Yes, I built all these products.
The tools have a shared C++ core library and then I did the DAW integrations and platform-specific GUIs with JUCE, which is a cross platform C++ toolkit popular with audio people.
The original issue that I solved was simply mixing a large number of inputs down to something like 22.2 cinema surround based on mathematical formulas. Instead of the user dialing in 24 knobs, they type in XYZ coordinates and the math decides those 24 knobs for you.
Later versions then added animation, control surfaces, the headphone surround sound, and MPEG-H export for live TV.
All the initial release versions were 1 programmer x 3 years. By now, I've moved on and nowadays they have a small team to do maintenance, support, upgrades, etc.
When you say you can input XYZ coordinates - I couldn't help but wonder, is this sort of thing ever hooked up to motion tracking?
It was a tremendous pain to get installed, and the documentation on your site is insufficient (I had to open the driver installer app inside the main app bundle manually, in the terminal to see the output with the error message, then google the error message to find out where the System Preferences request was), but I'm really excited to hear the fullness of the sound again!
Initial notes: Idle CPU while playing through SSC is about 1-2% less than without, and the "Energy Impact" of SSC is ~6.7 compared to Spotify's ~3.0. I don't think I'd call it particularly "light", but I love the sound! I'm rocking Reykjavik, but New York also sounds good in my headphones.
Then, like a year later, it became clear that I would need a full rewrite to make things work again because there was no way Apple would allow me to keep using the old APIs. I took a critical look at the sales numbers (like $6k over 3 years for the Hajo's Headphone Enhancer product) and decided that writing an Apple-only kernel driver from scratch would not be financially viable.
Since I was also the person that built the original Windows-only Spatial Sound Card app, I offered the burning Mac app ruins to them ;) But actually merging both products was done by my successors.
My bad, sorry if you got kicked, but please send me an email if want in.
(I am the one who created the server and only admin. I do not have enough bandwidth to manage an open server.)
Is the Spatial Sound Card L a bit like a software version of the Sound Blaster 16bit cards? Does it affect performance much on Mac and PC?
I played the original Thief using a Sound Blaster card and still remember the audio giving me goosebumps!
A shared friend introduced me to someone who claimed to be a struggling Hollywood genius. We were all drinking at some university party. He told us about all the cool shit he would do if only technology wasn't so bad. So I built a tool to solve his issues. To my surprise, he used it on the Expendables 3 blurays. Later, the audio crew for George Lukas' Red Tails praised the tool in an interview. Hollywood guy got grammy nominated. I got paid first for development and then licensing fees. But I mostly like it not for the financials, but because this way my software made it onto a few magazine covers :) I collected all of them.