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Speaker 1: This special three D episode is sponsored by Audible, The Conjuring,
Speaker 1: The Devil Made Me Do It, Rated R, and World
Speaker 1: of Warcraft. For maximum effect, headphones are recommended. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and Welcome
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an
Speaker 1: executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the tech are you?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: I am currently on a short little out of town vacation.
Speaker 1: I'll be back on Friday, but I wanted to have
Speaker 1: an episode for y'all while I was gone. This one
Speaker 1: originally aired on May tenth, twenty twenty one. It is
Speaker 1: called how three D Audio Works. So at the time,
Speaker 1: we at the company were kind of playing around with
Speaker 1: three D audio sound and three D audio technology and
Speaker 1: just kind of experimenting with it, and it was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to do that. I only got to
Speaker 1: play with it a little bit. I didn't trust it
Speaker 1: in my hands, but it did inspire me to do
Speaker 1: an episode to really talk about three D audio and
Speaker 1: binaral audio and that sort of thing. So I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy and I'll talk to you again when the
Speaker 1: episode is concluded. Let me tell you a story about
Speaker 1: my childhood. My family are all really big Disney theme
Speaker 1: park fans, and growing up in Georgia meant we were
Speaker 1: just a short eight to ten hour drive from Walt
Speaker 1: Disney World in Florida. Both of my parents were teachers,
Speaker 1: and they would save up money so that every two
Speaker 1: or three years or so we'd make the trip down.
Speaker 1: Disney World was always where my sister and I wanted
Speaker 1: to go, even when my parents gently tried to suggest
Speaker 1: other places like Washington, DC or New York City. Nope,
Speaker 1: we wanted Disney World also quick aside, these days, we
Speaker 1: still will take family trips to Disney World, my parents included,
Speaker 1: and now with my nieces we get to experience seeing
Speaker 1: Disney through fresh eyes, which is pretty great. But anyway,
Speaker 1: back to my story. Back in nineteen eighty nine, the
Speaker 1: Disney Hollywood Studios park opened for the first time. Back
Speaker 1: then it was Disney MGM Studios, and the studios were
Speaker 1: a working studio with films and TV shows shot on
Speaker 1: the premises. A lot of attractions related to film and
Speaker 1: TV production. There was the Great Movie Ride, which closed
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen. There was a Behind the Scenes Tour
Speaker 1: which closed in twenty fourteen, and there were various experiences
Speaker 1: that taught audiences about stuff like special effects, all of
Speaker 1: which have closed. Almost leads you to the conclusion that
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Studios aren't so much the Hollywood Studios anymore,
Speaker 1: but I'm off track again. One of those experiences was
Speaker 1: all about sound effects, and it was called the Monster
Speaker 1: Sound Show. I remember that the attraction featured a clip
Speaker 1: of a film starring Martin Short and Chevy Chase, and
Speaker 1: it had a lot of sound effects that played in
Speaker 1: that movie. Then the attraction host would bring up some
Speaker 1: audience members to try and create sound effects live on
Speaker 1: stage using various props while a silent version of the
Speaker 1: film played, and then they would play the film back
Speaker 1: again with the new audience supplied folly sound effects in
Speaker 1: place to great comedic effect that presentation. However, you could
Speaker 1: wander through the rest of the attraction and tucked off
Speaker 1: to the side were a couple of rooms large enough
Speaker 1: to hold a few people at a time, and they
Speaker 1: were called Sound stations. Inside those rooms were benches attached
Speaker 1: to the walls, and there were hooks holding headphones every
Speaker 1: couple of feet you would go in, you would sit down,
Speaker 1: you would put on the headphones, making sure that the
Speaker 1: headphone with the yellow pad went over your right ear.
Speaker 1: And then something extraordinary happened. As the lights went down,
Speaker 1: you were presented with a scenario. You were playing the
Speaker 1: part of a new executive at the Walt Disney Studios
Speaker 1: named R. J.
Speaker 3: McBean.
Speaker 1: You're told you're sitting behind your executive desk waiting for
Speaker 1: your assistant Hampton to come in and start off your day,
Speaker 1: and the sound orbited you. You'd hear the narrator set
Speaker 1: up the scenario and her voice drift from one ear
Speaker 1: to the other as if she were actually walking around
Speaker 1: you while you sat at this fictional desk. And then
Speaker 1: the scenario would really begin and things got really wild.
Speaker 1: A little tinker bell jingling would represent the true beginning,
Speaker 1: and you would hear Hampton come in. He would walk
Speaker 1: through on a door to your right, and then you'd
Speaker 1: hear him pontificate as he walks through your office. He
Speaker 1: would pour a fuzzy drink into a glass of ice
Speaker 1: and he introduced you to your secretary surely, Oh and
Speaker 1: also said you would get a haircut from a stylist
Speaker 1: named Ken, because of course the big Cheese is on
Speaker 1: his way to meet you. And the haircut sounds in
Speaker 1: particular were really compelling. You could almost feel the since
Speaker 1: of someone cutting your hair. And I say this as
Speaker 1: a bald man who hasn't had hair in more than
Speaker 1: twenty years. Meanwhile, as the hair goes flying, a director
Speaker 1: called Flavio shows up and pitches a new film to you,
Speaker 1: complete with using a hairdryer to simulate desert winds. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of other cute sound effects that follow,
Speaker 1: like a paper being placed over your head to represent
Speaker 1: a turbin and you can actually find recordings of this
Speaker 1: piece online, though I will warn you the effects aren't
Speaker 1: quite up to the quality of the original attraction, which
Speaker 1: also incorporated stuff like actual blowers to blow warm air
Speaker 1: on you. Oh and that big cheese who comes in
Speaker 1: at the end, well that's Mickey Mouse. Of course. He
Speaker 1: comes into place a pair of mouse ears on top
Speaker 1: of your head. The whole thing lasted about five minutes
Speaker 1: and I loved it. And at the end you were
Speaker 1: instructed to remove your headphones, hang them back on the wall,
Speaker 1: and exit the room, whereupon you'd head outside to the
Speaker 1: blazing Florida sun and the wild audio of the real outdoors.
