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
setup 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 five in this case refers to the number of speakers in
the system. And the number after the point, in this case one, 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 interoral level difference
and interoral 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
cause the same interoral level difference and interoral 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 soundwave 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 project sound from
different angles. Many of these have a general oneizefits-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 bionural 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
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comments below about virtual surround sound.