Becoming Binaural

Where the Hell Have I Been?

Have come to the conclusion that feeding this blog will happen on event time, not calendar nor clock time. When having the ability to ponder, pen and present something meaningful, it will arrive.

What has helped inspire me back onto the saddle of this beast — for what I sense will be longer sustained ride — are two pieces of audiophile brilliance which recently arrived in the post box.

Binaural microphones and dead kitten binaural ear muffs by Soundman.

What are binaural microphones?

For those who know about binaural microphones, skip the following bits and go to Creating.

 

Human Nonsense

Most of us see in three dimension. With two separated eyes, signals to our brain present a rich perspective of depth, layers, texture and most importantly, a sense of place. It’s easy to take the simple act of sight for granted until loosing it.

We also hear in three dimensions. With separate ears on both extreme sides of our heads, the audible world around us is being presented in a spellbinding rich landscape of spacial sounds. Because of the spacial separation of our ears, we can sense discernible distance, layers, texture, even feel sound elicit it’s flow and movement.

 

Tech Nonsense

With a mono microphone (and most shotgun and lavaliere clip mic’s), you’re presented with a one dimensional sense of our world. Perfect for listening to someone speak or to isolate certain sounds but otherwise flat, simple and completely dimensionless.

With a stereo mic, we think we’re being presented with sounds that represent what our ears hear, however that’s not the reality. Stereo microphone field recordings basically fake a sense of spacial audio by presenting our brains with a concept of left and right spacial sounds. The main field of sound recording heavily overlaps with their left or right counterparts in front of the mic, focusing 40 percent or more (depending on the microphone) on the sound in front of us, which is actually incorrect in regards to how we hear. We accept this because our eyes see forward in this rather narrow 40% overlap, therefore we think that is how the sound actually moves around us, but that’s not correct. In addition, stereo never reaching much further than beyond a 180º sound plain. What about the sounds behind us that we can hear equally as well as the sounds before us?

Look at this stereo “polar pattern” for the Rødes VideoMic, a brilliant stereo microphone many of us use with our 5D Mark II and equivalent Nikon gear, and witness what this stereo microphone actually hears (polar pattern diagrams shows how each specific microphone pick up a field of sound):

 

By no means can a stereo microphone truly present the dimension of sounds which naturally emanate not only from the left, right, but before and behind us, in the same manner which our ears deliver to our brains the exact audible landscape we hear.

With binaural microphones, we are presented with an exact replication of the entire theater of sound surrounding us in the exact same way our ears send the audible sensation to our brains. I like to call this, Reality Audio, because a binaural audio recording is the unconditionally true presentation of dimensional sounds that we hear.

Here is the polar pattern for the Soundman OKM II Classic Studio microphones showing just how unique the audio field of recording actually is on binaural microphones:

 

 

Why

Binaural mic’s are placed in each ear, allowing for the exact same sound dimension to be recorded to tape or SD card as our ears hear, in turn it’s what our brains process into diminutional understanding of sound space.

The natural divide — the extreme separation of left/right channels — caused by, yes, our thick heads, replicate exactly the natural three-dimensional sounds that are swirling all around us. It’s only possible therefore to bring a true audible sense of location from the sounds moving and emanating around us via binaural microphones.

There is indeed another level of sound recording even more spacial — surround sound. That’s über technical and far more involving than most photographers will want to dabble in — not to mention you wouldn’t blend in too well wandering the streets of New Deli or New York City (ok, maybe in NYC) with a getup like this on your head from Sonic Studios: Click Here

 

Evolution

On a professional level, I’m a photographer. The power of the still image will last for all the history to come. Anyone wanting to debate this reality till it turns to glue can do so to your hearts content. Just do so while defending your theories to a doorknob, not me. Such discussions are by far the grandest waste of ones time in this art and profession. The discussion should be upon what we can do with all forms of communication.

On a personal level, I’m a field recording junkie. While living in Italy in the mid 80′s — using a camera in a completely, unequivocally, different form of photography…fashion — I would roam around Milan making recordings on a macro cassette recorder, moving onward to a Sony stereo cassette recorder once realizing I was hooked by the mesmerizing sounds of sound. It was during this time in my early 20′s that I also became utterly intrigued by global music after spending Christmas and New Years in Tunisia in what I think was either 1984 or 85. The triple combination of what I saw, the cultural absorption combined with what I heard, produced a deep communality I could feel, however it would be 20 years and hundreds of hours of audio later to realize the magnitude of not only the audio archive, but its power of merging together what we now call multimedia or what I prefer to call, short films.

