This is a BBC radio drama produced with flash and recorded by using binaural technique. Sounds pretty good, very realistic. Check it out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/darkhouse/play2.shtml

Not bad at all.

Binaural is a spectacular technique (and a very old one that dates from the early 1950s, and pre-dates "stereo") that can do for audio what 3D does for photography. Frankly, I am amazed that the technique is not used much more frequently since there is such popularity of headphones/earphones with mp3 players and iPods. Music of all types (rock included) could incoprorate some really wild effects using binaural recording that would sound great.

There is vast un-tapped artistic potential here that should be explored. Can you imagine what it would sound like to record with a binaural dummy head hanging above a drum kit, or with vocalists singing around it?

I'm not holding my breath though....

Yes binaural is very old, but it sounds spacious; I don’t understand why not too many stereo recordings using this technique. I have found binaural technique combined with 3D image widening process (such as a imager) could make regular stereo sounds massive with excellent separation, yet by using only two speakers. If outlaw can implant a quality imager chip into the 950 that enable user to alter the stereo sound field with 3D repositioning it would become very a powerful processor. It is the same principle used in TV sets and small portable stereos to expand the sound beyond the loudspeakers so that it sounds like they are farther apart than they really are. With this, combined with full range LCR in stereo, everything sounds so clear (music, movie); I almost feel I don’t need surround channels anymore. This dark house production has also incorporated 3D imager process to make the sound appears to be larger, which sounds really excellent.

But watch out, some 3D chips have side effects. 3D processes such as Spatializer, SRS, and QSound; utilize "generic ear response" filter functions, which often cause a weak center with echo on some recordings. They also require a centered, forward-facing listening position, and often take on an artificial-process character. The dynamic, spectral, and temporal modifications not only can be quite expensive, but also often cause "mucked up" sound. However, they sound extremely good with recordings panned hard right and left (such as, classical, jazz, instrumental with nothing in the center), but if there’s any component mixed in the center with reverb (such as, lead vocal, drum bass); it will make them sounds weak, distant and echo. This is what I have discovered so far.

Soundhound, if you have any experiences with 3D audio or imager, I hope you can offer some insights into this. I found they are really useful combined with an equalizer; they are also very tolerant of imperfect loudspeaker arrangement, room acoustic. Thanks, man!!

I've used spatializer-type plug-ins with my ProTools digital audio workstation for a few years, and they are very popular with rock music producers since a good amount of music is recorded and mixed completely in a workstation emvironment. The ones I use are not intended to process whole-audio recordings but rather allow a single track or tracks to be "panned" anywhere within a virutal circle around the listener (virtual surrounds). This "panning' can be automated so that complex actions can be performed.

I don't have a lot of experience with using spatializer-type units to process finished recordings as I usually listen as they were mixed. If I don't like they way a recording sounds, I import it into my ProTools workstation and do whatever processing necessary to make it sound like I want. Then I burn it back to CD in the case of stereo, or listen directly from the workstation in the case of multi-channel mixes. With binaural, I like headphones. I sometimes go so far as to listen to older mono recordings by turning off all but my left front speaker - I find mono sounds best through one speaker rather than as a "phantom" image between two speakers.

Yes, I agree with you Soundhound. One of the major flaws of two-speaker left-right stereo systems is that they rely on a phantom image to create the center sound-source location, which is mono signal. The center is the most important part of most music and movie program sources, yet as a phantom image between widely spaced loudspeakers, it has relatively poor localization. They also cause Image Doubling and Comb Filtering, which cancel direct sound at certain frequencies due to arrival time differences. To solve this problem, I use a real center channel extracted from stereo signal and put it between left-right speakers so that time smearing or comb filtering will be practically reduced for the center of the soundstage. Actually, stereo program is best listened with 3 speakers set up (LCR). Equalization also becomes much easier with an extracted center. For example, you can boost the gain to make the vocal sounds louder.

For the spatializer-type plug-ins you mentioned, Qsound also has software called Qcreator; I don’t know if this is similar to Protools. It features a virtual circle on the monitor; it enables user to import different pre-recorded mono wave files and pan the sound to different position within the circle then mix them into a stereo mix. They also do the widening to make them 3D. It is cheap though. They have a demo on their website.

http://www.3dsoundstore.com/www-3dsoundstore-com/product-qcreator.asp

Have you ever used any outboard imager, soundhound? I have found a good use of imager. Since this works by converting stereo to 3D, one can put this after every channel to create a gigantic surround field for their home theater.

No, I've just used plug-ins within ProTools rather than outboard boxes. Plug-ins are so well integrated in the editing environment's digital mixer that I've not even used my outboard reverbs for years now.

I've used a ProLogic matrix on many film mixes to extract the phantom-centered vocal from CDs when songs are mixed into movies I've worked on. The new "hard" center channel which contains the vocal is directed to the center speaker and the left and right channels, minus center information, is directed to the left and right mains. Usually, delay and reverb is added to these channels and they are doubled into the surrounds. The result is a huge sounding mix that you would never guess came from a lowly CD.

Soundhound

Do you also use ProLogic to extract surround info? I found with ProLogic; the derived surround signal from a stereo music source sounds like ambient-type surround as opposed to directional surround. It sounds not very natural; I don’t know why. How do you solve this problem?

No. In film mixing, the "Dolby 3" mode is used which only extracts the phantom center channel into a "hard" center and subtracts this information from the left and right mains.

There is a whole arsenal of equipment and plug-ins available on the dubbing stage to synthesize the surround channels from the 3 front channels. Doing it this way allows precise control over what the surround channels sound like and the mixing engineers are not at the mercy of the ProLogic matrix's surround extraction.