The Binaural Source

See the overview from the old home page (click here to view it)

HEADPHONE BINAURAL:

• provides virtual audio - all around you!
• requires no special equipment - just your stereo headphones
• you can experience it anywhere - in privacy or with someone
• loudspeaker-compatible.. also gives you superb surround sound via surround decoder

Click here to send feedback or ask questions using a popup form.

A Q and A plus a link from recent emails:

 

Name of sender: Evil Joe

I was wondering if the binaural effect would be the same if I had a surround
sound speaker system. Like two front speakers, two rear speakers, and a
subwoofer/center speaker. Thanks.

Hi EJ:

Most modern binaural recordings sound excellent in plain stereo, and will probably sound very good on a surround system, just as good stereo does.

But it will not be surround sound, neither will it sound the same as Binaural played back with headphones, or with just two "crosstalk-cancelled" stereo loudspeakers.

Binaural recordings played back through good headphones can also reproduce the up and down dimension: above and below as well as around you in a horizontal circle, and reproduce the effects of closeness or distance much better than a 5.1 surround speaker setup can.

Steve
The Binaural Source

 

 

and to illuminate, enjoy this binaural multimedia art from Jeff Anderson:

 

http://digdagga.com/2009/01/ghost.html

The point of this post to a nicely written article on finding space without human sounds and happens to feature a binaural recording artist, Gordon Hempton. There have been other posts highlighting Mr. Hempton's work and recordings, but the binaural connection here is overshadowed by a focus on what we listen to rather than the specific technique used to preserve the soundscape.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3627

We've followed  Jeffrey Anderson's posts on his blog previously. Check out this well done, as usual, post:

Build Your Own Binaural Dummy-Head!

Long
time no post! That's because I've been busy with a lot of binaural
goodies. I will soon have a new music video which has taken me more
time to plan out than actually create...

The reason for this
post, however, is to let y'all know about a tutorial I just posted on
building your own binaural dummy-head! Yep, I show you the easiest and
cheapest way I know to get started with a good looking, and sounding
head. Take a look for yourself:

Dummy-Head Tutorial

I hope you have fun with it and please, please let me know if you find anything that I can improve on.

Manipulating perceived position of sound

This is a really interesting Arduino project that involves manipulating
stereo sound so it appears to move in a virtual 3-dimensional space.
There is a lot of interesting information in the forum and the code can be found here.

The effect is so sharp, you can tell the difference between
center, ten degrees left of center and ten degrees right of center. I
was so surprised, I thought it might be due to wishful thinking, so I
turned off the stereo volume adjustments... even with just the delay
and no change in the volume between left and right, you can hear the
sound move from side to side. What's even weirder is that if you listen
to just one side, the sound stays the same.

Read more about Manipulating perceived position of sound

There are stories within stories, even in this Radio Lab program on "Emergence" which made my head turn more than once to see the source of the sounds. Of course, then the illusion evaporated and I refocus on the message.

Download the MP3 of the Radio Lab program "Emergence" by clicking on this line

So what do we make of recorded sound in our lives? Does the affect alter our paths or is the act of listening everything?

...and what does that say about background use in movies and the rare television use? Can you see the story?

This message was sent from:
Binaural.com Feedback
------------------------------------------------------------
Name of sender: Richard Greenspan
Email of sender: ricgreen1 at his hotmail.com address
------------------------- COMMENTS -------------------------

Just wanted to let you know about my binaural audio blog. The goal of this blog is to let people experience different locations and events through sound. You can check it out here:

www.throughmyears.com

Let me know what you think.

A previous entry focused on sounds produced by the ears as directed by the brain. The Radio Lab program, which itself appears to use binaural recordings (they would neither confirm or deny), featured as a link in this item, further details the phenomena of sounds produced by the brain.

Whether you have auditory hallucinations, stuck tunes, or receive broadcasts from your internal radio station, this is familar conversational fodder. Are these things like the visuals from dreams - does experience deepen the color, intensity, localization, and resulting cues, or something else?

Hope you enjoy the program:

http://audio.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast042208.mp3

Name of sender: Jeffrey Anderson

Email of sender: jeffmo77 is at gmail.com

------------------------- COMMENTS -------------------------



Rich, I contacted you a while ago about a binaural video I made called "Revolt". Thank you for posting about it. I got several hits from the right people (binaural people), and the feedback was great! Well, I've recently upgraded the mics and camera I'm using and I created another more elaborate video. I'm also starting up a blog to publish my works in a more elegant way. The blog is located at http://digdagga.com


Setup FYI, I'm using the same dummy head and the same silicon ear casts as before. But this time I'm using the Core-Sound binaural set with the mics mounted externally (just inside the ear) and directed towards the ear canal. This seems to have done well to eliminate as much direct sound wave impact on the mic elements as possible. I'm letting the shape of the outer ear do most of the work.

Hugo Zuccarelli laments the negative reaction to his reporting of facts about the ear and also shows outstanding demonstrations of holophonically created spatial accoustics played through speakers in this 1992 video.

In Beyond the Zonules of Zinn, (from the book
jacket) "David Bainbridge combines on otherworldly journey through the
central nervous system with an accessible and entertaining account of
how the brain's anatomy has often mislead anatomists about its
function."


