Experts hail 3D audio plug-in VIRTUOSO developed by a Huddersfield academic ‘a game-changer’

Sound engineers can now experience truly immersive 3D audio without the use of loudspeakers but instead through their headphones following a series of cutting-edge research projects which has been more than five years in the making.

The Applied Psychoacoustics Lab (APL), headed by the University of Huddersfield’s Dr Hyunkook Lee, has developed an immersive audio plug-in titled VIRTUOSO which is being hailed by experts around the world as ‘top-class’, ‘impressive’ and ‘a game-changer’.

“VIRTUOSO is a game-changer for my binaural adventures. Finally, I have a reliable immersive monitoring set-up to go, and all I have to think about is making music for it.”

Hans-Martin Buff, in-house engineer for artists
 Prince, Scorpions & Peter Gabriel.

VIRTUOSO, which recently became available as a commercial product, uses binaural technology powered by ASPEN™, for virtualising stereo or immersive loudspeaker setups and listening rooms for headphone monitoring, ‘with excellent tonal/spatial fidelity and a highly accurate translation’ to real loudspeakers.

While immersive sound technology such as Dolby Atmos can provide listeners with a 3D audio experience, a multi-speaker set-up is required to deliver it.

“This is where the inspiration to develop VIRTUOSO came from,” said Dr Lee, a Reader in Music Technology. “How do we deliver the same immersive experience to normal listeners when most people today listen to sound with headphones?”

Binaural Audio Technology

By using binaural audio technology to simulate the immersive speaker setup and the room acoustics, explains Dr Lee, when you listen to demos of the system it feels like you’re in the room listening to actual speakers and not through a set of headphones.

“If you’re in a room listening to music, you hear reflections and reverb, not just the sound of the speaker, so there is the overall ambience. When creating the same reality over headphones, this all needs to be simulated and this is done via signal processing methods developed based on our psychoacoustic research findings.

“However, binaural audio rendering can significantly colour the sound negatively if the psychoacoustic aspects of room perception are not considered carefully, and this has been the traditional issue. VIRTUOSO eliminates this problem,” he added.

The technology has been extensively beta-tested by world-leading experts. Bob Katz, mastering and mixing engineer and President of Digital Domain, said: “I thought I was listening to my speakers! VIRTUOSO fooled me. Amazing creation.  We finally have a translation tool that allows mixing with headphones.”

Former in-house engineer for ‘The Artist (Formerly Known As Prince)’ Hans-Martin Buff said: “VIRTUOSO is a game-changer for my binaural adventures. Finally, I have a reliable immersive monitoring set-up to go, and all I have to think about is making music for it.”

Dr Lee is internationally renowned for his expertise in 3D audio recording and reproduction. He received the Fellowship Award from the prestigious Audio Engineering Society (AES) in 2018 after his work in spatial audio psychoacoustics was endorsed by five experts, and the organisation’s board awarded Dr Lee’s work a distinction.  In 2021 he was proud to become the first South Korean to be elected Governor of the AES. 

International Conference on Spatial and Immersive Audio

In August later this year the University will be hosting the 2023 AES International Conference on Spatial and Immersive Audio with confirmed keynote speakers Natasha Barrett, Andrew Scheps and Professor Stefania Serafin, which Dr Lee believes is the perfect line-up for representing the research and creative worlds of spatial audio.

“Although spatial audio has been researched and developed over several decades, it has only been several years since it has become a major interest to the general public, thanks to commercial services available on streaming services and mobile devices,” said Dr Lee.

“To maximise industrial and societal impacts of spatial audio, there is no better time for the industry and beyond to get together and that’s what we will be doing at this year’s AES International Conference on Spatial and Immersive Audio.”