One window, one button
Look at your screen, press Set Forward, and mix. The main window shows where your head is pointing, whether the sensors are running, and where the data is going. Nothing else, because nothing else is needed while you work.
Every setting lives behind a single Settings button. It is there when you set the plugin up and out of the way when you do not.
- Live plan view of your head orientation
- Yaw, pitch and roll as precise numeric readouts
- Status lamps for tracker, camera and output
- Recentre at any time with one click
Sensor fusion
Two sensors that fail
in opposite ways
This is why combining them is worth more than using either on its own.
The head tracker
Provides the motion
Fast and smooth at up to 120 Hz, with almost no noise. But nothing inside it defines where forward is, so its yaw slowly drifts away over the course of a session.
The webcam
Provides the reference
Slower and a little noisy, but absolute. It measures your head against the screen, and that measurement is just as true after an hour as it was at the start.
Together
Fast and accurate
The camera never moves the output directly. It only steers a slow correction to the tracker. So the result reacts at tracker speed while staying aligned at camera accuracy.
Most head trackers use a built in compass as their absolute reference. In a studio full of monitor magnets, steel racks and power supplies, that compass is usually the least trustworthy sensor in the room. A camera cannot be fooled by steel, which is why it does the job better.
Output
Straight into
your renderer
Head movement arrives as OSC, so the binaural image stays locked to the room while you turn your head.
- Protocol
- OSC over UDP
- Update rate
- Up to 100 Hz, adjustable
- Targets
- As many as you like, at once
- Formats
- Yaw pitch roll, quaternion, separate axes
- Also sends
- MIDI CC, 7 or 14 bit
- Automation
- Head X and Head Y as host parameters
Adjustable where it matters
Every receiver in spatial audio has its own idea of address, unit and sign convention. So nothing is compiled in. Address, port, degrees or radians, rate and the direction of every axis can be corrected in place.
- Sensor fusion timing, so you decide how firmly the camera corrects
- Per axis inversion for both sensors and every target
- MIDI channel, controller numbers and resolution
- Automation range, from a small head turn to a full look around
Requirements
What you need
Hardware
A USB MIDI head tracker, a webcam, or both. With both connected you get the best result. With only one, the plugin keeps working on that one alone.
Software
macOS 12 or newer. Runs as a standalone app next to your renderer, or as VST3 and AU inside your DAW when you want head movement recorded as automation.
Compatible with spatial audio renderers that accept head tracking over OSC, including the Dolby Atmos Renderer.
Get it
Get the
Head Tracker
20 € One-time payment · Free updates · via Patreon
Available through Patreon. You get the standalone app plus the VST3 and AU versions, and every update that follows.