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Message: [QUOTE="Shamiso, post: 92517, member: 160"] Headphones can feed each ear separately, while two loudspeakers inevitably send both channels to both ears through the air. The extra path is the basic reason a convincing binaural image on headphones can shrink, smear, or pull toward the speakers when you play the same signal over monitors. A binaural renderer carefully builds differences in arrival time, level, and spectrum between the left and right ear signals. Ordinary stereo speakers then mix those signals acoustically before they reach you, adding a delayed copy of the left channel to the right ear and the right channel to the left ear. The effect is not subtle once the spatial illusion depends on precise ear-to-ear differences. ORBIT deals with this through [B][URL='https://goldmidi.com/community/threads/ovni-audio-introduced-free-orbit-and-supernova-plug-ins.77888/']ORBIT's crosstalk-cancelled speaker mode[/URL][/B] rather than pretending the headphone render will translate untouched. Its speaker output is trying to preserve a binaural relationship after the room, and the loudspeakers have had their chance to scramble it. [HEADING=2]Speakers mix the channels before your brain gets them[/HEADING] Put a pair of headphones on, and the routing is simple. The left driver sits beside the left ear, the right driver sits beside the right ear, and very little of either channel physically reaches the opposite ear. Binaural processing can therefore design the two ear signals with a fairly clean target in mind. Speakers are different. Your left monitor reaches your left ear first, but it also reaches your right ear a fraction later after traveling farther and bending around the head. The right monitor does the mirror image, so each ear receives its intended signal plus unwanted crosstalk from the other side. Those extra arrivals interfere with the timing and level differences already encoded by the binaural renderer. They can also create frequency-dependent cancellation and reinforcement because the direct and crossed paths arrive with different delays. A virtual source meant to sit well outside the speaker span can end up sounding flatter and much more like ordinary stereo. Crosstalk cancellation attacks the unwanted paths before they happen. The processor sends carefully filtered anti-signals through the opposite speakers so the leakage cancels at the listener's ears. It is acoustic pre-correction rather than stereo widening, and it depends heavily on where the speakers and ears actually are. [HEADING=2]The sweet spot is part of the processing[/HEADING] Cancellation only works when the anti-signal reaches the ear with the delay and level the filter expected. Move your head and the path lengths change, which means the carefully lined-up subtraction starts missing its target. A few centimeters can matter once higher frequencies are involved because their wavelengths are short. This is why transaural playback has always had a reputation for a narrow listening position. Room reflections pile on more paths the filter did not ask for, while speaker-angle errors change the geometry again. A dead-center desktop position is a much friendlier job than trying to make the same cancellation work for three people spread across a sofa. The newer detail is that raw channel separation does not tell the whole story. [B][URL='https://doi.org/10.1051/aacus/2026056']2026 head-motion measurements of loudspeaker binaural reproduction[/URL][/B] found that a system can suppress unwanted channel leakage yet still reproduce the wrong interaural timing after the listener moves. Speaker span also changed how well timing cues survived head rotation, so a bigger cancellation number does not automatically mean a more stable spatial image. Speaker hardware matters too. In a 2026 headrest system, proper loudspeaker equalization kept effective cancellation after the speaker setup changed without new HRTF measurements. The practical lesson is less glamorous. Cancellation filters depend on the playback chain, not just the binaural file. [HEADING=2]Speaker mode is a listening position, not a magic export[/HEADING] For a producer, the useful distinction is between checking a spatial effect over your own stereo pair and baking a supposedly universal correction into a file. Crosstalk cancellation is tied to a reproduction setup. The processing that behaves nicely at your desk may be wrong for someone using wider speakers, a laptop, a soundbar, or a different seating position. ORBIT's manual treats Phones and Speakers as separate output targets for exactly this reason. Headphone mode keeps the binaural HRTF and timing path intact, while Speakers adds its RACE cancellation stage so the spatial image has a chance of surviving a stereo pair. Switching modes is not the same thing as turning width up. You should also resist judging speaker mode while wandering around the room. Sit where the stereo setup is actually aligned, keep both speakers symmetrical, and compare the spatial position rather than just the tonal change. If the image falls apart when you lean sideways, the cancellation has exposed its geometry limit rather than proving the original binaural placement was bad. A final mono check answers a separate question. Crosstalk cancellation can help binaural placement over two speakers, while mono compatibility asks what survives when left and right are summed into one channel. Treating those as the same test hides two completely different failure modes, especially on moving sounds with aggressive ear-to-ear differences. [/QUOTE]

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