Listening to Binaural+ tracks, not sure what to think.

Since the GF and I don't share the same musical taste I do a lot of my listening using my headphones which got me curious about Binaural records. Supposedly they are optimized for headphone listening and will provide a more natural sound-stage.

I downloaded from HDTracks the female vocal collection from Chesky, which is supposedly a Binaural+ record and...I don't hear anything especially extraordinary about it. certainly not a faithful re-creation of a natural sound-stage or the impression that I'm sitting in front of the performer.

I really don't think that's my equipment fault but I will really appreciate if other members can pitch in and tell me of their experience with Binaural records and what equipment they used for listening.

 

I listened to a Binaural CD but also didn't find it anything special, a bit more 'whole' perhaps but nothing to justify the fuss. The problem is there are not that many binaural recordings and those that I heard were not to my taste.

I'm quite happy listening to my choice of music with ordinary recordings.

Binaural+ Series | Chesky Records

The Binaural Source world music & miscellaneous CDs

I had the Brenda Wilde CD.

 

For some reason I've never heard what I'm supposed to with binaural. I get a big
aural space but it's all behind me, I'm never surrounded.

 

I've always been interested in binaural recordings and the experience it gives. Largely it hasn't been successful for me but I stick with it sampling different music and trying different approaches. The method by itself is a bit all over the place with different methods, different set ups etc. I say go for the music first and immerse yourself that way.

Lou Reed experimented with a binaural recording system that his engineer promoted. It didn't work for me on the studio recordings of Street Hassle and The Bells (there are moments though) but does give a decent impression on the live Take No Prisoners album. Go for the remasters if you can and the best reproduction of the approach I've heard on CD is NYC Man.

And it goes without saying that you have to have good, good headphones that are fast with transients and microdynamics - those little sounds and overtones in music and life that give your ears cues of what you are hearing. The further I have gone up the chain with my headphones (currently a set of modified planars) and my amplification and my source the better the impression.

There are smatterings of binaural recordings in music around and I don't know that many. There is a whole set of nature sounds recorded by, I think, a Canadian in the 70s that was very popular and is till around. That is a lot of fun as you get the impression of being in many different soundscapes that you may know or don't know. Search binaural nature sounds or something like that on You Tube for these. I found the impression works best when I have heard a similar environment before. My brain connects the sounds to my memories and creates the scene better.

Roger Waters worked in a type of binaural on Amused to Death. Either liked or hated but most everyone enjoys the ambience produced. Of course, the last Waters Pink Floyd album, The Final Cut uses holophonics very effectively. He followed that with The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking which also uses binauralish effects(can't remember if it's Q sound or Holophonics).

But I suspect you are looking for the real deal surround experience binaurally. The impression is hard to get to sometimes with music I think because it is largely ahead of you. You get spatial cues in front of you but only a sense of the size of the room mostly. The Lou Reed TNP is good because you can tell you are in a crowded and very small club and you can hear where Lou is in relation to the band.

I have heard some wonderful impressions of an orchestra but on headphones it just seems like you have the best seat in the house very far away. Go for minimal miking setups. I've also heard some fantastic jazz recordings that place me in the studio.

Sorry for the length and lack of content detail. Let us know when you find one that works for you.

 

I have only moderate success with this method on foobar2000. You can fine tune it till you get what you like.

Natural crossfeed on headphones / earphones for foobar2000 v2.1 [major update made public]

 

I switched between the Sennheiser HD600 and HiFiMAN HE-4XX while listening but I suspect that you are right, music played in front of an audience and recorded in stereo won't sound much different in Binaural. I used to play with crossfeed and I remember the Q Sound effects, which I never liked, so perhaps in my case just listening to music in stereo is good enough as long as it is well recorded and mastered.

 

I have a half dozen binaural recordings, none of them sound like anything that was out in front of me. I don't think I would have thought they were anything special if binaural wasn't mentioned.