In Chapter 8, "The Little Fish Who Never Grew Up,
The origins of the ear", a controversial contention of Hugo Zuccerelli,
that sound is produced by the ear, generally dismissed as "silly", is
expanded in the excerpt.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/unearthed-archives-hugo-zuccarelli-part-2/1967920814


"The mammalian ear has evolved two even more useful innovations that improved its ability to serve as a microphone. The first is that it has become on active system - the brain not only receives sensory information from the cochlea, but it is also constantly modifying the cochleas's responses to sound. We now think that only a quarter of all the hair cells in your cochlea are sensory - the other three quarters are being constantly driven to vibrate by motor impulses from the brain. By wiggling selected regions of the cochlear membranes, these active hair cells can suppress spurious oscillations that reduce the ear's ability to discriminate tones - they reduce the "blur" in the sound signal. This allows us to determine pitch much more precisely, and possibly helps us distinguish among several sounds all heard at the same time. This active control of the cochlea is why Ramon y Cajal did not use the ear to show the direction that impulses pass through neurons - most of the nerve connection to the ear are motor, not sensory, with dendrites pointing to the brain and axons pointing to the sense organ. It also explains one of the weirdest phenomena in neurology: otoaccoustic emissions. Because most of the hair cells are forcing the cochlear membranes to vibrate, the cochlea actually produces sounds, and sometimes these sounds are audible to an outside listener. For example, pediatricians have reported tones being emitted from their patients' ears. This is not the same thing as tinnitus, or "ringing in the ears",in which you yourself hear the tones - the otoaccoustic emissions are genuine sounds coming out from normal ears."

An open source project enabling microcontroller synthesized binaural beats synchronized with LED lights continues to hold my attention. The Make Magazine solder and software instructions along with kit parts helped me to build several versions of the device. I'd never stuck with listening to recorded binaural beats before but the brush fires this particular project triggered finally moved me to spend the $20 to order the basic kit that needed to be modified using the helpful instructions freely available.

The web community enthusiasm and thrill of the build fueled the sprint to my first use; the hot glue had hardly cooled. The visual effects got my attention. Previously unimaged colors and patterns came from my own brain. Clearly I'm visually oriented and I didn't focus my attention exclusively on the audio generated until about two weeks of daily use of the device. It generated the same "brain-wave states" but without the visual effects that set the hook and seem more powerfully entraining.

You can browse through the reference links and continue reading about this sound and light machine, which is sometimes called a mind machine, and visit some of the sites I found most helpful. I've included a recording of the sound portion of the standard program that comes with the initial firmware installation.

Our trip to the Dry Tortugas wasn't quite as we planned, but then it didn't go all that well there throughout history either. We had trouble with the surf trying to scuba the reef and it knocked out the fine acoustics of the open air archways and harmed the harmonica recording. Dale Hill had stood still near a rampart to perform the piece that raised hairs as it echoed up a stairway during the formal tour. A professional could have gotten it right and caught the moment. The voices spontaneously bursting into song do add a great impression of the space.

DaleHillatDryTortugas.mp3

 

Many chapters still to go for me, but so far it is an informative, equasion-free examination of the determinators of realistic listening. You can get to the text of the book at Mr. Glasgal's site:

Ambiophonics.org

Ambiophonics,
2nd Edition

Replacing Stereophonics to Achieve
Concert-Hall Realism

By Ralph Glasgal

Chapter 3

Understanding Stereophonic Sound Fields

Human hearing using two ears is called
binaural and was developed by evolution. Binaural sound is what most of us listen to all
the time. Audiophiles sometimes think of binaural sound as a recording made with a dummy
head and played back through earphones. This is a poor imitation of the real thing and is
not what we will mean when we refer to the binaural hearing mechanism in this book.

Name of sender: Bernard Rousseau
Email of sender: bprousseau has a hotmail address
------------------------- COMMENTS -------------------------

I know it has been explained with great detail in many papers, but maybe I can humbly add my 2-cents worth. From personal experience, the most important factors for true binaural recordings are:

1. The use of OMNI-Directional Condenser microphones
2. The spacing between the mikes (8 inches, more?) and most important,
3. Proper phasing of the L & R signals.

When I experimented with the Hafler "rear" channel system in the 1970s, I learned to reverse the phase of an encoded "rear" channel mixed with the L-R music channels. When the phasing is wrong, the binaural effect is destroyed. The panorama of acoustical musical instruments is gone, headphones or speakers (in the sweet spot). BR Dec-07

Bernard Rousseau is a collector of country and bluegrass music, as well as a sound engineer who had a recording studio in Kingston, Tennessee, ca. 1960-85. Rousseau recorded live performances of musicians at bluegrass and country music festivals, fiddlers’ conventions, and music clubs and lounges. He welcomes your questions. You can find details of the archived collection at East Tennessee State University by following the link:

http://www.etsu.edu/cass/Archives/Collections/afindaid/a469.htm

If you haven't had the virtual haircut, get it. Terrific production! (Warning: Bag effect can take your breath away.)

Enjoy your trip to the barbershop:

http://www.andy-coates.com/blog/2007/05/06/have-a-virtual-haircut/

and find out more here:

http://www.andy-coates.com/blog/2007/05/18/virtual-haircut-binaural-recording-how-it-was-done/