Speaker 1: That was how I first experienced three D audio. At
Speaker 1: that time, it was based off a technology that had
Speaker 1: a brand name of Holophonics. These days, we'd more likely
Speaker 1: call it binarl audio or maybe just three D audio.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of different ways to create
Speaker 1: the experience, some of which requires special equipment, others that
Speaker 1: require special software. You can find examples of three D
Speaker 1: audio in music recordings, amusement park attractions, and stuff like
Speaker 1: ASMR videos. It can be a really compelling experience, and
Speaker 1: I remember getting goosebumps the first time I encountered it,
Speaker 1: and depending on who's doing the recording and the effect
Speaker 1: that they're creating, I can still get goosebumps from it today.
Speaker 1: Longtime listeners might remember that. A few years back, I
Speaker 1: interviewed an ASMR artist named Heather Feather, who was one
Speaker 1: of a handful of creators who are really making ASMR
Speaker 1: a phenomenon. Now we have thousands of creators. If you
Speaker 1: do a search on YouTube for ASMR, you will see
Speaker 1: countless videos in the category, but the technology and psychology
Speaker 1: behind this experience goes back quite a ways. So I
Speaker 1: want to explore the evolution and technology behind making three
Speaker 1: D audio. Now, in the beginning, there was mono, that
Speaker 1: is monaural or monophonic sound. This sound can come from
Speaker 1: a single loud speaker, or it could be channeled to
Speaker 1: multiple loudspeakers, but the signal going to each loudspeaker is
Speaker 1: exactly the same as every other loudspeaker. It's effective a
Speaker 1: single channel of sound. It's how we do podcasts typically,
Speaker 1: where you usually will hear the same level of volume
Speaker 1: in each ear. For shows with multiple hosts, it means
Speaker 1: that you hear all the hosts in both ears equally.
Speaker 1: Most listeners tend to prefer that, but very early on
Speaker 1: people started to experiment with ways to provide more than
Speaker 1: one channel of sound simultaneously to a listener to create
Speaker 1: a different kind of experience. Way back in eighteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: when the loud speaker itself was just a few years old,
Speaker 1: Alexander Graham Bell had patent it in eighteen seventy six
Speaker 1: as part of his telephone invention. Well that's when a
Speaker 1: man named Clement Adder came up with a clever idea.
Speaker 1: One of the downsides of live theater is that it
Speaker 1: is a scarce resource. Only so many people can fit
Speaker 1: into a theater for a performance, and once that performance
Speaker 1: is over, it's all done. So there is an element
Speaker 1: of exclusivity when it comes to live theater, something that
Speaker 1: remains true because I mean, it's just the limitations of
Speaker 1: the art. But Adder thought of a way that would
Speaker 1: help people listen in to say, a performance of an opera,
Speaker 1: without having to actually go to the opera house. His
Speaker 1: demonstration involved installing telephone receivers in a few rooms at
Speaker 1: the Palais de Lindistri. The microphones he installed near the
Speaker 1: footlights at the Grand Opera in Paris, so they were
Speaker 1: across town. People could come into these rooms at the
Speaker 1: Palais in small groups and they would hold two receivers,
Speaker 1: one to each ear. Each receiver connected to a different microphone,
Speaker 1: which meant the sound they were hearing was actually coming
Speaker 1: from two different locations. In an article in Scientific American,
Speaker 1: a Monsieur Hospitalier is quoted as saying, quote, everyone who
Speaker 1: has been fortunate enough to hear the telephones at the
Speaker 1: Palais de Lindiestri has remarked that in listening with both
Speaker 1: ears at the two telephones, the sound takes a special
Speaker 1: character of relief and localization which a single receiver cannot produce.
Speaker 1: End quote. This was a very early and primitive version
Speaker 1: of stereophonic sound. For those of us who have hearing
Speaker 1: in both of our ears, we experience the world in stereo.
Speaker 1: Sound travels at a certain speed. It's three hundred and
Speaker 1: forty three meters per second if you have an air
Speaker 1: temperature of around twenty degrees celsius or sixty eight degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: And yes, the temperature affects how quickly sound will move
Speaker 1: through the air. And our ears are located upon opposite
Speaker 1: sides of our noggins. That means that sound hits our
Speaker 1: two ear drums at slightly different times, depending upon where
Speaker 1: it's coming from, and we will perceive sound coming from
Speaker 1: one side of us as being louder in that ear
Speaker 1: than in our opposite ear, and so on. So mono
Speaker 1: sound shoves all of those sound waves through one channel.
