I discovered stereo recently (in the last month) and it struck me as odd that all music files don't have stereo. I mean, once you hear it, there's no going back - it's just too good!

I wanted to figure out a way to make stereo better (so that it doesn't sound like sound jumping between ears), so I made a program (it was not simple, I will tell you that much!) which would rotate a sound around your head with stereo using HRTF, which worked really well.

I finally felt like stereo could be heard with simple, lossy files which I downloaded with yt-dlp. I didn't need the fancy speakers and vinyls (which audiophiles swear by). I just need some opus files and some C :)

This program is an extended version of that project, where it uses htdemucs to derive all instrument tracks from an audio file, then places sounds in different locations around the room, and uses HRTF to make it seem more immersive. And there's also some reverb stuff to make it sound like sound can also bounce off walls, but that's less refined. I've tried it on some songs with this program and I heard multiple keyboard lines from different directions that I'd been completely unaware of when listening to it without the program.

It does take 1.66 times the length of the actual file for the AI to break the file down plus 3 secs for adding the HRTF and stereo. That means a 4 minute song takes 243ish secs to just make an audio file that you can listen to with stereo. Though I am using CPU instead of GPU so on CPU it should be about 5-7 times faster.