Wave Arts Panorama - new Virtual Acoustics Processor

[rpmartino]

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to announce our new plug-in offering called Panorama... while our Power Suite plug-ins have focused on "essential tools" sort of processing, this new one is more of a unique tool which can achieve some nice 3-D and binaural spatial effects with conventional headphones or speakers. As it doesn't seem to fit in a well-known category we're calling it a "Virtual Acoustics Processor" and it's sort of a few things: a 3-D panner (left/right, front/back, up/down) and an environment simulator with reflection modeling and reverb.

We'd love to get some feedback on this, and we're open to ideas on how to make it even better, as it's possible it has applications we haven't even thought of yet. So far people have had success using it for moving sound effects and as a mixing tool by placing instruments in a virtual space. Feel free to download the demo and check it out. There's also a few mp3 examples on the Panorama product page which we hope to expand upon.

http://wavearts.com



Here's the blurb from the website:

Description
Panorama is a specialized tool for creating stunningly realistic 3-D audio scenes. The DSP technology in Panorama reproduces psychoacoustic sound localization and distance cues, allowing you to pan sounds in three dimensions: not just left and right, but up, down, front, back, near, and far. Panorama combines 3-D audio panning with acoustic environment modeling, including wall reflections, reverberation, distance modeling, and the Doppler pitch effect. While primarily intended for headphone listening, Panorama also includes a crosstalk canceller for playback over conventional stereo loudspeakers.

• - Position and move sound in three dimensions
  - Uses Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTF) to reproduce binaural sound localization cues.
  - Integrated reverberation and distance cues
  - Extensive control over dimensions and surface material of all six surfaces of the room
  - Doppler pitch effect
  - Full automation support for creating moving sounds
  - Crosstalk canceller for loudspeaker playback

Applications

• - Create realistic sound scenes
  - Make special 3-D and moving sound effects in conventional stereo productions
  - Unique mixing tool - position musical instruments in a virtual space
  - Essential tool for headphone audio production

Thanks for reading!

[multree]

this beast rocks

[Funkybot]

Sounds neat enough, will have to check it out after work.

[kylen]

I just picked this up (got the intro price!) for my new life of [mostly] monitoring stereo mixes in headphones...of course that's impossible for me to do critical listening and mix adjustments using normal headphone technology - I have high hopes for this method!

The idea is to monitor using Panorama and headphones and simulate HRTF-Binaural-OpenAir space, do critical listening and mix adjustments at appropriately loud levels, listen in open-air monitors without Panorama (or some different speaker setting) at a level appropriate to my new apartment space (probably < 70dBC SPL), render the mix without Panorama (unless I use a different instance as an effect in some tracks).

As an extra bonus I believe I will be able to hype the freq curve of my headphones to anything I like, since my near-fields will be at < 70dbSPL or so I should be able to prevent a lot of room resonances/modal combing and interference that I previously had...that's what I'm working with anyway. Translation of mixes will be the metric!

[rpmartino]

Hi kylen,

There was recently a question/response about this kind of application on our company forum (at our website), maybe you'd find that info useful...

[kylen]

Thanks rpmartino - I'll check it out...I'm still moving into my mini-virtual-studio space so I'm still making adjustments and learning how to use my new tools!