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Video and Binaural Audio

Started May 1, 2020 | Discussions thread
Sean Nelson
Sean Nelson Forum Pro • Posts: 16,109
Re: Video and Binaural Audio
3

Pov2 wrote:

I fail to understand how this binaural is different from stereo. Can anyone explain? Both have two channels for audio. There is no additional information provided like additional channels. Only two channels...

The idea is that your brain learns to differentiate sound direction not just by the sound that arrives via the air into your ears but also through the mass of your head.   So you heard sound off to your right in your left ear because it arrives via air into the left ear canal, but it also goes through your head.  And there's a difference in the timing of those two arrivals.

So you experience live sound differently than if you merely record two channels with mics pointing in opposite directions.

Binaural audio tries to recreate the sound experience by recording with two microphones embedded in a dummy head with similar characteristics to the human head to try to recreate this.  By putting the mics in a pair of earbuds, you replace the dummy head with your own actual head.

See Wikipedia article on Binaural Recording

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