Hi Curt--
Lang Elliot has written elegantly on binaural-headphone issues-
Bernie cites Lang's key argument in his book.
What you describe makes perfect sense to me: a distant, freestanding
speaker produces a more localized image (point of origin in space)
than headphones. Cardioid polar patterns cover a smaller field than
omnis. Matching speaker and micing separations can make these polar
pattern spacing differences more or less apparent.
I've always felt there's a micing/speaker separation trade-off:
"stereo" as tending towards a comparison of two fields and "stereo"
tending towards a unified field where sounders in the middle can be
more predictably localized. Asking the ears/brain to compare two
field with more difference between them can feel fuller and more
engaging. ORTF at 13" captures a lot more timing and tonal difference
than omnis at 6". Low Hz presence (125Hz-700Hz) can shift from
speaker to speaker like waves bouncing and interacting in the field
but its hard to sense this spatial quality, if at all, with
headphones. I can walk around and function pretty normally in space
listening only through binaural headphones where monitoring/moving
around with a 13" card ORTF rig takes a lot more mental adjusting.
Rob D.
At 2:11 PM -0600 3/14/06, Curt Olson wrote:
>So I'm casually reviewing some ambient field recordings today and it
>dawns on me: Recordings that I've made using cardiods (in my case,
>usually some ORTF variation) seem to translate better to my
>loudspeakers than recordings I've made with omnis. ("Better" as in
>richer, deeper, more spacious, more interesting.) The converse also
>seems to be true: Recordings that I've made with omnis (in my case,
>usually involving a small boundary and head-like spacing) seem to
>translate better to headphones than those I've made with cardioids.
>
>Am I late in understanding something extraordinarily basic here? Could
>my playback systems be deceiving me? Have I totally lost my judgment?
>
>Thoughts on this, anyone?
>
>Curt Olson
>
>
>
>"Microphones are not ears,
>Loudspeakers are not birds,
>A listening room is not nature."
>Klas Strandberg
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
--
Rob Danielson
Film Department
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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