Speaker 1: Everything is coming out equally through each loud speaker. Stereo sound, however,
Speaker 1: changes this up, varying the amplitude or volume of sound
Speaker 1: in each channel and creating a different effect. While adders
Speaker 1: demonstration indicated that there was something interesting with producing sound
Speaker 1: using different channels directed at different loudspeakers, that was just
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. Alan Dower Blumline would advance
Speaker 1: the art considerably in the nineteen thirties. Blumline was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh three. He became an electronics engineer and
Speaker 1: he worked for the famous Abbey Road Studios where he
Speaker 1: pioneered advancements in stereophonic recording. According to an anecdote told
Speaker 1: by Alan Blumline's son, Simon, Blumline was at the movies
Speaker 1: with his wife watching a film and he remarked that
Speaker 1: we're a blind person to go to the movie, they
Speaker 1: might struggle to follow what was going on because the
Speaker 1: sound was all coming from loud speakers in mono. There
Speaker 1: was no way to detect through hearing where people were
Speaker 1: within a scene. Everyone would sound like they were in
Speaker 1: the same spot. You would only be able to hear
Speaker 1: if someone was further or closer to a microphone, but
Speaker 1: otherwise spatially you would have no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1: And that got him into thinking about developing a system
Speaker 1: that would allow sound engineers to record and reproduce sound
Speaker 1: so that had a more localized effect. Action happening on
Speaker 1: the left side of the screen would be represented by
Speaker 1: sounds emanating from loudspeakers on the left side of the theater. Likewise,
Speaker 1: action on the right side would be paired with an
Speaker 1: appropriate amount of sound coming from the right. Each speaker
Speaker 1: might produce some of the sound, but at different amplitudes,
Speaker 1: so that while you might get a little bit of
Speaker 1: the right hand sound from left hand speakers, the levels
Speaker 1: would be lower, and the overall feeling would be that
Speaker 1: you're in the middle of that sound, and it would
Speaker 1: enhance the experience of seeing a movie and as well
Speaker 1: as help out those who are visually impaired follow what
Speaker 1: was going on. According to that anecdote, Blumline called it
Speaker 1: binaral sound, which of course we'll come back to a
Speaker 1: bit later in this episode. I just find it interesting
Speaker 1: that the original term for stereo is one we now
Speaker 1: associate with a more specific approach to audio recording and production.
Speaker 1: He would receive more than seventy patents for his various
Speaker 1: inventions related to stereo sound. He created technology to record, process,
Speaker 1: and reproduce audio in stereo. In nineteen thirty four, he
Speaker 1: oversaw a stereo recording of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at
Speaker 1: the Abbey Road Studios. Blomline also pioneered the Blumline method,
Speaker 1: which would use two microphones mounted at a ninety degree
Speaker 1: angle with regard to one another, to pick up directional
Speaker 1: sounds in a recording environment. So words, if you think
Speaker 1: of a room as a square, one mic is picking
Speaker 1: up sounds primarily along the X axis, and the other
Speaker 1: is picking up sound along the y axis. Blumline also
Speaker 1: figured out how to create a stereo groove in a
Speaker 1: record album. Back in those days, these were made from shellac,
Speaker 1: but they would later be made from vinyl. And when
Speaker 1: I think about that, I'm astonished. I mean, the way
Speaker 1: a record player works is that a stylus or needle
Speaker 1: fits into the groove of a record. That groove causes
Speaker 1: the stylus to vibrate, and those vibrations transmit to a transducer,
Speaker 1: which turns the vibrations into an electrical signal thanks to
Speaker 1: a little electro magnet magic, and that signal then goes
Speaker 1: to an amplifier, which boosts the signal strength, which then
Speaker 1: goes on to loud speakers and powers them so that
Speaker 1: they can reproduce the original recorded sound that created the
Speaker 1: groove in the first place. It's the edges of these
Speaker 1: grooves that cause the vibration or the wiggle of the stilus.
Speaker 1: So how does one record stereo sound to a physical
Speaker 1: disc with a groove. Well, imagine a groove that slaloms
Speaker 1: back and forth in a nice even path, So the
Speaker 1: waves along either side of the groove are a physical
Speaker 1: representation of the original sound waves that were recorded. Now,
Speaker 1: usually in a mono record, you would just see that
Speaker 1: these waves are evenly distributed on the left and right side.
Speaker 1: It's like they're in sync with one another. It's just
Speaker 1: a nice smooth curve. But what if you wanted to
Speaker 1: record stereo, Well, you could have it where the left
Speaker 1: side of the groove and the right side of the
Speaker 1: groove are actually different. The wall on one side would
Speaker 1: represent the audio recorded in one channel, and the wall
Speaker 1: on the other side of the groove was for the
Speaker 1: second channel. So, with the proper equipment, you could play
Speaker 1: this record back and the stylus would vibrate in a
Speaker 1: very specific way. It would be detected by two sensors
Speaker 1: connected to the stylus, So essentially two transducers, and these
Speaker 1: two channels of sound could again go to specific loudspeakers
Speaker 1: a left and a right, and then you get stereo playback.
