How Genelec’s Aural ID plugin ‘bridges gap between headphones and speakers’

Genelec R&D director Aki Mäkivirta speaks to Headliner about the company’s new Aural ID plugin and what its arrival means for music creators.

As well as providing extra features and more flexible purchasing models, the new plugin is optimised to integrate into every audio professional’s workflow – delivering a personalised headphone listening experience, from stereo to immersive.

Using simple video footage supplied by the user via the free Aural ID Creator mobile app, Genelec will then analyse the way the user’s head, external ear and upper body affect and colour the audio arriving from all directions.

This effect is unique to every individual and is called the Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF). Aural ID’s cloud-based calculation engine then models the user’s own head and upper torso features to calculate their personal HRTF, and this information enables precise rendering of audio in any direction within the Aural ID plugin, which is available in VST, AAX and AU formats for easy integration into any DAW.

Aimed primarily at audio professionals working in music, film, broadcast, game audio design and academic research, Aural ID delivers headphone listening with a natural sense of imaging that is modelled on in-room loudspeaker monitoring.

New to the plugin version of Aural ID is the ability to compensate for the sound colouration that any headphones will introduce. There are two modes for achieving this, the first and most accurate being a corrective EQ individually tailored for a library of specific headphone models within the plugin, while a second mode offers a more generalised response that supports any professional headphone model.

The plugin also allows users of Genelec Smart Active monitors to import calibration files directly from Genelec’s GLM loudspeaker manager software. This helps the user to closely replicate the performance of their in-room monitoring system.

To find out more, we spoke to Mäkivirta about the new possibilities that the Aural ID plugin opens up for studio professionals…

Tell us about the origins of this product and why you decided to create it?

Genelec has been focusing on loudspeaker-based monitoring solutions for over four decades, and we have a good coverage of all the key monitoring scenarios and a broad solution range. The obvious missing detail has been our support for using the headphone for monitoring. The headphone is a challenging monitoring device, as wearing it eliminates the directional hearing system of the listener - and all audio appears mainly inside the head. In addition to this, as there is an interaction between the sound colour and directional hearing, there is also added sound colour uncertainty when using headphones, even after the valiant efforts to standardize the headphone sound colour (typically diffuse field calibration). These two aspects still leave important work where the headphone is a very good tool.

The essence of our directional hearing system functionality is captured in a person’s head-related transfer function (HRTF). Once you have your own HRTF data, this information can be used to largely restore what has been eliminated by wearing the headphone. This has several very beneficial effects and is exactly what Genelec is looking to bring to headphone monitoring – added reliability.

Applying your own HRTF to audio starts moving the audio outside of your head. This creates a much more realistic presentation of the sound stage and virtual sound images. Even with limitations, this is an essential addition to how headphones can be used. This brings the headphones closer to loudspeaker monitoring. We start bridging the gap between using loudspeakers or using headphones.

The motivation for Genelec in introducing the Aural ID plug-in software is to bring a reliable method of using headphones for monitoring to all audio professionals. This includes a reliable method for obtaining the personal HRTF. In fact, the Aural ID plug-in is actually more than just the software you install in your DAW. You also get a mobile device app that guides the user through the personal data acquisition process, and enables ordering the personal Aural ID. We offer a webshop where the user can download the DAW plug-in software and access their personal Aural ID HRTF data.

What does it have to offer audio professionals?

We are looking to empower professionals to freely choose when to use headphones and when to use loudspeakers for monitoring. Even if Genelec does not make headphones, just looking at how much professionals need headphones motivates this work. We want to bridge the gap between the two methods – using loudspeakers and using headphones.

We think that one of the key benefits of using the Aural ID plug-in is going to be freedom and flexibility. Freedom to choose what monitoring tool works best for the workflow. Flexibility to use the most accessible monitoring method. The Aural ID can be very useful in freeing the audio professional from the constraints of space – using the Aural ID plug-in for remote work becomes possible, and the full immersive loudspeaker system may no longer be needed 100% of the time. This can be a significant saving factor in hectic day to day work. I could see that this can be a significant benefit for freelancers and mobile professionals, for example.

What are some of the features that make it such a unique plug-in?

The HRTF that comes in the Aural ID is 100% completely personal. We do not use HRTFs from dummy heads, or a method of selecting a best-fit HRTF from a library. What we create is completely individual, and contains the acoustic features contributed by the external ear details, head shape, neck, shoulders, and upper torso. In our understanding, this is a unique service in terms of the level of detail and quality we offer.

One of the key features available in the Aural ID plug-in is the full support for calibration. This is of course something Genelec has been doing for loudspeaker-based monitoring for a long time now. We offer in-room calibration that can elevate the accuracy and reliability of monitoring by compensating for the listening room related influences.

With headphone monitoring and the Aural ID plug-in, following this principle is natural. In the plug-in we offer a full set of controls to calibrate the locations and playback levels of each of the virtual monitors, as well as the listener orientation. We also offer a toolset for calibrating the sound character of the total playback system. One can also bring in the calibrated frequency response of a Genelec Smart Active Monitoring system from the GLM setup file, and use that as a guideline for adjusting the sound character in your virtual monitoring environment on your headphones. Using these tools, it is possible to adapt the headphone monitoring to your personal workflow and enable easy and reliable transfer between loudspeakers and headphones. The Aural ID plug-in supports any monitoring scenario from mono and stereo up to 7.1.4 immersive audio layouts.

We recommend that high quality professional headphones are used because they can offer a more reliable monitoring experience. One area where we continue to work is to expand our support for specific types of headphone models, but all high-quality professional headphones have the potential of providing a good monitoring experience

Will you be looking to release more plug-ins this year?

Well, Genelec is not a plug-in company, and the Aural ID plug-in is not actually a plug-in - meaning in the traditional sense of what plug-in software is used for, and it’s not an effect. What we have created is a rendering engine for headphones that is completely personal to an individual and technically sits in a location of the DAW where the plug-ins go. That is just a convenient technical location. For us the key focus remains in the monitoring. Our business is to empower professionals with reliable monitoring tools that give access to all the details in an audio mix. Looking into the future, we want to keep on developing the Aural ID plug-in to become an even more powerful monitoring tool. In the same way as with Genelec monitors - simply a tool to trust.