low_iso wrote:
Markr041 wrote:
Bose headphones are horrible; no sound professional would use them for gaging audio fidelity. Your AKG is a decent budget headphone, but nobody would use it seriously for professional monitoring. Try Sennheiser 650 and come back with comments about audio.
Hmm. Well, I’m a sound professional, have been for many decades, and listen a lot on headphones. I have many, including a pair of Bose QC35s, given to me as a gift. I too have an active negative bias against Bose products in general, and dislike many of them. But I have to say, the QC35s are not only listenable, they are highly listenable, comfortable, and the noise cancellation is excellent. They are actually more often my choice, and I have many much more expensive headphones to pick from. I think the Sennheiser 650s are…well, they’re ok, perhaps good, but not at all what I consider pro quality. They are very much high-end consumer cans, but I could never mix on them, for example.
Headphones are a very personal choice, but there are some characteristics that have been defined as factors that result in the general perception of high quality. Harmon did quite a bit of research on that. But, even within that definition, there are a huge range of headphone sounds. The thing is, once you get great headphones, your brain has a way of getting used to them so they end up sounding right.
I spent several hours auditioning high-end headphones a few years ago, including some in the $1500 - $3000 range. None those knocked my sox off. I ended up liking the Shure SRH1540, which list at $500. Does that make me not a professional? I still use my Sony MDR-7506 headphones I’ve owned for 30+ years for monitoring location sound and live sound. Not pro either??? And the Bose are used recreationally, and in noisy environments like mowing the law or on an aircraft, or just dozing off. Not pro?
Yeah, well, I think I’m a pro, it’s one career I’ve made a living doing.
Comments on all of my Roland-miced videos suggest that viewers were able to discern the advantages of binaural stereo, some even going on to to try it themselves. If you actually were an enthusiast for this type of recording you should be grateful, rather than a grouch pushing a wholly impractical method for videography.
There are other practical in-ear kits, from Sound Professionals, which mount the mics in the ear pinna.
I think you may have taking the comments too personally. The ones that cite the external position of the earbud mics as a limitation are quite correct. The directional characteristics of the pinna are a big deal in localization, and those mics bypass that entirely. Sure, the interaural spacing is more or less correct, and you will get most of the diffraction effects of a head with them, so the binaural will sort of work, but you should really check out the real deal too.
Here’s where I need to talk a bit about several fatal limitations of binaural recording, though. First, the big one: compatibility. If you have one recording to make, and you want most of your audience to hear it correctly, then binaural is a terrible choice. It rather fails on conventional speakers without quite extensive post-processing. For record producers that means you have to produce two versions of your records, and while there are some, it’s really not done, even with the rather huge potential headphone audience we’ve had since the Walkman changed portable audio. It’s just so bad on speakers.
Next: real, detailed binaural is very individualized due to the specifics of every head, torso, and most importantly, the pinna. There’s not actual “generic” HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) that works to the same degree for everyone. Our ear/brain combo has been programmed and conditioned to work for just us as individuals. Feeding someone else’s HRTF into our brains simply confuses the effect. Not to the extent that it’s gone, but it does take a pretty big hit sometimes.
Third: you can’t always get your head, or an artificial head mic, into the perfect position to record something. With earbud mics you get a representation of what you heard, but its not likely what an artist would want. Remember, recorded sound never replicates an event, not even with binaural. What it does is present a believable and acceptable representation of intent, sufficient to suspend disbelief. Binaural can do that, sometimes shockingly well, but not always, not even most of the time, and not equally for everyone. Proof? Binaural records have been around since the late 1960s. Heads and mics, even similar to your earbuds, have been around since the 1970s (Sennheiser made a head and a mic headset you could put on the head to put on your own head, 1970s), but we don’t have a binaural library that covers even a tiny fraction of the non-binaural records. It’s had more than 50 years to succeed, and has gone through various improvements, usually a couple per decade, yet has still not achieved its place in the market. Binaural remains a novelty. There must be a reason, right?
I’ve made many binaural recordings, made my own in-ear mics, used the Sennheiser mics and heads, and had a lot of fun. Not one of those recordings ever got past novelty. I’ve played with digital processing of binaural on speakers (thats actually NOT what Carver’s sonic holography was supposed to do!), and interaural processing of “normal” recordings to improve the out-of-head image on headphones. All of it works a bit, a few things quite well, but not in a way that’s commercially useful.
And now we have Atmos for headphones. Have fun with that.
Thank you for the comments. In your long post, this is the statement that I think is most helpful in this thread about the in-ear mics I used:
"the interaural spacing is more or less correct, and you will get most of the diffraction effects of a head with them, so the binaural will sort of work, but you should really check out the real deal too." Ok!
But "the real deal" couldn't be used for the videos I shot. What's next, claim I should shoot with an IMAX camera rig? No, dummy-head micing is not possible out in the park or in the church where I shot. Nor is an IMAX camera.
Most of what you have to say, which is correct, interesting and useful, does not pertain to video use of binaural micing. Videos where the shooter wears binaural mics provide an aural and visual reproduction that is perfectly in synch - what you see and hear in the video is exactly what the sound was like in the position the video camera was at. Yes, the viewer should wear headphones to get that effect, but as the music videos show, the stereo heard through speakers is not bad either (we both know it is not ideal and flawed).
You are a knowledgeable and experienced sound professional, but you are not primarily a videographer I would surmise. So whether binaural records sell or not is irrelevant. Nor is what a performing "artist" prefers very relevant to shooting a video to convey time and place. As the "professionals say "Audio is 50% of video." Not 100%! It is subservient to the purpose of the video.
Is binaural audio something that should be used for all video shooting - no. For most video, probably not.
Geez, I posted some videos with binaural micing just as examples to show what it does and how accessible the technique is. I have posted lots of non-binaural videos here; they don't get such comments (there is better equipment; here are the limitations, my video with other equipment is better, try better equipment) or such long dissertations (helpful as they are). Even on YouTube, a commenter posted over and over again that the recording was simply NOT binaural because I had used the in-ear technique. Yes, he was sound engineer too.
If I had posted a video using ORTF micing, would I have also encountered such responses (not the best, use XY, spaced omnis, there are better mics, try a different height, a shorter distance)?
My defensive (in the reasonable sense) reactions to the many comments is not because I take them as personal criticisms; rather, I worry that many of these responses about limitations, unpopularity and the existence of better equipment will simply discourage users to try binaural video/audio, which they can do at low cost, with little inconvenience, and as you agree, get very good binaural results.
Sony MDR 7506 - you are a professional! Even if they are not even close to having a flat frequency response. BTW, I use a pair of B&W 801 speakers for monitoring my non-video, non-binaural DSD recordings, really.
Forget headphones. Yes, there are two of these.
And I use Sony noise-cancelling headphones on airplanes; better than BOSE.