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible. Listening back to properly recorded and processed
Speaker 1: audio would give the listener the sensation that they were
Speaker 1: actually in an acoustic space. It would feel as though
Speaker 1: you were standing at the spot where the microphone had
Speaker 1: been mounted, and that the sound you encounter is just
Speaker 1: as if you were present at the recording session. That
Speaker 1: was the intent, anyway, but the actual process of getting
Speaker 1: there is a lot more complicated than setting up just
Speaker 1: a pair of microphones. When we come back, we'll learn
Speaker 1: a bit more about stereo recording and editing, and we'll
Speaker 1: also learn why the Beatles, who also made famous recordings
Speaker 1: at Abbey Road Studios, concentrated on creating mono records for
Speaker 1: a long time, even though stereo had been around for decades.
Speaker 1: But first, let's take a quick break. Now. I've done
Speaker 1: episodes about sound to film in the past, and also
Speaker 1: sound on television, so I'm going to skip over all
Speaker 1: of that, Otherwise this episode would be for five hours long. Instead,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a bit more about stereo recordings
Speaker 1: and why bands like the Beatles were slow to adopt them.
Speaker 1: To listen to a stereo recording properly, you need a
Speaker 1: stereo system. That is, you need a sound system that
Speaker 1: has at least two loud speakers and a way to
Speaker 1: send the different channels of sound to both the left
Speaker 1: and the right speakers or independently to the left and
Speaker 1: right speakers. Otherwise, the playback would be in mono even
Speaker 1: if the recording were in stereo, and what you would
Speaker 1: get is a weird case where some elements of the
Speaker 1: recording would be really quiet, as those would be the
Speaker 1: sounds recorded to a channel that wasn't getting picked up
Speaker 1: by the mono playback system. Now, if you've ever listened
Speaker 1: to a recording where some of the voices or instruments
Speaker 1: sound unusually quiet, and that it doesn't sound like this
Speaker 1: was done on purpose, it's likely because either someone mixed
Speaker 1: the audio improperly, or it's a stereo recording that at
Speaker 1: some point got converted over into mono and you're losing
Speaker 1: some of the audio as a result. Stereo systems were
Speaker 1: really expensive when they first came out. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: like stereo systems that you would purchase for your home,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people, particularly young people, had really
Speaker 1: purchased record players that had a single speaker incorporated into
Speaker 1: the player itself, so these were mono playback devices as
Speaker 1: there was only one speaker for sound to go. The Beatles,
Speaker 1: being a band whose music was disproportionately favored by the young,
Speaker 1: had their audience in mind as they mixed their albums.
Speaker 1: It said that for many the albums from the early
Speaker 1: to mid period of the Beatles as a band, the
Speaker 1: group would spend hours in the mixing studio to get
Speaker 1: the mono mix just right, but when it came time
Speaker 1: to do the stereo mixes, they left that to the
Speaker 1: audio engineers at Abbey Road and were never around. So
Speaker 1: why is that, Well, because to them, the mono recordings
Speaker 1: were more important. That was what their fan base could enjoy.
Speaker 1: For that reason, a lot of Beatles fans or purists
Speaker 1: favor the mono recordings of early Beatles work. They eschew
Speaker 1: the stereo recordings as failing to represent what it was
Speaker 1: the Beatles were trying to achieve. And if you listen
Speaker 1: to the mono versus stereo recordings of some of those
Speaker 1: early songs like Paperback writer or eleanor Rigby, you really
Speaker 1: can tell there is a major difference, and this leads
Speaker 1: into one way to create a stereo or three D
Speaker 1: audio sound. You can take a recording and you can
Speaker 1: change how much of the signal gets sent to a
Speaker 1: particular channel. That determines which loud speaker or set of
Speaker 1: loud speakers will play back the audio, or more likely,
Speaker 1: how much volume that particular sound will have in each
Speaker 1: loud speaker. This is both a science and an art.
Speaker 1: A lot of the work in this field was centered
Speaker 1: around music, and music can contain a wide range of
Speaker 1: frequencies and tones. Imagine an orchestra. You have instruments that
Speaker 1: primarily create lower frequencies, like lower pitches. You've got tubas
Speaker 1: and basses and cellos. Each of those instruments, while creating
Speaker 1: notes that might be in the same general range, have
Speaker 1: distinct sounds. A tuba and an upright bass do not
Speaker 1: sound the same. In other words, then you've got instruments
Speaker 1: that center on some of the higher frequencies, like flutes
Speaker 1: and piccolos and violins. These also sound different from one another,
Speaker 1: and so it became important to figure out how to
Speaker 1: not just capture a recording and divide it into channels
Speaker 1: to create spatial landscapes, but also how to balance out
Speaker 1: the tones so that you don't lose anything in the process.
