Binaural Listening? I had a very compelling demo, have you?

[Peter Breuninger]

First, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I was editing a video from CanJam the other day and though I remember the demo well, I was shocked at how shocked I was. What's everyone's experience with binaural? I think Chesky is doing it. Go 1.05 minutes in and then stay tuned for my reaction.

 

[Soundminded]

Binaural recording/playback has been acknowledged to be an inherently fatally flawed concept for at least 50 years. The reason is that when you turn your head, everything you hear turns with it. Real music is not heard that way. Why does this matter? Because your hearing ability, your capacity to judge everything about power, space, distance, direction depends on the sound field being fixed when you turn your head. Attempts to overcome this limitations through various schemes have not only failed but are never likely to succeed. Changes in timing between the arrivial of sounds between one ear and the other as you move your head are detectable in as little as two to five microseconds. Unless a system with a large multiple of binaural tracks can sense the position of your head and respond by changing the sound field that fast or faster, the system won't work. The ability to sense direction is the result of billions of years of evolution in higher animals like man as a primary strategy for survival. They'll have to do a great deal better than binaural sound to fool it.

 

[flez007]

I think I saw an interesting article in HFN&RR latest issue, will find out and post if that´s the case.

 

[Soundminded]

There is a fundamental difference between the sound fields produced by headphones and those produced by other methods. Headphones produce sound fields that are essentially what scientists and engineers call scalars. They have magnitude but no direction. Other sources of sound produce vector fields. These have both magnitude and direction. When you move your head, your brain compares the sound from your two ears from one microsecond to the next. If there is no change, it immidiately comes to the conclusion that the sound must originate inside you head and that's where it remains fixed. You only have to turn your head slightly for this to happen, you probably aren't even aware that you're doing it. That is how you brain actually determines direction. Therefore sound produced by headphones have no direction. OTOH, when comparing the vector fields produced by real musical instruments that reach your ears and that produced from home audio systems that reach your ears, the distortion of the fields by the playback systems are nothing short of horrendous. They have very little in common in the way of directions of arrival, timing, or spectral balance of their various components. It's hardly surprising they don't sound anything alike.

 

[Soundminded]

I think we must be talking past one another, atleast i hope so. I am well aware of how we determine direction and all that,

everyones ear brain system is different in accepting illusions. Binaural is coming out baby!

while speakers or headphone illusion are just that, binaural (keep you head still for a moment!) has much much more in common with the directions of arrival etc than stereo, as relates to ones head, at the event,and how sounds enter each ear via timing clues and intensity clues.

"I think we must be talking past one another"

It does appear that way to me too. When I first read about binaural sound, I thought someone actually solved this problem if you don't mind wearing headphones. Then I got to the end of the article and it pointed out the flaw and the result that the sound appears to be coming from inside your head. I was 14 years old at the time. Sure enough, that has always been my impression too. It's why binaural recorings are so rare compared to stereophonic recordings. Coming to understand how direction and space are judged by the brain I was able to understand why the technical shortcomings of the binaural process preclude it from working as desired.

"everyones ear brain system is different"

I don't agree, in fact I think it's exactly the opposite. While people's sensitivity to sound, their development of their ability to focus on listening to details, and their preferences may vary, the mechanism by which their brains interpret sound IMO is hard wired in. The instinct when hearing a new sound is to identify its direction immediately and turn your head towards it to see what the source is to know if it's a threat or an opportunity. That triggers the fight or flight response. Even a new born infant displays this behavior. As I said previously it is part of our inherited evolution as a primary strategy for survival. I believe it's the same in all higher animals. Certainly dogs and cats react the same way. Bats use it to navigate to avoid collisons in places where there is virtually no light. They listen for the direction of reflections of the sound they know best, their own voices. This is why you always hear them screeching when they fly in a cave.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Binaural recording/playback has been acknowledged to be an inherently fatally flawed concept for at least 50 years. The reason is that when you turn your head, everything you hear turns with it. Real music is not heard that way. Why does this matter? Because your hearing ability, your capacity to judge everything about power, space, distance, direction depends on the sound field being fixed when you turn your head. Attempts to overcome this limitations through various schemes have not only failed but are never likely to succeed. Changes in timing between the arrivial of sounds between one ear and the other as you move your head are detectable in as little as two to five microseconds. Unless a system with a large multiple of binaural tracks can sense the position of your head and respond by changing the sound field that fast or faster, the system won't work. The ability to sense direction is the result of billions of years of evolution in higher animals like man as a primary strategy for survival. They'll have to do a great deal better than binaural sound to fool it.

Stereo is an inherently fatally flawed concept. It is a fixed sound field, that emanates from just two points in a flat plane. Why does this matter? Because your hearing ability, your capacity to judge everything about power, space, distance, direction, depends on a sound field that emanates from all directions. Somewhat successful attempts to overcome this limitation include binaural and multi channel surround, though they bring with them their own flaws.