Having a profound event happen one evening in 1986 — a complete awakening — I left the fantasy world of fashion and moved to Madrid, throwing myself as deep as possible into the power of reality photography. My audio interests followed to similarly focus on somehow recording the natural human symphony around all of us, as unaltered and real as possible. I began collecting high-end stereo mic’s like the Audio-Technica AT825. Now, scratched and dented as if dragged behind a truck down a dirt road, I sill have and use this wonderfully balanced microphone but it always felt limiting and required the loss of a free hand when taking pictures.

Around seven years ago I stumbled upon the solution which dramatically changed how I not only record audio, it also allowed me to be a photographer at the same time — binaural microphones.

I was gone.

 

Creating

Before the dawn of what really was the turning point — when still photography and filming merged more seamlessly with the arrival of the Canon 5D Mark II — photographers would tote around flash recorders, capturing ambient sounds that were then used in slideshows for what became termed as multimedia, though I prefer the term Visual Audio. To do so meant not only carrying your camera, a camera bag and an audio recorder, there was the microphone which needed to be carried in the kit. A street photographer begins to look like an over decorated Christmas tree that much gear.

We are now being asked to produce short films as compendiums to a photographic story. Excellent. We should relish the act of expanding lateral and outward, same as a guitar player can only expand their art further by learning and then playing the piano.

But how can we make this deliberate act of going from the fluid function of taking still images, then switching over to filming, without taking on an epic level of bulky audio gear or a secondary sound person?

 

Filmmaking

After each stellar National Geographic seminar (the latest being last January 12th), the next day is reserved as a gathering of photographers who regularly work for the magazine. The day-long event begins Friday morning at 8:30 with a session titled Nuts & Bolts. During past sessions, brilliant talents like Kenji Yamaguchi and Dave Mathews from National Geographic’s Photo Engineering department, would demonstrate the latest in remote aerial camera planes like the one now being used by  Michael ‘Nick’ Nichols for his latest project on lions, new camera trap designs by the ever inspiring Steve Winter or utterly trip-out underwater custom camera housings used by the likes of the brilliant Paul Nicklen and David Doubilet. 2012′s Nuts & Bolts was on the greater merging of stills and filmmaking.

The photo department at National Geographic had recently hired the talented, Pamela Chen, as a Senior Photo editor. Her background in filmmaking, photography and audio reads like the who’s who of present-day photojournalism. Her presentation on the audio and film background to a piece she’d produced for the NYT’s was enlightening. Afterwards, questions began swirling around the room, the usual we tend to hear when still photographers mull the prospect of juggling both mediums where one key aspect, the stills, outweigh the moving images:

“How can we be expected to jump between still image making and video in a seamless manner?”

“With all the gear needed to produce video, how can I also manage decent audio without hiring assistants?”

All super important questions, however there is a solution to solve much of the general audio kit catastrophes related to filmmaking.

Sitting in the back of the room, I raised my hand:

“All of this is getting too technical. Use binaural microphones.”

50 or more sets of eyes gazed at me as if I were speaking in tongue. Understandably so. Many have never heard nor even used such microphones.

By using binaural microphones when filming, you’re hands are free to hold the camera and BE a filmmaker, easily switch back to BE a photographer. Even better, no bulbous microphone attached to the hotshot of the camera.

Then the crowning touch, your bringing to the film a dimensional sound experience, equally layered as your film and photography.

And the best part…when not wanting to film, the mic’s fit in your shirt pocket or can stay resting in your ears till wanting to film again later. Here’s how small these microphones actually are:

For poshing the sound quality even further, make sure to order the Soundman A3 Adapter, a mini preamp and noise reducer when going with the 1/8″ jack directly from the Soundman earbud binaural mics into your camera. The binaural mic’s can work without the preamp however the difference in sound quality is noticeable:

And for those who want to really up the sound quality even further by taking the Soundman binaural mic’s into a Sound Devices or another high-end audio recorder, Soundman has a new XLR connector with A3 mini pre-amp:

Binaural mic’s in your ears is not the solution for everything. Not all aspects of filmmaking can be accomplished with them. There are indeed moments when a lavaliere mic clipped on a persons lapel is needed for an interview (call it the macro mic) or a shotgun mic may be used to isolate sound you want within a crowd (call it the telephoto mic). But I would imagine 60-80 percent of all audio needs for journalistic reportage filmmaking can be accomplish with extremely small, unobtrusive, binaural microphones, which allow your hands to be completely available to focus on filmmaking.