Speaker 1: With the wrong mix, one instrument or group of instruments
Speaker 1: might totally overpower another, and it's almost as if those
Speaker 1: other instruments were never even present at the original recording,
Speaker 1: and so processing recordings and getting the mix just right
Speaker 1: became critical. One part of this is called panning, and
Speaker 1: it relies on a pan control. In the old days,
Speaker 1: you would use a mixing board with physical controls on
Speaker 1: it to control the pan. The pan determines how much
Speaker 1: signal from each input is sent to each channel. These days,
Speaker 1: many audio producers work with digital audio workstations or DAWs,
Speaker 1: and with a DAW you also control panning. You can
Speaker 1: pan either mono or stereo tracks. Most DAWs will let
Speaker 1: you convert one type of track into another, splitting a
Speaker 1: mono into stereo or a combining stereo into mono. For
Speaker 1: certain types of audio, like mini podcasts, the default is
Speaker 1: to go to mono. It can be a little disconcerting
Speaker 1: if you record and publish a podcast in stereo. Many
Speaker 1: years ago, when I first started recording large nerdron collider
Speaker 1: with my friend Ariel. I accidentally recorded and published several
Speaker 1: episodes in stereo, which meant all of my audio was
Speaker 1: in one channel, like the left channel, and all of
Speaker 1: Ariel's audio was in the other channel, the right channel.
Speaker 1: So it's like I was talking into your left ear
Speaker 1: and Ariel was talking into your right ear, which was
Speaker 1: very unsettling. I eventually figured out what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and I began mixing our recordings into a mono track
Speaker 1: to avoid that problem. And with some early stereo recordings
Speaker 1: you can hear examples of problems like this. It's frequently disconcerting.
Speaker 1: There are records of songs in which all the instrumentation
Speaker 1: is on one side and all the vocals are on
Speaker 1: the other side. Now, that might have been done purposefully,
Speaker 1: but it was often a sort of heavy handed approach
Speaker 1: to stereo. There are times an artist might desire that
Speaker 1: specific effect, but other times the desire was to be
Speaker 1: a bit more creative with stereo, and you might have
Speaker 1: a track in which the vocalist is on the extreme
Speaker 1: right of part of the recording than on the extreme left.
Speaker 1: Later on, the Beatles A Day in the Life actually
Speaker 1: falls into that category. Or you might want to create
Speaker 1: a rich soundscape in which there is a sense of
Speaker 1: location for all the sound maybe not something that is
Speaker 1: explicitly communicated to the listener, but is an important representation
Speaker 1: of the performance. So how about we play around with
Speaker 1: some post processing panning to create a three dimensional experience.
Speaker 1: My producer, Tari, who is a superstar here at iHeart,
Speaker 1: is always to the success of this show. But in
Speaker 1: a moment, she's going to take over the experience of
Speaker 1: what this show sounds like to you, the audience. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to do something I've always wanted to do
Speaker 1: in three D audio. I'm going to give you a
Speaker 1: little Shakespeare. This piece is the prologue to Henry the Fifth,
Speaker 1: one of Shakespeare's company Designated the chorus implores the audience
Speaker 1: to use their imaginations to augment the production of the
Speaker 1: play itself. And so as you listen to this piece,
Speaker 1: imagine you are seated on a stage with the chorus
Speaker 1: walking around you, explaining your role in creating the theatrical experience. Now,
Speaker 1: I admit I'm cheating a little bit here, because the
Speaker 1: whole point of this passage is to say that theater
Speaker 1: is incapable of creating an exact copy of the story
Speaker 1: of Henry the Fifth and England's battles with France. But
Speaker 1: you also have to remember I'm a former English literature major,
Speaker 1: and I never get to do Shakespeare. So here we go,
Speaker 1: headphones on, Oh, for a muse of fire that would
Speaker 1: ascend the brightest heaven of invention, a kingdom, for a stage,
Speaker 1: princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Speaker 1: Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, assume the port
Speaker 1: of Mars, and at his heels leashed in like hounds,
Speaker 1: should famine sword and fire, crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles,
Speaker 1: all the flat, unraised spirits that have dared on this
Speaker 1: unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object. Can
Speaker 1: this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may
Speaker 1: we cram within this wooden o the very casks that
Speaker 1: did affright the air at agincour pardon, since a crooked
Speaker 1: figure may attest in little place a million, let us
Speaker 1: ciphers to this great accompt on your imaginary forces work.
Speaker 1: Suppose within the girdle of these walls are now confined
Speaker 1: two mighty monarchies, whose high upreared and abutting fronts, the
Speaker 1: perilous narrow ocean parts asunder, peace out our imperfections with
Speaker 1: your thoughts into a thousand parts, divide one man and
Speaker 1: make imaginary puissance. Think when we talk of horses, that
Speaker 1: you see them printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth.
Speaker 1: Fortis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, carry
Speaker 1: them here and there, jumping over times, turning the accomplishment
Speaker 1: of many years into an hour for the which supply
Speaker 1: admit me chorus to this history. Who prologue like your
Speaker 1: humble patients, prey gently to hear, kindly to judge our play.
Speaker 1: So for that recording, I went into our studio at iHeart,
Speaker 1: and I spoke into a normal studio microphone. All the
Speaker 1: manipulation had been done in post production, which is an
Speaker 1: effective way to achieve that three D audio sound, but
Speaker 1: it does require a lot of work on the part
Speaker 1: of the producer. But the three D audio I did
Speaker 1: at the top of this episode was done in a
Speaker 1: different way. I used a special microphone. When we come back,
Speaker 1: i'll talk a bit about that technology, and we'll learn
Speaker 1: about some companies that have produced specialized equipment for the
Speaker 1: purposes of three D audio. But first, let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break. While some engineers and artists experimented with binaural
Speaker 1: recordings for a while, it wasn't until nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: that the first pop record using binaural recordings came out.
