Is Spatializer for Audiofools - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 16, 2019, 11:35:14 pm
content: this odd audio chip was on an old Toshiba crt TV set pcb. in my electronics teardowns bin.takeing a look at the pdf datasheethttp://rtellason.com/chipdata/an7396.pdfshows this ic is a stereo enhancement spatializer.so what is a spatializer? 2 audio inputs and 2 audio outputs. no subwoofer channels as best I can see.this is not a 5.1 surround sound as it has only 2 audio outputs.is this for audiofools? I may just do some experiments with this ic, if itsactually does something?what happend to spatializer audio laboratories that made the ic?.the other ic is a video switch ic Spatializer chip4 image\/

author: admiralk
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2019, 01:09:25 am
content: It sounds like it expands the stereo image. There are plenty of DAW plugins that do this, so I would imagine it does do something. How well it does it might be a different story.

author: Canis Dirus Leidy
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2019, 08:40:17 am
content: Quote from: jonovid on September 16, 2019, 11:35:14 pmLooks like afancy name for specific sound processing.

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2019, 08:51:32 am
content: Or it could be and 'aural exciter' ....https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exciter_(effect)

author: dzseki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2019, 08:52:59 am
content: With conventional stereo setup one shouldn't sit much farther from the speakers than the distance of the speakers themselves. This never could be achieved with conventional TV sets with their built in speakers, stereo expansion was aimed to overcome this to some extent, yielding better stereo effect.The other application is to downmix materials to headphones, as in headphones there is no such crosstalk between the channels (your ears) as with noises coming from the free air, such system usualy fail at using the proper HRTF (head related transfer function), as each person is used to their own hrtf, while such systems use generalized HRTFs which could be a hit and miss, recording the exact HRTF is rather cumbersome.

author: Zbig
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2019, 04:36:11 pm
content: Pretty much every other cheap computer speaker set I remember from late nineties / early 2000's had a button labeled "3D"/"Virtual Surround" or one of countless other terms to that tune. It was altering the signal in one way or another with the aim of widening the "panorama" or "sound stage" to borrow an audiophool term. The effects were usually immediately obvious so no placebo effect here. Quite on the contrary, after the novelty wore off, I was usually turning the feature off and leaving it that way, feeling that the processing was a bit to heavy and that I'was no longer listening to the same thing the producers meant. To describe the effect as I was perceiving it: with my eyes closed, sitting close to the speakers (at the desk), while listening to the mono signal, I heard the sound as if it was coming from a virtual speaker placed in the middle, between the actual speakers.; that's obvious. While listening to the unprocessed stereo signal, I could hear the stereo effect and appreciate it just fine, no problems, but I could still pinpoint the actual sound sources without seeing them. With the "3D" feature engaged, however, the "panorama" appeared more contiguous, seemed to extend beyond the physical speakers and I felt like I'd have problems pinpointing the actual sound sources hadn't I know for a fact where they are physically placed. All that at the cost of noticeably "different" sound and funny side-effects that resulted from the chip messing with the signal phase in weird and funny ways.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 17, 2019, 08:19:27 pm
content: It's definitely not bullshit. The term itself is rather vague, but the ideas behind that is basically to recreate "3D" localization effects in a purely binaural manner, based on psychoacoustics."3D" effects with stereo only have been known for decades, and they work surprisingly well when well implemented. You can definitely process stereo sound so that listening to it in stereo headphones (can't be more binaural than that) will be perceived as if sounds were coming from more directions than just "left" and "right".Of course any "automatic" processing based on audio content itself only will be pretty limited - since localization itself at this point is unknown and will just be "guessed" by the algorithms. The goal is to give listeners the impression that what gets out of the speakers sounds more like they would hear it in a natural context.Whether one specific implementation gives "satisfying" results for any kind of listener remains of course to be asserted.