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Xfactor330
21
Aug 7, 2014
Right, so after picking up my jaw from the floor after listening to Money by Pink Floyd I had to download the trial (listening on audio technica ath-50), by the way the way the trial is designed, it is one of the fairest software demos that I have seen. Anyway, sound was a bit quiet in the trial, so I plugged in my portable amp and cranked up the volume, even at a moderate volume (what I usually get out of my computer without amplification) the sound quality was horrible :c, and I have no idea why. Also, closing the program is a bit fiddly for me as I have to force close it with task manager and then switch over on the control panel just to make the sound work. The price is kind of steep, and I'm wondering if the trial is identical to the actual quality of the full version. I want to listen to music at a decent volume so this is a real problem.
Also, fantastic what you're doing, I really appreciate you taking your time and answering questions here and the general idea behind the software is brilliant! I have the privilege of listening to a 15k sound system every once in a while, and this is probably the closest that I can get to that sound, on my cans and a limited budget :)
Xfactor330Hi Xfactor330,
Thanks for your comments.
You can view my previous responses regarding the output of Out Of Your Head not sounding right.
But as far as exiting the software, the only way to do that is to right click on the Out Of Your Head system tray icon and select "Exit" from the pop-up menu. Closing the Control Panel interface will not exit the software.
The volume level of Out Of Your Head is lower than without it. The main problem is that I need the levels low enough such that when all 8 channels are outputting a lot of audio, say in an action movie, for example, that there is no clipping. As you can imagine, 8 channels of audio being summed into two channels can result in fairly high signal levels.
I also did not want to do any kind of software compression. So my choice was to have lower levels to avoid regular clipping, or raise the levels and have clipping occur during loud passages of movies or multi-channel content. At one point I did have the levels set louder and everyone that tried it kept complaining about clipping.
But, I find that when using and external amp or amp/DAC combo, there is usually plenty of volume level. I can understand that with the built-in headphone jack of some computers with less efficient headphones, you might not be able to get enough level output from Out Of Your Head. I am working on a solution in a future version that will allow you to adjust the gain higher than zero for those people who need higher output levels, and just know that during loud passages of movies, clipping may occur.
It's a unique problem since Out Of your Head is feeding your headphones the total sound coming from 8 speakers.
-Darin
Xfactor330
21
Aug 7, 2014
Darin_Fong_AudioThanks for the response, I have some more questions. I have disabled all of the software that could possibly interfere with the sound, and even then, on the same settings the Massdrop sample of Money sounds better than what I listen to on itunes, same album, same speaker setting on your program, everything else disabled.
Also, I noticed some problems with the Sasha Speakers, when listening to music on itunes I hear some sort of crackle all of the time, it is very noticeable and if I switch to music on youtube, I hear a similar crackle on almost all speaker settings.
On the plus side exiting the program works fine after a restart of my computer, I don't know what as causing problems before but it works as it should now.
I'm going to wait some more time before actually buying your software, hopefully some of my problems will be resolved later down the development.
By the way, if you don't mind me asking where does the high price tag of the software come from? I understand that some software costs much more to develop than you would think at first (the Skullgirls kickstarter campaign comes to mind) is the process of recording the various speakers expensive? Do you have to pay a royalty to the owner of the speakers? Or is the marked so narrow that the price just has to be so high? I'm sure a lot more people would jump on board if the price was a bit more accessible, I'm not exactly thrilled on spending more money on making my headphones sound better than on my headphones themselves, especially when the product is aimed at people with a budget since they can't afford quality speakers.
Xfactor330Hi Xfactor330,
Not sure why the sound would be different than the pre-rendered files. but all I did was record the output from Out Of Your Head using Audacity with the Acoustic Zen preset.
The Sasha preset can be fixed by lowering the input channel levels on the Out Of Your Head Control Panel. When you have the Sasha preset selected, just adjust the input level sliders down until you no longer hear the clipping. I need to fix that on the original preset file. Sorry about that. But when I lower the levels in the preset itself, then people will also complain that the level is too low and can't be set high enough.
Glad you got the program to exit properly.
As far as the pricing goes, with software pricing can seem quite a bit more arbitrary than selling hardware in spite of similar development time and costs. When I first developed Out Of Your Head, I assumed it was initially going to be a very niche product regardless of price. But having never developed a software product before, it was difficult to predict potential sales and figure out where to set the price.
From my perspective, I was coming from being a Smyth Realiser owner and paid $3000 for it. When I consulted experts in the industry at first some people who owned a Realiser said, "Well if the Realiser is $3000, you should just charge half that." Well, that certainly was out of the question, but it is one way to look at it. Some people also cautioned me about charging too little. In high end audio, setting your price too low can be just as bad as too high.
Yes, Out Of Your Head is aimed at people who are not going to buy any of the speakers I have measured so I guess you could call that people on a budget. I also think that at $149 price, that is not much to pay considering how much even a modest good sounding speaker system can cost especially a 7.1 home theater system. So looking at it that way, if I were selling high end speakers for $149, that would seem really cheap. I know I am not selling speakers, but you get the idea.
I think there is a psychological factor that most people have about software vs. hardware, myself included. But in the end it's about the sound and the experience and how much it's worth to you regardless of hardware vs. software. $149 for hardware is considered inexpensive. $149 for software is considered high end.
Will some one who spent $100 on their listening systems pay $149 for Out Of Your Head? Probably not. But many people on Head-Fi or Audiogon, etc. are spending WAY more than $149 to make their current audio systems sound better.
-Darin
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