On 23 May, 2012, at 6:56 PM, Avocet wrote:
> In this interesting discussion we seem to have missed out binaural and
> dummy head recording which can only be listened to properly on
> headphones. With loudspeakers you can't get the exact phase and timing
> relationships that you can with headphones. It is "levels stereo" or
> "pan pot" stereo which is very different on headphones and "time
> difference stereo" which becomes uncertain on loudspeakers.
I was into binaural recording when I first joined micbuilders and
nature recordists.
I was never satisified with headphone listening experience even with
HD-600s and
Etymotic ET-4S (didn't spring for 4Bs), because in spite of good
spatial imaging,
it always sounded to me like the sound stage was inside my head, not
out in front.
There are two techniques listening to binaural recordings with loud
speakers that
I've heard and liked better. One is called a stereo dipole and
involves putting the
speakers side-by-side with a baffle between them, and listening with
your nose against
the far side of the baffle. The other is using a stereo de-
correlation processor
as developed by Duane Cooper and Jerry Bauck. Duane used to live
across the street
from me -- I never got to play with any of their circuits, but I've
heard de-correlated
demo recordings. Small sweet spot at the equilateral vertex, but for
both techniques
the sound seems to come from in front of me (because it does) and the
binaural cues
are there.
PS: I mix live music weekly for broadcast using the ET-4s. I've done
it for over
a decade, and I still can't do anywhere near as well as post-processing.
-- Mike
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