Field manual
One track, one path around your head, one file out. This page covers every control onthe converter, in the order you meet it on screen. Everything runs on your own machine — nothing is uploaded.
Press Choose an audio file…. MP3, WAV, FLAC or M4A, decoded here in this browser.
Tap a starting shape, then Preview with headphones on. Drag the points until it moves the way you want.
Export WAV renders offline — faster than real time, and lossless.
Orientation
Two columns. Settings stack down the left; the sphere and everything you do by hand fill the right. On a narrow screen the sphere drops below the settings.
Left column — top
Opens your file picker. MP3, WAV, FLAC and M4A all decode; anything your browser can play will work. Once loaded, the line beneath shows the length and a tempo estimate.
Nothing is uploaded. The file is decoded in this browser and never leaves the machine, which is also why there is no library — close the tab and it is forgotten.
A tempo guess, made on load. It is what Sync to beat locks the lap length to. Like all tempo detection it sometimes lands an octave out, which the ½× and 2× buttons exist to fix.
A warning appears past about twelve minutes, with an estimate of the memory the export will need — roughly 42 MB per minute, because the mono source, the stereo render and the WAV bytes all exist at the same moment.
Phones are stricter than that number suggests. A shorter edit is the reliable path.
Why it goes mono first
Your track is downmixed before it is placed. A stereo source already carries conflicting directional cues, and layering a head-related transfer function on top muddies both. One mono source at one point in space is what makes the position readable — the trade is that the original stereo width does not survive.
Left column — middle
Seven ready-made paths. They are starting points, not settings: tap one and it loads into the editor, where every point is yours to move. The moment you edit, the preset stops being highlighted — nothing owns the path but you.
Eight points on an even circle at arm’s length. The plain one, and the right starting point for most tracks.
Two turns winding from close to very far, pausing briefly each time it crosses north, east, south or west.
Four points, a beat of stillness at each. Reads as four distinct places rather than as movement.
Seven random points it darts between and rests on. Re-rolled every time you tap it, so tap again for a different one.
In from the front, straight through your head, out the back, then wide left and right.
The same idea at full scale — in from the outer ring, through you, and back out.
An orbit whose height undulates between overhead and below. The one preset that uses elevation.
A path file is YAML or JSON: a name, a lap length, and a list of waypoints. Load one and its paths join the list beneath the built-ins.
The easiest way to make one is Save path — draw what you want, save the file, then edit the numbers by hand.
Left column — bottom
How fast the sound travels the path, and how hard it leans into the movement.
Seconds for one full circuit. Short laps read as an effect, long ones as a place the sound happens to be. Around eight seconds is where an orbit stops calling attention to itself.
This is travel time only. Waypoint holds are added on top, which is why the note underneath reports a longer real lap once your path has pauses in it.
Appears once a tempo has been detected. Locks the lap to a musical length instead of a number of seconds, so the movement lands with the track rather than drifting against it. The Lap slider greys out while this is on.
Four is one bar of common time, eight is two bars, sixteen is four. High values are the musical way to get a slow orbit.
Halves or doubles the detected tempo. Detection routinely lands an octave out — if the movement feels exactly twice or half as fast as the track, this is the fix.
Pitch shift as the sound moves toward and away from you. It is the cue that makes a fly-by feel like it has momentum, rather than like volume automation.
Subtle is convincing. High settings smear anything with a strong melody, because the whole track is being bent — this is one dial where the default is usually right.
Right — the sphere
A top-down view with you in the middle, facing up. Each numbered dot is a waypoint; the drawn line is the smoothed path the sound actually follows between them, and the moving cursor is where it is right now.
Drag empty space to audition
While your finger is down on empty canvas, the sound parks at that exact spot instead of following the path. It is the fastest way to find out what “behind and slightly left” actually sounds like on your own ears, before you commit a point to it.
Every gesture has a slider
Scroll, shift-scroll and right-click are shortcuts, not the only route. Tap a point and the same controls appear as sliders, so touch and pointer-only users lose nothing.
Right — tap any point
Dragging a point sets its angle. Everything else about it lives in the panel that opens beside it.
How far away. 0 is inside your head, 1 is arm’s length, 2.5 is the outer ring.
Below you, through level, to straight overhead. Vertical cues are weaker than horizontal ones in any HRTF — expect a hint, not a full move.
How long the sound waits here before moving on. This is what turns a circuit into a rhythm.
Pace of the leg leaving this point. Below 1 it dawdles, above 1 it darts.
Level trim at this point, for stressing an arrival or ducking a pass behind you.
Removes this point. The path re-smooths through whatever is left.
Two points is the minimum for movement. With one, the sound simply sits there — which is a legitimate thing to want.
Holds are the interesting control
An even orbit is the first thing everyone makes and the least interesting result. Give three points a hold and one a fast travel and the same circle becomes a phrase — three places the sound sits, and one moment where it bolts between them.
Right — under the sphere
Removes the point you added last. It undoes additions only, not drags or slider moves.
Empties the sphere so you can draw from nothing. Tapping a starting shape gets you back.
Downloads the current path as 8d-path.yaml — readable, hand-editable, and loadable again from Starting shapes. This is how a path outlives the browser it was drawn in.
Packs the whole setup — waypoints, lap, Doppler, beat settings — into a URL and copies it. Send it on and the other person opens your exact path.
The audio is not in the link, only the movement. Opening a shared link overrides whatever that browser had saved, so what you send is what they see.
Your path is saved automatically
Every edit is written to this browser a moment later and restored on your next visit. You do not need to save to keep working — Save path is for sharing, and for keeping more than one.
Right — bottom
Plays the track through the path in real time, with the cursor tracking on the sphere. Every control stays live while it runs — move a point mid-preview and you hear the change immediately.
Renders the whole track offline and downloads it as<track> — 8D.wav. Lossless, at the file’s own sample rate.
Offline means as fast as your processor manages rather than as long as the track — a six-minute song does not cost six minutes. The preview stops first, deliberately: rendering is CPU-hungry, and a stuttering preview underneath it reads as the export having gone wrong.
Wear headphones
Everything here is binaural. Over speakers both ears hear both channels, the ear cues cancel, and what is left is ordinary auto-panning. On headphones the sound genuinely passes behind you.
Coming from the drum machine
The drum machine’s Send to 8D → button renders your loop and hands it straight to this page — it arrives already loaded, named Drum loop, with a tempo already detected. Put it on an orbit, sync the lap to the beat, and the whole groove circles the listener.
Worth knowing
Things that will surprise you if nobody says them first.
Headphones are not optional. The effect is binaural — it works by recreating the timing and tonal differences between your two ears. Over speakers both ears hear both channels and most of it collapses into ordinary panning.
Your track is summed to mono first. A stereo source already carries its own directional cues, and layering HRTF over them leaves the two fighting. One mono source at one point in space is what makes the position readable. The original stereo width does not survive, by design.
Long tracks can exhaust the tab. The mono source, the stereo render and the WAV bytes all exist at once — roughly 42 MB per minute of audio. Past about twelve minutes the page warns you; on a phone, assume less. If a render fails, that is almost always why.
A shared link carries the path, not the music. Copy link encodes the waypoints, lap, Doppler and beat settings into the URL. Whoever opens it loads their own track into your path.
Elevation is the weak axis. Height runs −40° to +90°, but no HRTF places vertical as convincingly as horizontal. Use it as seasoning, not as the main move.
Nothing is uploaded, ever. The file is decoded and rendered inside your browser through an OfflineAudioContext. That is also why export beats real time — there is no round trip to wait for.