Wave Arts Panorama - opinions, alternatives?

[Mathematics]

I know this is an old thread but as of Mid-2016, I have not found an alternative that is as good as the Wave Arts Panorama. There is psuedo-panorama plugin by Oculus which is free; however...the Panorama produces much more accurate results. Here is the link to the Oculus SDK plugin:

https://developer.oculus.com/downloads/ ... K_Plugins/

The reason I refer to the Oculus as pseudo-panorama is because it is more of just basic panning whereas the Panorama uses more sophisticated algorithms. Wave Arts has a great description of their modeling so you can read about it on their website. I have no connection with either developer but I own both and I have no reason to use the Oculus when I have the Panorama. The difference is hair-raising...literally. Here is the Wave Arts Panorama link:

http://wavearts.com/products/plugins/panorama/

For anyone who doesn't care about the cost, Altiverb is probably the only other solution but you'd be buying an entire suite of sound design tools just to have a sound-positioning utility. I thought I should mention that. Good luck with your search. You can always try before you buy with these developers.

[KTlin]

I know this is an old thread but as of Mid-2016, I have not found an alternative that is as good as the Wave Arts Panorama.

You could try Proximity. Not exactly like Wave Arts Panorama (or other products mentioned in this thread) but it has some interesting features and it's free.
http://www.tokyodawn.net/proximity/

[sinkmusic]

Maybe Eareckon Eareverb 2 ?

Or Cytonic Space260 (which is free) ?

[KTlin]

Maybe Eareckon Eareverb 2 ?

Thanks sinkmusic! I knew about EAReverb, but I didn't know they released the v2. Boy, oh boy, this looks very powerful.

[sinkmusic]

It is, indeed

[MogwaiBoy]

The reason I refer to the Oculus as pseudo-panorama is because it is more of just basic panning whereas the Panorama uses more sophisticated algorithms. Wave Arts has a great description of their modeling so you can read about it on their website. I have no connection with either developer but I own both and I have no reason to use the Oculus when I have the Panorama. The difference is hair-raising...literally. Here is the Wave Arts Panorama link:

http://wavearts.com/products/plugins/panorama/

Thread dig! How is this kind of plugin in a music context? I imagine it plays havoc with phase but that's fine if used only as a special effect on a certain element (like making a synth sound like it's coming up behind you). Also: would you use headphone or speaker mode for use in mixing music?

[Guillaume Piolat]

Binaural panning can definately introduce a bit of anti-phase, mostly with interaural delay. The more interaural delay, the more antiphase energy. It is a matter of restraint here because us plug-in developers can't do much more than limiting the possible amount of delay, and provide visualization tools. (There doesn't seem to be convincing ways to zero out the effect of delay with phase equalization. I tried to phase unwrap the delay, but it doesn't remove more than 50% of the antiphase energy and affects magnitudes).

[Arrested Developer]

Thanks. Anything else?

I used it about 6 years ago in a binaural project.
It was ok, but i wasn't really happy with the sound quality.
First, it added a lot of coloration that i didn't liked (it's possible to tweak a lot, i just didn't liked the
results).
Second, while it created a good sense of the position, sometimes i felt that it didn't really could put the sound source in front of me.
In comparison with a dummy head microphone i found there is a huge difference in quality.

[Jace-BeOS]

i demoed it some time ago and didn't like how the binaural panning is defeated by the algorithmic reverb. What's the use of going through the effort of doing binaural panning if you're going to contradict those spatial cues with a fake reverb?

This is how every binaural panner seems to work. They should be doing physical modeling of a room, place a sound source in it, and feed the sound projections and reflections to the binaural "mic".

The only real room modeling plugin i've seen is RaySpace, but it does not use a binaural process on the "listener"/mic part of the signal flow.

Why these two techniques are not being used together makes no sense to me at all. Also, we're in a new era of headphone usage, with all the portable MP3 players in use everywhere. Surely this is the right time for a resurgence of binaural recordings...

i haven't tested it yet, but here's possibly another alternative to Wave Arts' Panorama: https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Panagement.html

[Arrested Developer]

Also, we're in a new era of headphone usage, with all the portable MP3 players in use everywhere. Surely this is the right time for a resurgence of binaural recordings...

Completely agree with you!

[andrewbarker12345]

Check out this plugin that I just finished: http://freedomaudioplugins.com/downloads/3d-audio/

[simon.a.billington]

Yeah I don't think this thing quite suits the purposes either, DTS Neural.

[BetaAltairVII]

How about this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr-5RSiz-8Y

It basically seems to be Panorama remade. I dunno about you but it might just sound cleaner too.

[ericzang]

other alternatives are:

Nuspace Aeko delay
https://nuspaceaudio.com/2017/09/06/aek ... layreverb/
The delay part can be turned off and just the 3d panner be active.

Another approach is to use a surround panner which is then routed to a surround to stereo binaural plugin:
surround panner: http://sonic.supermaailma.net/plugins "Surround Pan"

surround to binaural:
Ircam HEAR
http://store.dontcrack.com/product_info ... cts_id=864 (maybe will go back on sale to $40 one day?)

or Muze:
https://nuspaceaudio.com/2017/05/16/muz ... rb-plugin/ (reverb part can be turned off)

The Nuspace plugins add some high frequencies in binaural mode (can be approximately compensated with eq), compared to HEAR.

[plexuss]

I have WA Panorama. I have tried the demo of PA dearVR Pro. I use Panorama without the reverb and it does a decent job of localization. dearVR Pro is much better but is 44.1k only. Here are a couple tracks to demonstrate. I use Panorama to create both a speaker specific and headphone specific version using the spacialization on all tracks. I also have an earlier mix that was done with Panorama...

Mix without Panorama (this is mix is different in general from the others)
https://soundcloud.com/musicofplexus/pr ... dgar-v3-96

Re-mix with Panorama for speakers
https://soundcloud.com/musicofplexus/fu ... rain-remix

Re-mix with Panorama for headphones
https://soundcloud.com/musicofplexus/fu ... headphones