If you want damn near indistinguishable headphone sound from speakers check out the Smyth Realiser. When I tried it out, it was just plain baffling how the headphone system was at least 95% or more in matching the sound of the speaker system. Some could not tell the difference. I like headphones for sounding different from speakers so I would not consider it. If I had to be forced to be headphone only I would strongly consider it.

 

I'm with you Claude. Someone once said that the crossfeeds are good with lower / mid quality headphones and I can agree with that assesment. Crossfeed seems to give the appearance of imaging through out of phase and transient cues but it comes at the cost of frequency shift and tonal changes along with blurring. As I recall crossfeed implementation comes as a solution to the 60s recording techniques where there was a tremendous amount of side to side panning and isolation (Capitol's Duophonic anyone?).

In the end I prefer to hear what was recorded and get as close to that as I can. I can not imagine or live in a world that squishes or changes the ping ponging of instrument and voices on Don't Worry Baby. I only want this song as I know it now

I liked Qsound and I hoped it would succeed - I thought the major releases with it from Sting, Madonna and Roger Waters were really good implementations. It just didn't lift off. I felt the same way about Holophonics. It worked very well on the Pink Floyd releases. It's probably a money thing.

 

The sound in front thing could be me. Could be how my ears hear things though I know this isn't true in my life walking around. The brain is a funny thing and your hearing knows how far away something is and when sounds are missing. I don't find music recorded binaurally to be "around" me sound wise but I am still impressed with the music cues I hear. I am aware of sounds to the side and bouncing of sound off walls or being absorbed at times. Even the nature recordings are in a 180 degree or slightly larger soundfield for me. The only ones that were truly stunning to me were ones I recorded myself but it wasn't music and it was done as if the person were laying down.

I'm really interested in the Smyth Realiser but I haven't heard it. I looked into it seriously a number of years ago. I was facing living in a living room / home theatre situation with the baby room nearby and I wanted a headphone solution to a speaker situation. I know I can download samples but I think I was unimpressed by them.

What did you enjoy about the approach? Besides cost what did you find to be downsides when it came to playing music?

 

Interesting, but do you have to wear a headband all the time?

 

Binaural was an example of early stereo before they invented the stereo cartridge. Each record had 2 separate programs and required a special tone arm with 2 separate aligned cartridges. Atlantic records put out some pre-stereo binaural albums. There was nothing special about the sound other than 2 speakers played 2 different channels and gave sort of a 3D effect.
Moving forward to 1970, Stereo Review released a binaural test LP demonstrating what binaural could be. Using a cast of a human head, a microphone was placed in each ear. Wearing headphones, the sound was like you were in the middle of it and you could tell direction and depth, just like it was you sitting there. I have a copy of this LP and here is a link to show you what it is:
Unknown Artist - Binaural Demonstration Record

I suspect that what these latest binaural recordings are is that 2 microphones were placed in front of pointing towards the performance. All this seems to me is like 2 microphones set up in the front row of a live concert. Depending on how far apart the microphones were separated and what type of pattern those microphones have(directional or omni-directional) would determine the spaciousness of the sound. Unless the microphones were placed in the ears of a human head casting, heaphones will be of no advantage.

 

One of the problems with binaural recording, even using a dummy head, is that we each have different shaped heads and different shaped ears. Frequency attenuation and timings that allow us to place sounds are learned and ingrained, and when the record head has different ears than us, it doesn't compute.

It is better to use in-ear monitors, as this simulates the placement of the microphones in the record head.

 

Amused To Death was produced in QSound -- advertised as "3D stereo" but really a reworked form of matrixed quadraphonic sound.

Binaural is different in that it is meant to be listened with headphones only -- one of the major factors in why it never really caught on in the mainstream. It's sometimes called "dummy head stereo" because it's recorded using a dummy head with microphones placed where the ears are:

 

Even with a good binaural recording, there is still the inside-the-head sensation and an almost total absence of an image projected in front of the listener, particularly, front-center. I tend to find that binaural works better with sound that is supposedly coming from behind the listener. I heard a demo recording where someone whispers from different positions around the listener. The sound from the back and to the side were quite realistic and very distinct as to placement, from the front, not so.