 

Wind

My original Soundman binaural’s had its wire ripped out a few years ago — got snagged on something. In the interim I’ve been enjoying the Rødes, Sennheiser lavalieres and my original Audio Technica from the early 1990′s but I sure was missing those awesome — and small — binaural microphones. When ordering this replacement pair last week, I noticed a new piece of kit on the Soundman website that all audiophiles need — dead kittens.

These dead kittens (wind screens) aren’t just any type of kitten. They are custom made earmuffs to avoid wind sounds while making handsfree binaural recordings.

When they arrived as I was as excited as my 8 year-old tends to be when receiving a gift on his birthday. Fiddle and faddling around the house completed, I couldn’t wait to hear how these kittens worked in wind. Trouble was, no wind.

Two days later I had my chance. A 15-30 mph cold wind was blowing through the Berkshires.

Here are a few recent binaural field recordings. The first is test recording made specifically for this blog when the wind was whipping through large pine trees in front of our home. There’s also sounds of the gate opening, a car passing and the arrival home on the bus of Konstantin.

The second field recording was created while I wandered through snow around the farm wearing the dead kitten earmuffs (it was windy) while our family dogs, Emma and Asia, followed. It’s a simple, short piece, but if you listen closely you’ll hear — hopefully feel — the movements of Asia, a 30 lb. Beagle, running past me on the right, followed by Emma, a 110 lb. French Mastiff, thudding just a second or two later on my right. Crank the bass if you really wanna hear Emma’s gait.

The third recording was also created last week while on a brief visit to New York City. To test wirling wind suppression moving around the city — and to bombard the binaural mic’s with as many dimensional layers of sound as possible — I took a brief stroll through Time Square at around 5pm.

Make sure you have either excellent speakers connected to your computer or posh headphones so you can sense the spacial sound.

Wind, Car and School Bus
(iPhone and iPad)

 

Walking in the Snow with Emma and Asia
(iPhone and iPad)

 

Binaural Recording while wandering around Time Square
(iPhone and iPad)

 

Field Recording Store

If you’ve ever poked around this blog you’ve likely stumbled upon the Field Recording Store. In this section you’ll find entire albums from musicians who otherwise wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to share their music globally, let alone locally. Two of the albums in the store, Bauza Drummers of Zambia and Ratan and Piddut of Bangladesh were recorded using Soundman binaural mic’s, bringing an entirely different dimension of live musical performances.

 

Insights

While in NYC this week filling a missing gap in a National Geographic story code name, “Sweetness”, I meandered in B&H Photo and picked up a pair of micro-dead kitten wind covers made specifically for lavaliere mic’s. Amazingly, they fit perfectly snug on the recording ends of binaural Soundman mic’s. Making some basic recording level tests I could see that the wind does diminish with these macro-kittens but if in heavy wind, far more noise is suppressed with the Soundman muff versions. This lavaliere option makes a nifty secondary wind sound removal whenever recording in warm climates because the ear muffs dead kittens do keep your ears warm.

 

 

iPhone

And some big news about to completely change audio field recording…we’re only a week or so away from the first meaningful stereo-IN recording option for an iPhone. There has been another on the market for some time, the GuitarJack by Sonoma. There are two problems with this iPhone add-on — the GuitarJack is large and the audio-IN connector is a 1/4 inch plug, meant more to be used for a guitar then a small yet powerful stereo field recording kit. The soon to be released Soundman As looks promising — a mini clip-on item which by the looks of the photograph seems to be petite, making it less prone to flexing when attached to the iPhone…and it has a 1/8 inch audio jack. It should make for an extremely small audio field recording kit when combined with some of the pro-recording app’s for the iPhone.

More on this iPhone add-on in the coming weeks.

Till then, keep well and enjoy making your life as a photographer and a filmmaker more seamless, less technical — and far less cumbersome — by using binaural microphones.