Here’s my impressions of the Out of Your Head DSP software for headphone listening after listening to the Demos and downloading the free trial with it’s very limited 2-minute trial time for the various presets.
Setup
First off, I love the sound of my various headphones. For the listening tests I used my Sennheiser HD650 headphones and my Shure SE846 headphones with Grace Design DAC/headphone amp to ensure the most accurate reproduction on my end.
Preface
Unfortunately, only two of the demo tracks were content I was very familiar with – the Master and Commander scene in 7.1 surround, and the Rebecca Pidgeon “Spanish Harlem” tune in 2-channel stereo. I completely ignored all the marketing content and descriptions of what the processing does and just listened. I put in about an hour specifically on the demo tracks then played with the trial version of the DSP with content I know ever better and discovered quite a bit about what the DSP is doing by listening before reading about what the inventor claims it did. I also avoiding looking at the screen during playback of the demos, specifically the video-based demos, as our brains are VERY susceptible to the power of suggestion when it comes to what we hear. I didn’t want to be tricked by visuals or words into thinking I was hearing something my ears and auditory processing was, in fact, not deciphering on their own.
Initial and Immediate Impression
My initial impressions were that the stereo processing is interesting, but the surround processing is confusing and constrained, at best. More on those two impressions later.
So anyone here can also experience what I did, I will specifically use the two demos I am familiar with: Rebecca Pidgeon’s song and the Master and Commander scene. From the demos I could not ignore that the overall tonality and balance is changed completely and there is a sense of a hollow-tube “honky” tone that cannot be ignored. The high treble was altered significantly in both demos from the original content I own (assuming they are using the same source content I have) and the deep bass is vastly different – not even close to the same depth and levels as the original. The midrange, as mentioned, has a strange “honky-ness” to it which I can only describe as something like listening to a speaker at the end of long narrow corridor. It isn’t as bad as actually listening to a speaker at the end of a corridor, but that is the characteristic I heard.
7.1 Surround Sound Simulation
With the Master and Commander soundtrack, I was quick to hear how the DSP added ambience to the sound. That said, much of the impact was reduced and the dynamics seems lacking by comparison to the original soundtrack on my BluRay disc. I also couldn’t help but notice the difference in frequency response balance, which for me was distracting. As the scene progressed to the explosions the sound from the processed signal was significantly muddier, sloppier, and more difficult to make out any detail at all. It was just a massive confused stew of noise and rumbling without any detail I expect to hear either in my HT or over my headphones. Basically, the processing seemed to decrease the dynamics, muffle the detail, and alter the timber of the original content. I don’t know why anyone would want that.
By comparison, enabling the Dolby headphone processing in my PC software-based BluRay player resulted in the requisite added ambience but the balance of the frequency response remained essentially the same as the original, the dynamics were only slightly affected, and the detailed clarity was affected considerably less. Based on the listening experience, I assumed the Out of Your Head filter was, in fact, modeling specific speakers and rooms the inventor believes are “ideal”. I have complaints about this approach, both in theory and in practice, I’ll address below.
Finally, using the demo where a voice announced the channel as each of 7 channels were played I found things very strange. Everything that was said to come from in front of my head seemed to come from over my head – not in front of me. Everything intended to come from behind me seemed to come from either the left or right of me. In other words, what should have been a flat circle of speakers around me was perceived as an arc over my head and extended out to the left and right when it was supposed to be “rear” speakers. The DSP succeeded in taking the sound out of the center of my head, but it failed completely in making sound seem to come from the speakers in a real home theater. The same demo using Dolby headphone processing was better at placing speakers where they should be, but it was still far from perfect. So, yes, the processing influenced my perception of space, but neither DSP was realistic – to me at least (and everyone is different).
2-Channel Stereo
Using the demo of Rebecca Pidgeon’s, “Spanish Harlem,” I was less disappointed than with the attempts at 7.1 surround. The processed demo pulled the sounds out of the center of my head to a virtual space above my head. The frequency response obviously changed and the dynamics flattened, both of which were very distracting and disappointing, but the soundfield effect was somewhat pleasing. I pondered if I could make a habit of listening with this sort of processing as I would sacrifice details, dynamics, and the frequency timber I like from my headphones to experience the music from outside of the center of my head. That said, when I played a dense recording using the trial version of the software in stereo, the loss of detail and dynamics wasn’t acceptable to me. Like I said, I love listening with headphones and rarely feel I am missing anything when doing so.
Again, I got the impression the DSP was modeling a set of speakers and thus changing the frequency timber, phase shift, group delay, and so on. Between that and the added ambience, I was convinced this was removing detail, dynamics and even bass performance. Compared to Dolby Headphone processing, I still preferred the latter.
continued in next post...
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