How to simulate "loudspeaker sound" when listening through headphones

[Obelix27]

I like listening to music at a louder level than my neighbours would appreciate, but somehow listening to music through speakers is so much more enjoyable than through headphones, even though headphones are far more accurate. I assume this is due to missing the room acoustic (or maybe something else)? So is it possible to re-introduce the room acoustic when listening through headphones? Some sort of reverse impulse filter? Or am I miles off and there is some other way to achieve this when listening through headphones?

 

[sm52]

Listening with headphones will never be equal to listening with speakers.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I like listening to music at a louder level than my neighbours would appreciate, but somehow listening to music through speakers is so much more enjoyable than through headphones, even though headphones are far more accurate. I assume this is due to missing the room acoustic (or maybe something else)? So is it possible to re-introduce the room acoustic when listening through headphones? Some sort of reverse impulse filter? Or am I miles off and there is some other way to achieve this when listening through headphones?

----------------->Smyth Realiser.<--------------------------------

 

[Obelix27]

----------------->Smyth Realiser.<--------------------------------

This seems to be exactly the sort of thing I am looking for, but at $4,000 it ain't cheap. I was rather hoping for some sort of software implementation which would obviously be a lot cheaper.(even free!).

 

[John Mulcahy]

There are lots, players like Roon and Foobar have plug-ins for headphone listening. Search for headphone crossfeed.

 

[teyhyrh4r]

crossfeed plugins will bring the sides more to the middle, but not out of your head. famous example is canopener
if you want a real simulation you need binaural solutions, like the ones from Waves

 

[DanDan]

I really like Canopener Studio by GoodHertz. It was originally an iOS app for 1.99. Could have changed the world. The balance between M (Centre) and S (sides) is significantly different between Speakers and Cans. As a prophet I did sugges float the idea of Binaural Impulse Response samples of great listening spaces to Altiverb and a world leading studio designer. It didn't take, but Waves have now done it. Unfortunately really badly to my ear. Truly Awful. I haven't tried this one, but it looks like a pretty serious attempt. https://www.dear-reality.com/products/dearvr-monitor

 

[Obelix27]

Well I loaded Goodhertz CanOpener into Cakewalk and frankly it didn't seem to make a lot of difference. Varied the Angle from 0..75, Amount from 0..150, Crossfeed parameters etc. but it didn't really make a lot of difference and certainly nothing like making me think I am listening to speakers! I also tried Sennheiser's dearVR Micro. This made a greater difference but again, nothing like listening to speakers. Maybe I am missing something.
It seems that crossfeed is pretty simple and just reduces the stereo for headphones, but the soundstage stays in your head rather than moving in front of you like Smyth Research claim to do (for $4k!).

 

[DanDan]

Well, Canopener is very transparent. I work in a pretty anechoic Control Room, quite close to the speakers, so BIG CANS..... Used to that. I like Canopener because it for me it does move the centre of attention from in the middle of the skull to in front of the eyes. There is quite a bit more than just changing the balance of M/S, there are frequency and delay Head Related Transfer Function parameters. I would recommend give it another try. Altiverb's ability to place one in a space is fabulous, so I suspect that there will be a tide of successfull IR based Virtual Reality type products incoming. I remain somewhat gobsmacked at how awful the Waves one is.

 

[ddude003]

It sounds like you are looking for some kind of "Spatializer" and/or "Binaural Spatializer" effects plugin... Seems many have been covered above... You might also take a look at the suite of plugins by Liquid Sonics which has an interesting twist on IR convolution called Fusion-IR...

 

[teyhyrh4r]

binaural solutions will always colour, since real rooms are like that.
I have been atempting to "neutralize" a IR from a room:

I don't consider it finished, but it takes a lot of work, and I am focused on other stuff now. plus I don't realy use headphones much

 

[Obelix27]

I still can't get CanOpener to make a significant difference. It's more of a slightly reduced stereo effect than getting the soundstage in front of you.

Unfortunately neither Fusion-IR nor dearVR seem to have trial versions.

It seems there is a lot of work going on in this field, just a question of finding something that works. I don't know why, but listening on decent speakers is so much more enjoyable than headphones. It's just that the neighbours wouldn't agree!

 

[ddude003]

I am pretty sure all the the Liquid Sonics products have a trial version with a key...
Maybe see: https://www.liquidsonics.com/demos/

I am not a headphone expert and I was wondering if you have looked into any headphone specific EQing...
Look here: https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/referenceaudioanalyzer

BTY I am not associated with any product vendor in any way... Just a happy user of some hw/sw kit... See My AV System...

 

[DanDan]

I still can't get CanOpener to make a significant difference. It's more of a slightly reduced stereo effect than getting the soundstage in front of you.

That seems odd. It is quite a dramatic change to the sound. What type of headphones are you using? Your regular reference tracks?