Hi Lemnoc
Their campaign is going very well - kickstarter is very hit and miss, good luck to them. I do not think they are the first as the Smyth Realizer does the same thing (I think) but at a very high price, all reports have been impressive.
My own company Involve Audio is also conducting research in the same area and the real problem is not what most people think. It is relatively easy to create the perception of height, left, right and rear but the creation of a true frontal image is the hard bit as opposed to the typical headphone thing of the frontal image being somewhere in your head.
Without giving too much of the game away we note that many attempts at creating 3D headphones have been done and many including Ossic X use multi mini drivers located around each ear in the cup. Our double blind tests have shown NO CORRELATION of sound position to the position of these mini drivers close to the ear. I know it does not sound obvious but we believe the use of multi positioned drivers within the cup just provides a psychological comfort that the thing is capable of surround.
I remember way back in the 70's (yes I am that old) I purchased a set of JVC surround headphones and eagerly tried them out in the hope of getting a front back sensation. It had 2 front back located drivers in each cup. The disappointing result was NO SENSATION OF SURROUND! Recently we purchased a few well known gaming headphones using the same multidriver technique and the result was the same - NO SURROUND.
In our view the best results are still with single drivers per cup and some very clever head related transfer functions like the Smyth. Also I think multi drivers reduce the overall fidelity of the unit (I know I am sounding like an audio snob).
Having said that these guys appear to have done some very clever stuff in particular to panning. I think the general "gaming review " press tend to think the headphone is surround if it has some crap like Digital Surround written on the side....we are easily fooled.
I would love to actually hear the Ossic X
Regards
Chucky
What do people think about these 3D headphones on kick starter ?
Worth the money ? Seems to be a lot cheaper than a lot of plain ordinary headphones that sell for a lot more. I wonder if the audio quality has been compromised in exchange for the 3D spatial effects ?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/248983394/ossic-x-the-first-3d-audio-headphones-calibrated-t?ref=category_popular
cheers