 

Came here for Pearl Jam. Haha. Monday...

 

That is very true and I guess that the dummy head was kinda generic so it sounded very good to me. In the demo of moving around the room, going up and down, the sound seemed like it was coming from wherever it was supposed to be. In ear headphones might portray it better, I'll have to try that next time I have the record out.

 

Hey, I bought a copy of that, and wore down the grooves in it! A real ear-opener for this A-V-Club/Band Nerd High-Schooler - I actually wrote a review of it for my school paper column! (Yeah, like that's gonna send Biff and Shirley right down to our local head shop and ask for it by name...! )

I did find it interesting in an, "Hey-come-on-over-and-we-can-play-with-our-model-rockets!"-sorta way. It did do what it said it would, at least in my Koss Pro-4AA's.

But remember what a breakthrough it was to have Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough as an ice cream flavor? You know - back when it was a breakthrough to have Flip Wilson and Bill Cosby on TV every week! Nowadays, 200+ breakthrough flavors later - plus jimmies! - ya can't be really impresses unless it's mixed-into Godiva or some other "signature flavor", and forget about finding caramel without salt on it.

I guess my point is, I don't get a chubby anymore by sticking a pair of Wollensak mics inside a dummy's head...or Lou Reed's head...or even the Elephant Man's head! You can spent years tweaking, tuning, un-phasing, soundstagescaping, or even bringing out an overpriced Bose app for binaural. To me in 2018, that's just one setting on a DSP function...and I bet I've already found one I like better ("see? It makes Terry Kath sound like he's in a jazz club, and Danny Seraphine sound like he's in a hot tub-!").

Binaural was...interesting...for its's time. But now, it's kind of "Quad-in-the-age-of-Atmos". IMHO.

 

I guess I'm lucky that there are still evenings when I'm alone and can enjoy the extraordinary imaging and staging from the speakers on my desk.

I like listening with headphones, but it's not the same experience and I really dislike using DSP except for volume leveling so I thought to give it a try with Binaural. Well, never mind, there still plenty of good music to be enjoyed .

 

Having had the thrill of listening to binaural and quadraphonic, today it's high resolution and multi-channel music like 5.1. Not all the 5.1 is mixed right, missing the added 1.1 and actually being 4.o. What seems to be best is good old spacious stereo which is not quire as confusing.

 

Binaural is to audio as 3-D is to video. Either you like it or you don’t.

 

See if you can find the Stax "Space Sound" CD. It's got some wonderful binaural recordings on it which certainly fooled me into believing there was real stuff going on in the same room I was listening. Scary.

 

Now playing, 2017 reissue

 

Just re-listening to this CD - it really does sound 3D on headphones. Fooled me into thinking someone was trying to open the door next to my listening position - really gave me a fright (the Gunther and Sabine exchange, when Gunther enters the room).
Listened to "Improptu" by David Hazeltine (a Binaural+ CD by Chesky). Nice sound, but not close to the 3D soundstage of the Stax.
"Take No Prisoners" is also quite nice, apart from a little overload on the loudest parts.

 

I don't like the Chesky Binaural+ style of binaural. The Binaural+ process loses the true binaural magic and loses the sense of natural 3D headphone soundstage that true binaural can do. Chesky starts with a real binaural recording, then processes it so it can also be played on speakers, and at that point they've turned a potentially great binaural recording into a half-assed binaural recording. Why?

If you're going to go through the effort to make a binaural recording keep it all true binaural and for headphone listening only. Don't process it can also be played on speakers. Don't do that. Just don't.

I find the Chesky binaural recording frustrating. Because I know how true binaural can sound like. When I listen to a Chesky Binaural+ recording I keep hearing just half-assed binaural and it's frustrating.

 

I'm totally in agreement. Binaural is and should be strictly for headphone listening.

It still is more of a gimmick than anything I would prefer to listen to in real life.