WAVES Nx – 3D AUDIO ON ANY HEADPHONES

WAVES Nx – 3D AUDIO ON ANY HEADPHONES

by Waves Audio

Waves Nx is the first application to bring personalized 3D sound to any pair of headphones.

About this project

With Waves Nx, music, movies and games can be heard in a revolutionary way, as they take on a new dimension of immersive 3D reality. And it all happens inside the headphones you already own.

Immersive 3D Audio on Any Headphones   

Waves Nx is an application that you install on your desktop computer or mobile device. Once the application is installed, Nx recreates – on any set of headphones – the same three-dimensional experience as listening to sound in the real world.

Head Tracking   

Waves Nx personalizes the 3D audio experience to your physical movement in space by tracking your head movements wherever you go. Nx does this using either your computer’s camera or the Nx Head Tracker, a compact Bluetooth device that latches on to your headphones and follows your head movements in all directions.

True Surround Sound on Any Stereo Headphones   

With Waves Nx, you can hear true 5.1 and 7.1 surround on your regular stereo headphones. Your ordinary headphones become a surround sound system, even if the movie you’re watching or the game you’re playing were not originally mixed for surround.

The perception of spatial three-dimensional sound in the real world is a rich and complex phenomenon. It combines the interactions between the acoustic soundwaves and the room or space we’re in; the interaction of the soundwaves with our head and ears; and finally the way our brain interprets these acoustic interactions.   

The perception of sound over regular stereo headphones is a completely different – and much more limited – experience. Here are a few crucial differences:

“Crosstalk” between Your Left and Right Ears

When you listen on headphones, left and right are completely separated. Whatever comes out of the left side of your headphones, you hear only through your left ear. Whatever comes out of the right side, you hear only through your right ear.

But that’s not the way you hear sound in the real world. In the real world, you hear everything through both ears – with a little time delay between them. This helps your brain construct a three-dimensional acoustic image of the space around you.   

Reflected Soundwaves

In the real world, the direct sound coming from the audio source is not the only thing you hear. You hear both the direct sound and the ambient sound reflected from the walls and the other physical objects around you. Your brain uses information about the different volume levels, times of arrival, and directions of these reflected soundwaves in order to construct a three-dimensional acoustic image of the space you’re in.

On headphones, none of this happens. You only hear the direct sound sent straight into your ear, and there is no indication of how it interacts with the three-dimensional environment around you.   

Why Head Movement Matters

In the real world, even the slightest nudge to your head causes the complete audio scene to change, because the external world is not moving with your head. Your brain, being sensitive to change, remembers where the sound used to be and where it is now, combines this with its knowledge that your head (and not the source) has moved, and uses all this info to locate the source of the sound in your three-dimensional environment.

When we listen on headphones, the audio scene constantly moves with the head, again causing the experience of sound to be less realistic, less immersive, less three-dimensional.   

So what difference does all that make to your listening experience?

When you hear sounds in the real world, you hear a full, rich, realistic sound environment. 

Thanks to the “crosstalk” effect between your left and right ears, the ambient reflections, and the adjustment to your physical movement through space, what you hear is a full landscape of sound, a full 3D soundscape.