Binaural Recording of Concertina

[Richard Mellish]

15 hours ago, Łukasz Martynowicz said:

 

I think the following analogy is a good one:
- monophonic recording lets you look into the room from across the street - you see a flat image behind a window glass

- stereophonic recording places you just outside the window, so you can get a better look, with some limited perspective, but you are still behind the glass
- surround systems put you on a chair inside the room, but you can only look around a bit

- binaural recording let you move around the room freely and closely examine everything, but at the same time exaggerates everything in a kind of hangover intensity

All fair enough, but I was commenting on the desirability or otherwise for the specific case of a concertina with some notes coming out of one end and other notes out of the other end.

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

One way to solve the issue is to turn your two stereo speakers facing one left . And other one right ( outward facing)! Then it's sound will project out in the same general direction as on the instruments.. but generally with a tiny amount of audio reverb added even in mono, you can trick the ears into perceiving an illusion of depth quite easily.🌝 

[DaveRo]

18 hours ago, Łukasz Martynowicz said:

...binaural recording let you move around the room freely

Unless I misunderstand binaural recording, the 'dummy head' used for the recording is in a fixed position. The listener will only hear the effect of moving around if the head moved around. Which would be disconcerting if the listener is sitting still.

 

The point, surely, of binaural recording is fidelity of the sound heard by a (single) member of the audience. Whether a solo concertina should be recorded 'faithfully' - or whether it would sound 'better' recorded in mono is quite another question. As well as the sound coming out of both ends, on my duet the left is much louder.

 

(And it occurs to me that an active sound-cancelling speaker might be an alternative to a baffle to quieten the accompaniment from the point of view - or hearing - of me, the player. I expect it's been tried.)

 

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by DaveRo

[Łukasz Martynowicz]

3 hours ago, DaveRo said:

Unless I misunderstand binaural recording, the 'dummy head' used for the recording is in a fixed position. The listener will only hear the effect of moving around if the head moved around. Which would be disconcerting if the listener is sitting still.

 

The point, surely, of binaural recording is fidelity of the sound heard by a (single) member of the audience. Whether a solo concertina should be recorded 'faithfully' - or whether it would sound 'better' recorded in mono is quite another question. As well as the sound coming out of both ends, on my duet the left is much louder.

 

(And it occurs to me that an active sound-cancelling speaker might be an alternative to a baffle to quieten the accompaniment from the point of view - or hearing - of me, the player. I expect it's been tried.)

 

 

This was just an analogy trying to illustrate the level of sound scene detail achievable by binaural recording when compared to other methods. The main difference between binaural and stereo/dolby surround is that stereo/dolby try to reproduce the location of the sound source, while binaural recording tries to achieve „holographic” recording fidelity of phase shifts and volume differences at listener position so that our hearing sense can deconstruct directions faithfully. And it works. You hear exactly where the sound is coming from. If the recording is done in real environment, you also hear how exactly the sound bounces from the environment, which is the quality that all other methods lack (you only hear that it bounces, not how it bounces), giving you 3D space rendering that is comparable to „looking around the corner”, since hearing is not a synthesis of a series of 2D slices, like sight is, but an „everything at once” sense, that is then computationally deconstructed.

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

At the end of the day, the best way to hear realistic sound, with believable depth .. is to listen to a live performance, in a real setting.

And so support those living performers as they give expression to their gifts in music.

[Clive Thorne]

My son's band did a binaural recording for a video, but in that case it was done so that as the camera man moved about and changed his shot the sound balance changed (basically the camera man had microphones on his head.

 

It was very interesting, and very much as if you were there moving around yourself, but of course does not always represent the balanced sound that a listener at the back of the room might hear.So interesting, but NOT  really suitable for a commercial release.

 

Edited to add the capitalised NOT above.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Clive Thorne

[David Barnert]

10 hours ago, Łukasz Martynowicz said:

... binaural recording tries to achieve „holographic” recording fidelity of phase shifts and volume differences at listener position so that our hearing sense can deconstruct directions faithfully. And it works. You hear exactly where the sound is coming from.

 

I understand that it doesn’t work nearly as well if the dummy head doesn’t have a nose (but the nose doesn’t have to have a sense of smell 😉).

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

Years ago, I went  to what they call "I -Max".. cinema ( in Bradford)... With its huge massive screen,(well  over 45 ft. Screen size).. and the soundtrack to the special 'giant: cinema screen, came from different parts of the theatre. One instrument might emerge from one side, and then others from different areas of the room space. Sound was highlighted, individually, from isolated parts of the place. It was more depth than stereo sound, and very impressive , at least to me. (Over 30 years ago!)..

Edited January 30, 2023 by SIMON GABRIELOW

[seanc]

Just listened.. found it interesting on one hand. But overall, disjointed and annoying.

 

kind of reminds me of those late 60s Beatles and others records. Where many times they were just too focused on “hey we got STEREO! Look what we can do!”

 

 

[David Barnert]

1 hour ago, seanc said:

kind of reminds me of those late 60s Beatles and others records. Where many times they were just too focused on “hey we got STEREO! Look what we can do!”

 

Oh, yes! The good old days.

 

Simon in one channel, Garfunkel in the other.

Peter in one channel, Gordon in the other.

Don in one channel, Phil in the other.

 

And who remembers Quadraphonic Sound? When I was in college in the 1970s, the two Boston classical music stations (WGBH and WCRB) cooperated to broadcast a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert using their combined four stereo channels (two each). I had a stereo radio and my roommate had a mono, so we tuned them to the two different stations and I guess we listened in tribuphonic sound.