Binaural Audio 101
Thanks to the rise of Virtual Reality and an increase in popularity of headphones, the century old format binaural audio is making a comeback like you wouldn’t believe. But what is it exactly?
Binaural or Binaural 3D audio is audio captured identically to the way we hear the world. When audio is captured with a binaural microphone like the Hooke Verse, it is capturing the exact location of every sound source and where it is in relation to the recordist upon capture.
How Does Binaural Audio Work?
Binaural audio must be recorded with a binaural microphone. A binaural microphone consists of two omni directional microphones wherein one mic is positioned very precisely within each ear. When a microphone is placed within the pinnae of each ear, a recordist is capable of recording audio identically to the way they hear it. Watch with headphones and hear binaural audio below:
Binaural Audio Is NOT Stereo
Where stereo audio allows you to localize a sound source to left and right upon playback, binaural will allow you to localize audio in front, behind, left, right above and beyond since it was captured with a microphone designed to capture sound the way your ears experience it.
How Does One Make Binaural Audio?
Binaural 3D Audio can be recorded on iPhones, Android phones, DSLR cameras, GoPros, Field Recorders, Pro Video/Audio equipment. I put together this playlist of tutorial videos to show you the best way to record binaural to each respective device.
Can I play binaural audio on other speakers/headphones?
Once recorded, the binaural effect can be reproduced using any regular set of headphones or a dipole stereo. It does not work with mono playback, nor does it really work with loudspeakers as the acoustics of this arrangement distort the channel separation via natural crosstalk (an approximation can be obtained if the listening environment is carefully designed by employing expensive crosstalk cancellation equipment.) See Edgar Choueiri’s brilliant BACCH System or the Yarra 3DX speaker.
When did binaural audio start playing with video?
If you’ve been fortunate enough to experience binaural sound, you’ve probably only experienced it on the listening end. It’s difficult to pair binaural sound with video because both formats must precisely reflect the perspective of the recordist in order to function properly. If you were to wear a pair of binaural mics and record with a video camera that is positioned 6 feet above your head, the resulting media would be inaccurate. We need to make sure we are capturing video the way we see it with our eyes in order for binaural recording + video to work together. That’s why integrating with your GoPro, DSLR or phone’s built in camera is a no brainer because you hold them all to your eye or head when shooting.
If binaural audio is recorded wirelessly, is their latency?
Not if you create your own codec! Which is precisely what we at Hooke Audio have developed. Most bluetooth audio codecs experience a latency time of around 150ms. This is a problem as humans will begin to detect sound arriving later than an image at around 80ms. However, there are a few Bluetooth chips on the market that use a high quality Bluetooth audio codec which transmits at very little latency.
Where can I hear more binaural audio?
YouTube: www.youtube.com/hookeaudio
SoundCloud: www.soundcloud.com/hookeaudio
Where can I get a binaural microphone?
From One Ear To Another,
Anthony Mattana