Speaker 1: It was Lou Reed's Street Hassle. Listening to that album
Speaker 1: with headphones on is pretty cool. To achieve the effect,
Speaker 1: studio engineers took a mannequin head and installed a microphone
Speaker 1: at each ear and use that to record sessions. A
Speaker 1: company called Delta Acoustics put the system together with Manfred
Speaker 1: Schunck supervising. Reed made a couple of other albums in
Speaker 1: binarural audio. One was the Live Take No Prisoners album
Speaker 1: and the other was The Bells. Other bands would experiment
Speaker 1: and recorded binarl as well. The Rolling Stones did it
Speaker 1: for their album Flashpoint, which was a concert recording of
Speaker 1: some of their big hits and rarities. Pearl Jam record
Speaker 1: a studio album called Binaral, recorded fittingly in Binarl. The
Speaker 1: tech used to record these albums changed slightly, but it
Speaker 1: was still based on the same underlying principles. I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty widely understood that our ears receive sound in
Speaker 1: the form of vibrations through a medium such as the air,
Speaker 1: and then through interactions with the ear drum and the
Speaker 1: cochlea and special nerves sending information to the brain. We
Speaker 1: interpret those vibrations as sound in a very simple way
Speaker 1: of looking at it. Sound comes into our ears. But
Speaker 1: did you know our ears also generate sound, Because they
Speaker 1: totally do. It's called autoacoustic emission ORAE. Now. To get
Speaker 1: into OAEs, how they work and their role in stuff
Speaker 1: like medicine is beyond the scope of this podcast, and
Speaker 1: more importantly, way outside my general expertise. But it is
Speaker 1: true that a very sensitive microphone inserted into the ear
Speaker 1: canal of a person with hearing will pick up spontaneous
Speaker 1: autoacoustic emissions or soaes. Now, most folks can't detect these sounds.
Speaker 1: They tend to be at very low frequencies that dip
Speaker 1: below human perception, and they are usually at very low amplitudes,
Speaker 1: so they're pretty quiet. But in some cases people might
Speaker 1: actually hear the sounds generated within their own inner ears
Speaker 1: and experience it as tenetists. I'm one of those people,
Speaker 1: yay me. Now, The reason I bring up that fact
Speaker 1: that the inner ear can be not just a receptacle
Speaker 1: for sound, but also a generator of sound. Is because
Speaker 1: an inventor named Hugo Zucarelli used that as the basis
Speaker 1: for a system he called holophonics. His idea was that
Speaker 1: our hearing isn't a passive thing. That the inner ear
Speaker 1: generates signals that interfere with the incoming audio signals, and
Speaker 1: the resulting interaction between the sounds made by our ears
Speaker 1: and the sounds coming into our ears plays a part
Speaker 1: in sound localization. Now, long story short, Zucarelli's hypothesis doesn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of support in the broader scientific community. However,
Speaker 1: Zucarelli's equipment could record and reproduce sound in a really
Speaker 1: interesting way. It's just the whole interference angle of what
Speaker 1: was going on seemed inconsequential. Zucarelli used microphones to stand
Speaker 1: in for human ears, spaced apart so that a sound
Speaker 1: from any given direction would reach one microphone before the other,
Speaker 1: and the amplitude of the signal would depend upon things
Speaker 1: such as the distance between the microphone and the origin
Speaker 1: of the sound, as well as the angle at which
Speaker 1: the sound waves would reach the microphone. Zucarelli made a
Speaker 1: bunch of different recordings to demonstrate this technology, something called
Speaker 1: the Shaking Matchbox recordings, because that was one of the
Speaker 1: sounds he actually recorded using this system. Whether his underlying
Speaker 1: hypothesis was correct or not, the recordings were effective, and
Speaker 1: Zucarelli's approach created a way to make really localized audio effects.
Speaker 1: That's essentially what was going on with the Disney sound stations.
Speaker 1: Some of the microphones used by recording studios even resembled
Speaker 1: a human head, with microphones literally placed where the ears
Speaker 1: should be, and that also plays a part in recording
Speaker 1: a sound accurately so that the playback will seem as
Speaker 1: though you are really there as you listen to it.
Speaker 1: Beyond just the fact that our ears are on opposite
Speaker 1: sides of our heads and the sound will reach each
Speaker 1: ear at different times and amplitudes, other factors also shape
Speaker 1: the nature of the sound. We perceive the shape of
Speaker 1: our heads, the density of our noggins, our sinuses. All
Speaker 1: of that affects our perception of sound. Collectively, we call
Speaker 1: all of this head related transfer functions or HRTF. The
Speaker 1: technology of holophonics systems and later binural microphones attempts to
Speaker 1: replicate the experience of hearing hyperlocalized sounds through the application
Speaker 1: of HRTF. But this process is incredibly complicated and it's mathy,
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to go into deep detail, which
Speaker 1: is good because I would likely mess up the explanation. Also,
Speaker 1: it's important to acknowledge that every person is different, which
Speaker 1: means there is no universal solution toward creating the perfect
Speaker 1: binaural recording that will convince every listener that they are
Speaker 1: hearing sounds coming from ultraspecific directions. You kind of have
Speaker 1: to go more general to get a good response, but
Speaker 1: the more precise you try to get, the more the
Speaker 1: results will only work super well for a specific person
Speaker 1: you know who whatever it was modeled for, and not
Speaker 1: working quite as well for anyone else. For many years,
Speaker 1: the microphones used to create binaural recordings in studio were
Speaker 1: prohibitively expensive and far too complicated for the average consumer.
