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