Gadgetory

Virtual Surround is a true representation of human ingenuity and the advances that scientific research can have on technology it essentially tricks your ears into thinking that sound which is coming from a 2.1 channel set up or a small strip of speakers using a technique called digital sound projection is actually coming from a 5.1 channel or higher speaker setup if anyone doesn't know what the naming scheme for a surround speaker setup means the first number 5 in this case refers to the number of speakers in the system and the number after the point in this case 1 refers to the number of subwoofers in the system both 2.1 and digital sound projection work because of advancements in psycho acoustics which is the study of sound perception they trick your ears by carefully directing sound waves at specific angles and bouncing them off walls to make you think that the sound is actually coming from behind or beside you rather than in front of you you see your ears are pretty adept at recognizing where sound is coming from this is why when you hear something drop in a silent room you're often able to instantly identify whether the sound is to your left or right we can tell what direction a sound is coming from because we have two ears which have a certain distance between them so for example a sound to your left will be louder in your left ear than in your right ear also the sound waves will hit your left ear a fraction of a second sooner than your right it's these slight differences in timing and volume that tell you what direction a sound is coming from on the x-axis this is called the interaural level difference and interaural time difference lucky for developers of virtual surround sound systems the x-axis is the only one they have to worry about this is because of something that many refer to as the cone of confusion which is an area in which objects which are above or below us caused the same interaural level difference and interaural time difference this also applies to objects which are in front of us or behind us at certain angles so how do virtual surround systems know how to simulate a 5.1 or higher channel system quite simply through recording a system of that size with directional microphones in a real world setting which takes into account the interruptions of a sound wave by your head neck and shoulders and simulating that with an algorithm this is why some systems will have a room size rating and why some even need to be configured with a microphone to work properly the size of the room needs to be accounted for so the waves can properly bounce off the walls to simulate full surround experience virtual surround headphones do something similar by using the shape of your ears to projects town from different angles many of these have a general one-size-fits-all setting based on average ear sizes but options like Razer surround are quite customizable so you can tweak the placement of each virtual speaker to perfect your listening experience if you so choose to give an example of what good virtual surround should sound like through headphones check out this video which uses bio-neural sound recording to simulate surround sound so that's it virtual surround in itself isn't that complicated but it's made possible by a variety of extremely complicated scientific studies and tests but the execution is actually quite simple just like today's episode sponsors Squarespace the simple way to set up and host your personal professional or business website Squarespace is trusted by companies of all sizes from one man or woman operations to small startups like us all the way up to multinational brands like volvo they have a wide variety of templates that you can use to make your own using their style editor and designing your site is a breeze in our case rather than having Luke create the site our designer Etzel was able to do it with no issues plans started only eight dollars a month for personal sites sixteen dollars a month for professional sites and just twenty four dollars a month for business sites so head over to squarespace.com slash Linus to get your free trial today and create your next personal professional or business website thanks for watching this episode of fast as possible give us a like or a dislike and leave your comments below about virtual surround sound and don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you next time