Choose your illusion. Believe in it and your brain will adapt; its flaws will recede behind it's strengths.

Tim

 

[Peter Breuninger]

I really want to see if anyone else has had a quality demo such as that Westone surround demo and what did they think? I wonder if it would make a good review and if "philes" are really interested in it.

Kal? How about you? Perhaps you wrote about it and I missed it. Or it's on your to do list.

 

[Soundminded]

Stereo is an inherently fatally flawed concept. It is a fixed sound field, that emanates from just two points in a flat plane. Why does this matter? Because your hearing ability, your capacity to judge everything about power, space, distance, direction, depends on a sound field that emanates from all directions. Somewhat successful attempts to overcome this limitation include binaural and multi channel surround, though they bring with them their own flaws.

Choose your illusion. Believe in it and your brain will adapt; its flaws will recede behind it's strengths.

Tim

You are of course correct in pointing out the serious deficiences of the stereophonic sound technology as it has evolved commercially. This does not negate the shortcomings of binaural sound technology which are different but every bit as real. Where tomelex and I disagree is in the significance of those shortcomings or whether or not they exist at all from my reading of his postings. I'm happy he enjoys it but I do not get any of the benefits he claims for it. In fact my reaction to it is the same as so many others who have experimented with it over the decades and I think I understand why.

I will say this for binaural recordings. It is the only system which can reproduce the timbre of musical instruments as they are heard in an audience. This is because the system captures the sound that reaches the listener where the listener sits, not where the sound eminates from. That's a big difference. But the system lacks the ability to capture and reproduce the spatial components that are inherent in hearing live music and these are clearly audibly very different from what comes from headphones.

On the other hand, the sound that comes from loudspeakers is also entirely different from what is heard live in an audience. I've been studying this problem for nearly 40 years and the differences are so enormous and the system so inadequate to overcome that difference that it too is fatally flawed. The problem with the high end audio industry is that it pretends these defects do not exist and merrily goes on to produce endless variants at perpetually escallating price of the same failed technology. From this engineer's point of view, there's an absurdity to it that is nothing short of hillarious. I just wonder why sociologists haven't studied the phenomenon of audiophilia and whether or not the species will ever become extinct.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

You are of course correct in pointing out the serious deficiences of the stereophonic sound technology as it has evolved commercially. This does not negate the shortcomings of binaural sound technology which are different but every bit as real. Where tomelex and I disagree is in the significance of those shortcomings or whether or not they exist at all from my reading of his postings. I'm happy he enjoys it but I do not get any of the benefits he claims for it. In fact my reaction to it is the same as so many others who have experimented with it over the decades and I think I understand why.

I will say this for binaural recordings. It is the only system which can reproduce the timbre of musical instruments as they are heard in an audience. This is because the system captures the sound that reaches the listener where the listener sits, not where the sound eminates from. That's a big difference. But the system lacks the ability to capture and reproduce the spatial components that are inherent in hearing live music and these are clearly audibly very different from what comes from headphones.

On the other hand, the sound that comes from loudspeakers is also entirely different from what is heard live in an audience. I've been studying this problem for nearly 40 years and the differences are so enormous and the system so inadequate to overcome that difference that it too is fatally flawed. The problem with the high end audio industry is that it pretends these defects do not exist and merrily goes on to produce endless variants at perpetually escallating price of the same failed technology. From this engineer's point of view, there's an absurdity to it that is nothing short of hillarious. I just wonder why sociologists haven't studied the phenomenon of audiophilia and whether or not the species will ever become extinct.

1) And the shortcomings of binaural do not negate the shortcomings of stereo.

2) Huge can of psychoacoustic worms here that binaural does not solve, and for those reasons, the best binaural recordings are not taken from a seat in the audience.

3) Nothing to disagree with there. And God knows I'm no engineer.

Tim

 

[Soundminded]

1) And the shortcomings of binaural do not negate the shortcomings of stereo.

2) Huge can of psychoacoustic worms here that binaural does not solve, and for those reasons, the best binaural recordings are not taken from a seat in the audience.

3) Nothing to disagree with there. And God knows I'm no engineer.

Tim

"the best binaural recordings are not taken from a seat in the audience."

There is no best binaural recording as I see it. The system is inherently flawed because the human brain can immediately distinguish between two scalar fields presented one to each ear that remain internally fixed and a vector field that remains externally fixed. The ability to make that discernement is why our variant of the species survived through evolution while those variants that didn't possess that ability died out. They couldn't identify by sound alone where their predators were coming from and escape them in time. In this critical regard, all humans and all other higher animals have brains that work the same way to understand sound.

 

[mep]

Well, what do you know? Stereo and Binaurul both taking a beating in the same thread.