Speaker 1: You would occasionally find binural recordings, such as the one
Speaker 1: at Disney World, but these were pretty rare and very specialized,
Speaker 1: and only big companies like Disney could afford to do them. However,
Speaker 1: over time, companies began to develop microphones that fell more
Speaker 1: into the range of the prosumer, with some consumer level
Speaker 1: solutions thrown in there as well. Today there is a
Speaker 1: range of microphones one can use to create three D audio.
Speaker 1: The microphone I used earlier in this episode is a
Speaker 1: three deo binural mic or a three D if you prefer.
Speaker 1: You may have seen one of these if you watch
Speaker 1: a lot of ASMR videos. They are very popular. The
Speaker 1: microphone looks like a horizontal bar with two silicone ears
Speaker 1: attached to either end of that bar. The ears are
Speaker 1: spaced apart to mimic a typical human heads width. The
Speaker 1: three D doesn't have the mass of a head, it's
Speaker 1: just that bar in the ears. It doesn't have the
Speaker 1: sinus cavities or anything like that. So it is not
Speaker 1: a perfect simulacrum of a person's auditory system, but it
Speaker 1: gets the job done. That style of microphone typically retails
Speaker 1: are around four hundred dollars, so it's a little bit
Speaker 1: on the pricey side, but it kind of falls between
Speaker 1: consumer and prosumer. However, you can achieve similar results using
Speaker 1: totally different microphone setups. They typically require XLR microphones that
Speaker 1: connect to a recording device that can accept multiple inputs
Speaker 1: recording each microphone to its own audio channel. It's possible
Speaker 1: to use two normal microphones and space them apart from
Speaker 1: each other and create a binaural experience, though it might
Speaker 1: take some experimentation to get the spacing and gain levels
Speaker 1: just right so that it all feels natural. Or of course,
Speaker 1: you could just do it in post, but like I said,
Speaker 1: that relies heavily on a ton of work on the
Speaker 1: back end of things, and ASMR artists are not the
Speaker 1: only ones using binaral audio. It's also useful for stuff
Speaker 1: like virtual reality experiences and video games. Sound is a
Speaker 1: powerful element that contributes to a sense of immersion, and
Speaker 1: in some games it's critically important. For example, you might
Speaker 1: play a first person shooter game like Player Unknowns Battlegrounds,
Speaker 1: and you really need to use your ears to figure
Speaker 1: out where other players are in relation to where you are.
Speaker 1: Not doing so severely reduces your chances of making it
Speaker 1: through the game. If you'd like to learn more, I
Speaker 1: would recommend seeking out Old Tech Stuff episodes about surround sound,
Speaker 1: which relates to this topic quite a bit, and also
Speaker 1: our episodes about audio compression, as the process is designed
Speaker 1: to compress audio. Tried to take the psychology of perception
Speaker 1: into account. It's all fascinating stuff. As for three D audio,
Speaker 1: I figure i'd leave you all with a little bit
Speaker 1: of horror because three D audio works really well to
Speaker 1: immerse a listener into a world, and it is particularly
Speaker 1: well suited for tales of terror. Some of my coworkers
Speaker 1: used it to great effect in a series called Thirteen
Speaker 1: Days of Halloween, which we published last October, and so
Speaker 1: here is a little excerpt from the show they produced.
Speaker 4: Ah, look at all the fun we're having in here.
Speaker 4: I just knew you two would get along swimmingly. Oh no,
Speaker 4: come with me, Surin.
Speaker 2: We'll catch up with you later. Dearhart is a truly
Speaker 2: sweet young man. I've been attempting to persuade him to
Speaker 2: see the good doctor about his cough, but he'll have
Speaker 2: none of it. Maybe you could be of service in
Speaker 2: that department. He really seemed to like you. Now, there
Speaker 2: are hundreds of rooms here of the Hawthorne, but this
Speaker 2: is perhaps the very finest, and it just so happens
Speaker 2: to be your waters. Was it luck or.
Speaker 3: Fate that placed you here? We'll never know.
Speaker 5: I trust that you'll find everything to your liking. And
Speaker 5: if you don't notify me and I will make sure
Speaker 5: it is rectified. It's all part of my role here
Speaker 5: as the caretaker. You know, your lack of verbal reciprocation
Speaker 5: is really breaking down my sense of boundaries. I can
Speaker 5: trust you, right of course I care.
Speaker 3: In these coming days, you may notice that Hawthorne manner
Speaker 3: has no shortage of oddities. I've witnessed things myself that
Speaker 3: strain the belief. But there is one strange legend that
Speaker 3: has truly become something of an obsession. Supposedly, somewhere within
Speaker 3: these halls there is a hidden doorway. If the tale
Speaker 3: of what lurks on the other side is to be believed,
Speaker 3: then gaining access would mean a sort of ascension beyond
Speaker 3: human imagination, true immortality. I have come to understand that
Speaker 3: one of our guests knows how to locate and open
Speaker 3: this door. Perhaps what they cannot say to me, they
Speaker 3: will happily divulge to you. I have a feeling your
Speaker 3: quiet fortitude will lure them into a sense of intimacy.
