Headphones with head-tracking: mobius, atmos...

General Headphone Discussion
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I’m interested in this niche of 3D sound. I like the Creative Super X-FI Air 3D sound, but there is no head-tracking. What models have head-tracking so far?

  • Audeze Mobius
  • Dolby Atmos
  • is that it?

I’m not really a gamer but I find that the crossfeed/3D aspect reduces fatigue. Also I like to make and listen to binaural recordings (which doesn’t require any 3D hardware, but Im interested in the subject, and how close fake-3D can get).

I’d love to hear about the comparisons and if there’s any anticipated that I should wait for.
I’m tempted by the mobius but it’s a 1st-gen model, and it had a good reception, so I think I ought to wait for a mobius2.
The Dolby can be expected to sound good but I’m afraid it will be too proprietary.
Meanwhile people seem to like the Creative SXFIs so maybe an AIR2 will have head-tracking…

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The industry standard for this sort of thing is Waves NX combined with a dedicated head-tracker that’ll work with most headphones and a plug-in for your audio chain/DAW to do the actual 3D (or virtual room) processing.

I have it, and use it in some specific scenarios both for production work as well as occasional listening sessions. It works very well, is inexpensive for what it does ($150 including the head-tracker) and is very configurable.

They also seem to have just released a consumer-focused version of NX at $9.99 for Windows or macOS, and that can work with a web-cam or a head-tracker. Haven’t tried this one yet, but at under $10 I shall have to (there’s a free trial too).

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There was a booth at Canjam LA last year called Vast Audio (now called Redscape) where this guy developed a software with a dedicated 3D head tracker that you can attach on any headphone, and I was pretty amazed by the technology. With the HD800 + tracker , it produced a very convincing near-field speaker sound for music, movies, and gaming. I honestly liked it more than the Mobius and liked how you can reproduce the effect in any headphone you own. The software also has a built in equalizer and you can save and load different presets, if you own multiple headphones. Definitely check it out! I’m not sure if I’m supposed to post direct-links so I will refrain from that :slight_smile: