with smokes and mirrors. I do still find it humorous, though.
I don't really follow your logic, how else would you propose to shape the audio that is not "just an effect".
Your analogy to real life does not take into account that the audio source itself is moving, so their is an extra variable outside of just stereo signal -which is what spatial audio is modelling
And your muffling example sounds a bit over simplified maybe? My understanding is that the spatial stuff is produced by phase shifting the LR signals slightly
Finally why not go further? "I don't listen to speaker audio because it's all just effects and mirages to sound like a real sound, what only 2^16 discrete positions the diaphragm can be in" :p