How does 3D sound works

[vilkera]

Hello,

I'm very interesting how actually 3D sound in XVR works. As far as I understood 3D sound could be played only on 2 speakers or headphones to get better impression. Because it works on Binaural sound perception principle. Is it true? Or it could also be played on 5.1 or 5.0 system? Could XVR generate discrete 5.0 channels?

Thank you for you answer

Vilkera

[marcello]

XVR offers a set of 3D Audio functionalities built on top of either DirectSound 3D or OpenAl layers.
Both implementations, and so does XVR, do not use binaural recordings, rather they use an average HRTF function to filter mono signals and position the sound in the 3D space depending on the sound source and the listener positional data.
This means that it is better played on a multispeaker environment (a 4.1 or 5.1 system), as this kind of HRTF offer a poor directionality on the front-rear direction (well recovered with surround speakers) and on the top-bottom direction (simulated with a fake "masking" effect, but actually the effect remains poor).

[vilkera]

Thank you very much for explanation.

But does it generates 2 channels output or 4 channels output. And if 4 or more channels output is it 2 pair of stereo (HRTF) or is it 4< descrete channels.

Thank you one more time.

[marcello]

It really depends on your soundcard capabilities: XVR (through DS3D or OpenAL) generates the "correct" positional information, then these are processed by your soundcard drivers that can output on 2.0, 2.1, 4.1, 5.1 etc. depending on its capabilities.