Re: in ear MICRO-phones, binaural audio (was: toys for non-musicians)

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 3:19 PM, michael noble<looplog@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering if you've experienced the "hole in the middle" problem 
>when
> playing binaural recordings back through standard stereo speakers? Maybe 
>I
> have an especially thick skull or something, but I can definitely notice 
>a
> lack of spatial dynamics in the center of the stereo field.
>
> -michael


That's a good question, but I'm not sure I am the right person to
answer it since I don't work with binaural recordings. However, I have
done some brief test mixing for binaural listening. This means working
with ordinary stereo or mono recordings and applying electronic
manipulation that simulates how timing and phase response behave in
binaural audio recordings. Given no human or wooden head is exactly
similar there is already a huge error margin in acoustic binaural
recording so I can't see that digital simulation algorithms should not
be as good as binaural acoustic recordings. When working with this
method I have definitely experienced a hole-in-the-middle when
listening over speakers. Finding a fix for that issue is next on my
agenda in learning to produce music for headphones listening. Probably
the hole can be fixed by creating a mono bus of the sound and mix it
in, but I have not done any testing yet. Got a full schedule here for
another week into the future.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com