Tests / 07 — Binaural 3D
Binaural 3D audio demo
Headphones only — this is the one test that’s meaningless on speakers. A noise source orbits your head using HRTF spatial audio, computed live. Close your eyes and track it.
The dot shows where the sound should be — front is up. If it matches what you hear, your pair (and your ears) are doing real spatial audio.
What’s happening
Your brain locates sounds using tiny differences between your two ears: arrival time, loudness, and the filtering your head and outer ears apply from each direction. An HRTF (head-related transfer function) simulates all of that, so two headphone channels can place a sound behind you — something ordinary stereo panning can’t do.
What to expect
- Left–right movement should be vivid for everyone.
- Front vs. back is the hard part — the browser uses a generic head model, and the further your ears are from “average”, the more front and back blur together. That’s normal.
- If the sound never leaves the inside of your head, check you’re actually on headphones and that any “spatial audio” or virtualization feature on your device is off — two spatializers fight each other.
Why this is a headphone test
Binaural rendering assumes each ear hears only its own channel. On speakers both ears hear both channels and the illusion collapses. If this demo impresses you, that isolation — plus channel matching you verified in the imaging test — is working as designed.