Speaker 2: It certainly works on me.
Speaker 3: Please make yourself at home. After all, this is it.
Speaker 3: There are so many others I cannot wait for you
Speaker 3: to meet.
Speaker 1: Well. That wraps up this special episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Several of the iHeart shows are including some binaral audio segments,
Speaker 1: and we've got a lot planned into three D audio
Speaker 1: space in the days up ahead. I really recommend you
Speaker 1: check it out and explore some of the three D
Speaker 1: audio recordings that are available online. You know that Disney
Speaker 1: one I mentioned, There are actually versions of that up
Speaker 1: on YouTube. People have the recordings up. I will say
Speaker 1: that when I was listening back, it sounded like the
Speaker 1: channels had been swapped. Everything that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: in my right ear seemed to be coming through the
Speaker 1: left ear. And I made sure that I was wearing
Speaker 1: the headphones correctly. That's an important point, by the way.
Speaker 1: If you're not wearing your headphones with the proper phone
Speaker 1: over the proper ear, it's very disconcerting. I double checked
Speaker 1: I was doing it correctly. Everything still seemed flipped and
Speaker 1: the effect was not nearly as impressive as it was
Speaker 1: when I went back to Disney. But I should also
Speaker 1: add the Disney version incorporated some stuff that headphones just
Speaker 1: can't do, stuff like a blower behind each person's back,
Speaker 1: so that when you're getting a haircut in that sequence,
Speaker 1: the hair dryer would actually blow air on you, so
Speaker 1: that would add to your sense of immersion as it stands.
Speaker 1: For me, if I'm listening to a very well recorded
Speaker 1: three D audio setup, then if someone speaking quietly into
Speaker 1: my ear, it's as if I can feel it, because
Speaker 1: we have to remember sound when it gets down to it, Really,
Speaker 1: that's just vibration. Those vibrations include fluctuations and air pressure.
Speaker 1: So if you are listening to someone talk into your
Speaker 1: ear through a speaker, you will feel it because those
Speaker 1: are fluctuations in air pressure. It's not something you're imagining.
Speaker 1: You are feeling it. It might be heightened because of
Speaker 1: the way the audio is recorded, but it's actually happening
Speaker 1: to you. I think three D audio is an incredible technology.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more we could say about it, and
Speaker 1: not just from the technological side, but the psychological side
Speaker 1: and the biological side. So maybe I will do future
Speaker 1: episodes that will focus on this more. I hope I
Speaker 1: get a chance to play with the three D audio
Speaker 1: microphone more. That was a lot of fun. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed doing that. I hope that I get to participate
Speaker 1: in some of the three D audio recordings that we
Speaker 1: have planned coming up, including some that are delving into
Speaker 1: different areas of fiction. I would love to do that. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I would love to do a full three D audio
Speaker 1: version of a Shakespearean play. It is something I have
Speaker 1: really wanted to do for a long time. I'm not
Speaker 1: even talking about necessarily being in it, although it would
Speaker 1: kill me not to be, but to be able to
Speaker 1: experience a three D audio version of one of Shakespeare's plays,
Speaker 1: to me, would be unbelievably amazing. So if you think
Speaker 1: that's interesting, you should write to iHeart and let them know,
Speaker 1: because I think it would be great. I wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: working on something like that and let me know what
Speaker 1: play you think we should do. Honestly, I'm thinking like
Speaker 1: much ado about nothing. I think a comedy might be fun. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that episode from twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: how three D audio works. I think three D audio
Speaker 1: can really be fascinating and really immersive. Like I still
Speaker 1: really love ASMR videos that do the ear to ear
Speaker 1: stuff and use a lot of spatial audio. Well, it's
Speaker 1: not as common now like that was like a big
Speaker 1: thing many years ago when ASMR was first really starting
Speaker 1: to take off. But these days I seem to see
Speaker 1: a lot more things that are based off specific what
Speaker 1: they call triggers, specific sounds, or specific effects, but less
Speaker 1: the ear to ear stuff, which is the evolution of
Speaker 1: the field. But it makes me miss the really cool
Speaker 1: three D audio things that make you feel like you're
Speaker 1: in an actual space with people really moving around you.
Speaker 1: To me like, that's just an effect that I can't
Speaker 1: get enough of. So that's kind of why I wanted
Speaker 1: to go back and revisit this episode. I'll be back
Speaker 1: on Friday with a new episode about tech news. We'll
Speaker 1: find out what the heck happened on the week of
Speaker 1: Memorial Day. I'm recording this the week before, so I
Speaker 1: don't have any clue. As we've established many times, I
Speaker 1: am not good at predicting the future, so I'll find
Speaker 1: out when you all do. So I hope you are
Speaker 1: having a great week, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tex Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts for
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This episode was
Speaker 1: brought to you in iHeart three D Audio. To experience
Speaker 1: more podcasts like this, search for iHeart three D audio
Speaker 1: in the iHeartRadio app. Thank you to our sponsors, Audible,
Speaker 1: The Conjuring, The Devil Made Me do It, Rated R,
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