[openal] HRTF redesign

[developer at oldunreal.com]

Sorry for answering this late, it's just that I yesterday became really 
aware about HRTF which went into OpenAL-Soft the first time. I 
personally would always put positional accuracy over performance cost. 
It's the most important thing when it comes to HRTF, the reason why 
people want to use it.
Also, with nowadays still increasing CPU power the performance seems to 
become more and more the minor factor either way.

On 19.11.2014 11:01, Chris Robinson wrote:
> Hey guys.
>
> I've been giving some serious thought to redesigning how HRTF mixing 
> works. Currently, it works in a fairly straight-forward, if somewhat 
> costly, way... when a source updates, its direction is used to lookup 
> the filter coefficients (really, the four nearest sets for bilinear 
> interpolation) which are then used to apply a FIR filter for the 
> source input to two output channels. There's also per-sample stepping 
> to fade between coefficients as the source pans around and the 
> attenuation changes.
>
> A possible alternate way, I think, is by mixing normally to a virtual 
> 14-channel setup (8-channel cube + 6-channel "diamond"), then apply 
> HRTF to those channels for output. This has the obvious drawback that 
> it loses some positional accuracy, but it does have a few benefits.
>
> First, it simplifies HRTF setup since it only needs to calculate 
> coefficients once on device reset, and avoids any need for per-sample 
> stepping. Secondly, HRTF processing then becomes a fixed cost. The 
> HRTF filter applies to the 14 channels, irrespective of however many 
> sources are playing. It also affects the output of effects.
>
> As well, it improves B-Format handling since it would mix into 14 
> distinct channels around the listener, which then get filtered for a 
> more encompassing result instead of simple stereo.
>
> But... I'm not sure how bad the positional accuracy loss will be, 
> especially given the ambisonics-based panning which would spread the 
> signal out across multiple (virtual) channels. Though maybe the way 
> the channel volumes are balanced will still provide good positioning 
> cues. So I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.
> _______________________________________________
> openal mailing list
> openal at openal.org
> http://openal.org/mailman/listinfo/openal