How to get HRTF sound on Linux

Question

I recently switched from macOS to Ubuntu, and there's only one thing I miss: It's the Boom3D application, which allows you to apply effects on music, especially the "Spatial Audio" effect that I like a lot.

After some research, it seems to me that the exact term is HRTF (Head-related transfer function), I also heard about SOFA files.

How to get this on Linux? Here is a video demonstration of the kind of audio effects I want to get: HRTF Demo - Steam Audio

Whether it's a music player, an ffmpeg script, or a system-wide solution, I'm interested!

Answer 1

I managed to get a system-wide solution!

Several steps:

1. Create a sink

pacmd load-module module-null-sink \
sink_name=SantaClaus \
sink_properties=device.description=SantaClaus

2. Set it as default (can be done using pavucontrol)

pacmd set-default-sink SantaClaus

3. ffmpeg (see the doc to output to pulseaudio)

ffmpeg \
-loglevel error \
-f pulse \
-i SantaClaus.monitor \
-af "sofalizer=sofa=/path/ClubFritz9.sofa" \
-f pulse \
-name "3D Audio" \
"3D Audio"

4. Use pavucontrol to select the output of ffmpeg (named 3D Audio), choose your headphones or speakers

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Here is a problem I encountered specific to version 0.6 of libmysofa