From: tony baylis <>
>
> Thankyou for bringing this site to my attention, I
> have been away so have only just looked at it. I do
> remember reading all I could find at the time c.15
> years ago, when I first started using my disk system,
> about various "Binaural Systems", the sources of which
> I have long forgotten. There was a consensus then
> that there was no discernable difference between the
> systems using disks or dummy heads, something the
> Sonic Studios dispute. I will have to listen to some
> recorded pieces on speakers and see if their claim
> holds up.
>
> Tony Baylis.
I think we need to remember that these various mic setups are defined by
the physical configuration of the setup rather than the sound we can
record from them. If we start defining on sound quality the descriptions
will actually have little helpful meaning as far as making a setup. In
terms of what we call them, two mic setups can produce exactly the same
sound quality in a particular recording instance, but still be called by
different names. In some other situation the sound quality they produce
may differ a lot, but their setup names do not change.
Call it binaural only if it meets the physical criteria for that mic
setup. This has been greatly blurred by many folks who fail to
understand that it is the name of a very specific mic setup, making the
term less and less useful with time. A true binaural mic setup can have
really awful mics in it, or really excellent ones. The sound quality
will vary accordingly, but all will record true binaural, which has
certain characteristics of it's own. In binaural you are carefully
defining the sound path so that there is no overlap in sound path
between the record and playback paths, and the soundpath is that of a
unaided ear, it's as if the entire recording process changed nothing in
the soundpath. At least in concept. I think it get's used a lot as a
name because it's a more catchy name. But it causes great confusion to
do so.
Two mics mounted somewhere on or near a real (or dummy) head is just a
pair of near coincident mics with a baffle between, unless they meet the
very specific requirements of binaural. Depending on how it's done,
there can be considerable variation in the sound even with the same mic
capsules.
The same applies between disks and dummy heads. Some dummy head setups
are binaural setups, but not all are. A generic term is "head spaced
stereo mics" for all these various setups. Then you have to define which
one you are talking about. After all that also includes things like the
SASS setups. Even the SASS setups come in two flavors. One, the original
design, is a pzm setup with the diaphragms facing the barrier in a
calculated gap that modifies frequency response characteristics. The
second, which includes all the modified SASS, is a boundary mic setup,
the diaphragm is even with the boundary facing outward. The sound you
get from these two types is very close, but not quite the same, there
are differences in the soundpaths. I have heard folks calling a SASS a
binaural mic (I've probably even done that at some time), and it's sound
has a lot of the same qualities, but not all. It's incorrect to call a
SASS a binaural mic.
Once we have classified a hardware setup, then we can haggle over it's
sound quality. And how much of that is due to the setup and how much due
to the particular mics used.
I would certainly expect that there is some difference between dummy
head and disk setups as to the particular quality of the sound. Stuff
that's independent of which mics are used. Heck, there is a fair
difference between the two modified SASS I have, and they differ only in
which MKH mic is used, which is the other side of the coin. Enough
difference that I'm still carting both around. Different dummy heads,
and different disks will also give results that are not the same in the
same way.
Of course it all depends on how picky you are and what sort of sound
reproduction system you are using. For someone playing a boombox out in
a noisy street they will hear none of these differences.
Walt
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