When you're wandering around in Jurassic Park and you hear a T-Rex roar, you run in the other direction. It's just good sense. No one wants to end their day — or their life — as an apex predator's lunch.
The dino escape wouldn't be possible without the myriad of audio cues that clue you in to which direction the danger is coming from. It's the audio equivalent of 3D, and — as headphone-maker Ossic understands — it's a critical, if overlooked, piece of any virtual reality experience.
"Just like with visuals, you'll never get a good sense that the sound is outside your head if it just moves with your head," Ossic co-founder Jason Riggs told Mashable.
"That would be like VR where the screen just moved with your face. You're not going to believe that it's there and you're in it unless it stays there while you move."
IMAGE: OSSIC
Enter the Ossic X 3D audio headphones. They're not just for VR experiences — each headset's capabilities can enhance stereo mixes from a game, movie or music source — but they offer a sense of depth in VR soundscapes that not even the Oculus Rift's built-in 3D audio headphones can rival.
It all starts with your body. Everyone picks up sound differently, and that has a lot to do with not just where we're standing in a physical space, but also the size of our heads and the shape of our ears.
"We are asymmetrical," Riggs said. "Our ears are shaped a certain way and they're different from the front to the rear."
When each individual's listening experience is its own, special snowflake, there's no one-size-fits-all solution for 3D audio. That's where components similar to what you'd find in a smartphone come in handy.
Sensors built into the headphones measure the wearer's head and ears. This data is needed to calculate the user's "head-related transfer function" (HRTF), a mathematical representation of how we locate the source of a sound.
Ossic X also employs head-tracking to work out a necessary data point for determining the wearer's HRTF.
"Just think about an animal in the woods turning its head [to locate a sound source]. We do it, too ... especially if we can't see the thing." Riggs said.
"Head-tracking gets us that. In the same way it gets us the visuals [in an HMD], it gets us with the audio. It allows us to sample [an audio source] at multiple points."
All of the data collected by the headset is then processed through software to create a more immersive soundscape, where changing your location and turning your head has a noticeable effect on the character of what you're hearing.
I experienced this firsthand in the HTC Vive's "Secret Room" demo, from Valve's The Lab. It drops you into the titular location from Dota 2, a cluttered wooden shack filled with magical devices and fantasy creatures.
IMAGE: OSSIC
The virtual space is filled with sound sources, each of which is essentially a cue to direct your attention. I immediately picked up on a sense of depth to the soundscape that I hadn't with stereo headphones. It's a difficult thing to describe.
Imagine you're sitting at home in your bedroom with the door closed. The dog starts barking in the other room, but it's muffled. You get up and walk to the door to see what's going on, and with every step you know — because of what you're hearing — that you're getting closer to the dog.
It is 3D for your ears.
Ossic X virtualizes that instantaneous, unconscious process of tracking a sound source in a way that even high-end stereo headphones aren't capable of. It is 3D for your ears.
When Ossic X launches later in 2016, connecting it to a PC (via USB) will be the best way to take advantage of what it can do. There, you can install proprietary software that processes the audio for your anatomy to create fuller soundscapes.
The Ossic X can also connect to most devices using a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. You lose out on the complex software processing that a PC can deliver, but the headset itself can still process your anatomy data to create the impression of positional audio.
Riggs sees the first-generation Ossic X as something for the high-end users, specifically VR early adopters, gamers (console support is a possibility) and serious audiophiles. The $399 price tag puts it in the same class as top-tier gaming headsets and studio reference headphones.
A lot of people are sold already. Ossic X broke $2 million in crowdfunding — well beyond the original $100,000 target — with six days to go. You can find more details on the math and science behind these headphones on Ossic's Kickstarter page.
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