Live Binaural remixes for the headphone generation

[dallas simpson]

I know binaural rears its head from time to time. Its an excellent headphone only surround technique and can work well on speakers with care, or specialist techniques like crosstalk cancellation.

In support of other comments scattered through this site I really do think its time we took binaural into mainstream use for headphone / earphone surround listening.

I was on a mini tour earlier this year presenting headphone only / video projection live concerts offering live binaural remixes of the performances and I'm currently involved in a series of environmental binaural remixes,

Can we develop this idea?

Live music concert binaural video's below, please use headphones!

YouTube - 1of4 Swimming + Dallas Simpson// There's A Mountain (Binaural Live)// Listen with HEADPHONES ONLY
YouTube - 2of4 Swimming + Dallas Simpson// The Fireflow Trade (Binaural Live)// Listen with HEADPHONES ONLY
YouTube - 3of4 Swimming + Dallas Simpson// Crash the Current (Binaural Live)// Listen with HEADPHONES ONLY
YouTube - 4of4 Swimming + Dallas Simpson// Improv (Binaural Live)// Listen with HEADPHONES ONLY

And here is an environmental binaural music remix:
SWIMMInG// Tigershark Binaural Woods Remix (Headphone Only) on Vimeo

Comments / ideas welcome!

dallas simpson

[Remoteness]

Damn, where's my headphones?

[John Willett]

Originally Posted by Remoteness

Damn, where's my headphones?

You are buying them on Monday

[David Spearritt]

What's the point of a binaural mix in a studio setting or a poor domestic acoustic or with the mix done by pan pots on a mixer?

Binaural comes alive with a natural high quality acoustic where "air" is the mixer. A great concert hall recording with a Fritz head or a nature recording in a rain forest, again with a Fritz head.

I don't understand the artistic premise behind these demos. Surely headphones are not better than loudspeakers in this instance.

Happy to be enlightened.

[dallas simpson]

Originally Posted by David Spearritt

What's the point of a binaural mix in a studio setting or a poor domestic acoustic or with the mix done by pan pots on a mixer?

Binaural comes alive with a natural high quality acoustic where "air" is the mixer. A great concert hall recording with a Fritz head or a nature recording in a rain forest, again with a Fritz head.

I don't understand the artistic premise behind these demos. Surely headphones are not better than loudspeakers in this instance.

Happy to be enlightened.

David, thanks for you coments! I agree about the limitations of an (indoor) studio setting or poor domestic acoustic - it severly compromises binaural spatialisation.

There are may ways to employ binaural, from its use in a stereo mix, like Tchads Blake's drum binaural overhead approach, to pure binaural field recordings and concert recordings, its use in drama:

BBC - Radio Labs: Immersive audio for Planet B

-sound art and others.

Sound presentation on speakers is a very different experience to sound presentation on headphones, also there is extreme flexibility in the portability of listening on headphones - we can go for a walk in, or inhabit a variety of environments whilst listening on headphones.

The premise behind these recordings was to establish a new creative environmental approach to a remix - taking the music out of the studio to a real environment, introducing the music into the environment with a strong spatial element, working the music to interact with the location, and capturing a listener's perspective of that process, including elements of the natural ambience at the location.

It is as much about the experience of being at the location and working the music within it as it is in making the remix recording. It is a highly experiential approach.

Also the live-head binaural approach offers a one-to-one relationship for the listener through the binaural process - the access of a listener to the recordist's creative perceptual experience of the moment.

Of course if you wish to listen on speakers that's fine! The experience will be different to listening on headphones.

[dallas simpson]

David, some comments on the binaural concerts.

In my reply above I was referring to the environmental remix. In the case of the binaural mini tour concerts, the aim was to change the relationship between the musicians and the audience. And consequently, through the constraints of the binaural technique, facilitate a different compostitional and performance approach from the musicians.

The band re-arranged their songs and played very quietly to suit the binaural approach, in particular to reduce wall and ground reflections from the performance area. Additional spatial elements of sound were introduced, often quite subtly, into the binaural mix through speaker driven 'voicepipes'. The audience experienced the performance as _individuals_ situated 'within the band' as a continually moving perspective, rather than as a collective, relatively static, audience in front of a stage with a very loud PA system!

Incidentally, when the band plays a conventional stage set they do have a very loud PA syatem!