Ircam HEar

HEar provides faithful reproduction of a stereo or surround mix with a pair of conventional stereo headphones. It relies on proven technology to model the various phenomena that occur when playing back audio material through a loudspeaker system.

This allows monitoring a full surround mix in situations when a surround-capable environment is not available or practical. Another typical use of HEar is doing precise checking of a mix, which is convenient with headphones as these provide a 'surgical' and very detailed, microscope-like rendering of the audio. HEar can also prove very useful in a project studio context, and whenever noise isolation is a concern, as it helps achieving a more realistic sound environment.

Binaural technology encompasses methods for recording, processing, synthesizing and reproducing sound that are specifically designed to preserve tridimensional localisation properties.

In order to mimic the impression of a sound originating from a given incidence, it is sufficient to filter a mono signal, which on its own lacks any kind of spatial information, with both left and right HRTF filters. This constitutes the foundation of binaural synthesis.

Please note that the resulting signal is only meant to be listened to with headphones, and isn't designed for a conventional stereo loudspeaker setup.