Brandenburg Labs unveils Okeanos Pro: 360° headphones with up to 16 virtual speakers for audio producers and researchers

Brandenburg Labs has unveiled the €5,000/$5,871 Okeanos Pro headphones for professional audio engineers, researchers, and others interested in reproducing a professional sound studio, with up to 16 virtual speakers that can be placed anywhere within a 360-degree space.

According to the company, the Okeanos Pro can eliminate the need to build out complete, but expensive sound studios in a variety of multi-channel speaker configurations for sound mastering and production. Instead, the headphones can be quickly switched among virtual formats, from mono to stereo to 9.1.6 surround sound setups, using a web browser on the computer they are attached to, which also provides all the processing for the speaker virtualization.

The headphones supports ultra-low latency AES67, Dante, and Ravenna connections to studio audio networks, with latency as low as 10 ms for binaural audio streams. The Okeanos Pro supports up to 32-bit, 48 kHz audio, with 96 kHz audio planned.

For more precise virtualization of custom sound studios, each physical speaker's DTF (directivity transfer function), or how the speakers reproduce sounds on- and off-center, can be measured and used within the virtualization software, says Brandenburg Labs.

The Brandenburg Labs Okeanos Pro immersive headphones can be purchased by emailing the company, with expected delivery of about a month. For a more affordable option, readers might consider the Steven Slate Audio VSX Immersion One headphones, which can also reproduce virtual environments. Gamers who simply want to target enemies better might try the Sony Inzone H5 headphones with 360 Spatial Sound for Gaming technology.