 

[Gregadd]

Stereophonic sound
In 1931, Blumlein developed what he called "binaural sound", now known as stereophonic sound (stereo).[5]
In early 1931, Blumlein and his wife were at a local cinema. The sound reproduction systems of the early "talkies" invariably only had a single set of speakers - which could lead to the somewhat disconcerting effect of the actor being on one side of the screen whilst his voice appeared to come from the other. Blumlein declared to his wife that he had found a way to make the sound follow the actor across the screen.
The genesis of these ideas is uncertain, but he explained them to Isaac Shoenberg in the late summer of 1931. His earliest notes on the subject are dated 25 September 1931, and his patent had the title "Improvements in and relating to Sound-transmission, Sound-recording and Sound-reproducing Systems". The application was dated 14 December 1931, and was accepted on 14 June 1933 as UK patent number 394,325.[6]
Whereas work led by Harvey Fletcher at Bell Labs at about the same time considered sound systems using multiple channels, Blumlein always aimed at a system with just two channels.
The patent covered many ideas in stereo, some of which are used today and some not. Some 70 claims include:
A "shuffling" circuit, which aimed to preserve the directional effect when sound from a spaced pair of microphones was reproduced via a pair of loudspeakers instead of stereo headphones;
The use of a coincident pair of velocity microphones with their axes at right angles to each other, which is still known as a "Blumlein Pair";
Recording two channels in the single groove of a record using the two groove walls at right angles to each other and 45 degrees to the vertical;
A stereo disc-cutting head;
Using hybrid transformers to matrix between left and right signals and sum and difference signals;
Binaural experiments began in early 1933, and the first stereo discs were cut later the same year.
Much of the development work on this system for cinematic use did not reach completion until 1935. In a few short test films (most notably, "Trains At Hayes Station" and, "The Walking & Talking Film"), Blumlein's original intent of having the sound follow the actor was fully realised.\

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Blumlein

 

[Gregadd]

http://www.gizmag.com/historic-recordings-by-inventor-of-stereo-sound-are-digitally-re-engin/9746/

So much of what is be\iing said about stereo has no relation to my experience. I thought we might benofit form some factual reality. It should come as a shock that stereo and binaural are siblings.raternal twins born of the same mind. Fatally flawed since 1935. i don;t think they had life support systems.
The original stereo recordings are available after being refurbished, http://www.gizmag.com/historic-recordings-by-inventor-of-stereo-sound-are-digitally-re-engin/9746/

We should abandon stereo for a system that is sure to be complicated and expensive.At this point is not even functional" It may make for an interesting academic discussion. AFIAC call when sinner is ready.

 

[Gregadd]

Well I don't know how you dissent with the inventor. Also Chesky claims to have the technology for Binaural over speakers.

David Chesky in Steroephile online:

"In the future," says Chesky, "when these filters are made available in consumer products, audiophiles will be able to decode binaural recordings out of two speakers and make them sound truly three-dimensional. I have the technology here, and it's blowing me away. In the meantime, we have recorded our new Binaural+ series with filters that allow you to play them on loudspeakers."

Chesky contends that we're used to listening to standard two-channel recordings and letting our brains fill in whatever sense of space is missing. In the future, he says, you'll be able to listen through a pair of speakers and feel as if you're actually in the original recording venue.

 

[Gregadd]

According to Bleumliein and Chesky yours is a false dichotomy. While binaural may be the pick of the litter stereo is not the a red headed stepchild. He is the father of them both.
I see no reason to bash stereo in favor of binaural. Chesky does not do it.

 

[Soundminded]

Well, what do you know? Stereo and Binaurul both taking a beating in the same thread.

For the purpose of reproducing the sound of live musical performances, both are fatally flawed for different reasons. Binaural because it produces scalar fields instead of vector fields and stereo because the vector fields it produces are only a small part of the field that reaches a listener's ears at a live performance and even that part is badly distorted when you consider the intensity of sound as a function of direction of arrival. These distortions matter because they are easily audible unless you put your head in one tightly fixed position and don't move it even by turning it so much as a fraction of an inch. So if you get to just the right spot and put your head in a vice, under certain conditions....it will seem to work. Otherwise....go back to the drawing board or live with the fact that they can't be made to work as they are currently realized. That's my analysis of them.

 

[Gregadd]

Perhaps you should look up term fatally flawed.

 

[Soundminded]

Perhaps you should look up term fatally flawed.

I have.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091015164011AAHwde1

"A fatal flaw is a key element in the downfall of a person or plan. "

In this case it is an inherent limitation of a concept that prevents it from achieving its intended goal. I have explained exactly how and why.

My solution; find a better plan. Audiophile solution; change the goal.

 

[Gregadd]

Exactly . What was Blumhiems' intended goal ? Did listen to the early recordings or read his patent? The fact is jsut because stereo is not perfect or all things to all people. Does not mean it is fatally flawed. Others who set their own idea of his goals and then point out it does not accomplish it.

Can stereo create a symphony hall in your living room? Was that his intended goal?

 

[Gregadd]

No matter what system you use you are not able to put that in your living room. It's not big enough. You are not going to be able to put it inside your head either . The only way you can accomplish it is with tricks and illusions.