An engineer friend of mine played me this piece of audio recorded in 'Holophonic sound'. Its a match being struck and the box being shaken. Not very interesting you may think but when i say that when listened to on a pair of stereo headphones the box seems to be shaken behind the listener. It also appears to go up and down behind the listener. Creating quadraphonic effects using stereo is absolutely amazing. I've done a bit of research and found out that it was developed by Hugo Zuccarelli in the 80's and both Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney were interested in the technology but I have found very little in the way of explanation of the techniques involved.

Here is the link to the audio, if you've never come across this before it really does have to be heard to be believed.

What I really want to know is this. Has anyone ever embarked on any holophonic recordings of their own? I am really fascinated by this now and would like to investigate further with my own experiments but would like a helping hand in knowing where to start.

Cheers

Ant

the first 2 albums by PsychicTV (1984 ish) used holophonic techniques, including the sound of being buried alive. i think it used a skull shaped transducer .. extremely life like sound but i only ever really heard it on a cheap 1980's hi fi, and ive never come across the cd's

grainger

Wow. I tried it with just my speakers and it sounded really life like. Thanks for the experience. I am going to look into this further.

Amazing on my HD650s..i mean AMAZING..

it makes turn your head around to see who's there!!

isn't it great!

I've read that that the original recorded signal is combined with an inaudible digital reference signal. I've seen this on quite a few sites i've been on but none really go into much depth.

If anybody finds anything juicy let me know!

Ant

'I Love You Like a Ball and Chain' on the Eurythmics 1985 album Be Yourself Tonight has a long section at the end where a sound is subjected to a holographic technique and is meant to sound as if it is circling round the room.

I’ve always loved this sort of stuff and experimented with binaural recordings back in the seventies. I’ve got several binaural records, most notable ones are by Can and Lou Reed.

Anyway, apart from all the sales talk, there’s some interesting stuff about holophonics (they call it ‘Holosync’) and how can be used to manipulate brainwaves here:

http://www.centerpointe.com

They have a free demo CD too.

FWIW, when I clicked on emmet02’s link I looked behind me ‘cos I thought there was a cat there sneezing… my internet pc speakers are absolute carp too.

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Studio: www.kymatasound.com

The Ball and Chain Eurythmic's record wasn't made with Holophonics. If you listen in mono you'll hear the track disappear completely when it is supposed to be poasing directly behind you. That shows that the effect was achieved purely with phase shifts.

Holophonics is a little more complex than that, and is more similar to binaural techniques.

The problem with binaural techniques is that they tend to form images behind more often than in front. The box of matches effect descirbed above is a classic sympton of that.

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

I also have a demo CD of some ‘VAPS’ - Virtual Audio Processing System - encoded material which is pretty impressive, although as Hugh rightly says, the problem with all these spatial techniques is the sound often appears to be behind rather than in front.

There’s more on VAPS here:

http://www.audiocybernetics.com/VA.html

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Studio: www.kymatasound.com

Edited by Tim Rainey (13/04/06 10:44 AM)

Thanks for the correction.

That matchbox thing wasn't behind for me, it had some up and down movement but not behind (using headphones).
Do these techniques differ in effect from person to person?

That's interesting especially regarding some things I've heard on TV lately.
Watching casually on my stereo TV, some sounds appeared almost behind and certainly more than a hard pan.
Then I'm sitting in bed the other night hearing a higher freq sound as if coming from the window.
Obviously in a bed room the sounds are going to bounce off different surfaces etc... but the intersting thing here is that the bedroom TV is mono.
So what's going on there ? higher freq sounds reflecting more or differently to lower freq's ?

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Jack of all trades, master of some.

I suspect it's a reflection from a hard surface in the room near to your speaker that makes the sound appear to come from way beyond its normal position. I've noticed this 'free surround' effect in various rooms, and of course it's why we place absorbtion at the 'mirror points' in our studios, to get rid of such phantom images.


Martin

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YewTreeMagic

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

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The problem with binaural techniques is that they tend to form images behind more often than in front

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Isn't that the whole point though? I've not had chance to listen to the recordings mentioned above but I'd be interested to here a track with the majority of the mix occurring in front of the listener and then certain textures and atmosphere's happening behind.

Would this work?

Ant

Edited by emmet02 (13/04/06 05:18 PM)

I know this might sound strange, but try listening to 'holophonic sound' with your eyes shut or the lights off. The brain is very clever and takes the visual cues into account when locating sound. So that means if you cant see it then it must be behind you.

Quite alot of the information that the brain gathers about where sound is coming from is the way that the sound changes slightly when the head is moved from side to side. I did hear about a system that tracked the movements of the head and made slight alterations to the sound to provide some better cues about where it was coming from. Maybe it was an alarm system for astronaughts (to help them locate beeps in the cockpit) that NASA were working on, but it escapes me.

So when listening to binaural and holophonic sounds try and keep your head nice and still, as moving your head will not result in a change in the sound and your brain will just become confused.

All this stuff the brain does is not very useful for modern day man listening to binaural and 'holophonic' sound recordings but very useful for the caveman to know in which direction to run away from the dinosaur.

Quote grAInger:

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the first 2 albums by PsychicTV (1984 ish) used holophonic techniques, including the sound of being buried alive. i think it used a skull shaped transducer .. extremely life like sound but i only ever really heard it on a cheap 1980's hi fi, and ive never come across the cd's

grainger

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Yeah, I think one of those albums was "Dreams Less Sweet". I was into some of Psychic TV's stuff in the early eighties. I remember my brother and I sitting there with headphones getting totally freaked out by the sound.. (even on a crap stereo with crap headphones) - but we were used to that..

During one of the tracks on the first listen I remember thinking.. "man, that's a loud plane flying over head" only to turn to look out the window to see nothing!
At the time we thought this "Zucarelli Labs" thing was gonna be the future..

I had no idea Peter Gabriel/etc. were into it.. I just thought it was Mr Genesis P. Orridge being his usual ground-breaking weird self..

Oh, and while I'm reminiscing, Psychic TV did the best cover (imho) of the classic Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" - slightly twisted, but the vocals (all multi-tracked by Mr P.Orridge again) were quite remarkable. The "Kundulini Mix" I think it was.. Check it out

does anyone know if this is the technology in the carver c-9 sonic hologram generator?

thanks,

d

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"Patsy had the drug tolerance of Keith Richards and the moral rectitude of Brian Jones." - Dr. Walter Bishop, "Fringe"

I did a presentation on Holophonics about 18 months ago. I seem to remember that quite a lot of Pink Floyd's 'The Final Cut' is recorded using the technique, which involves a very accurately specified dummy head.

I never liked that album much...

Did anyone else find they thought the matches were moving round the head in a circle, behind and then in front? When I first heard this stuff last year, I thought I could only hear it behind (the lack of visual cues is a big problem for reproduction of this kind, since there aren't really any significant audio shadowing effects due to the pinnae etc), but this time I could definitely tell a difference.

The up/down stuff is very clever, and involves recording the reflected sound from the shoulders and chest on the dummy used to make the recording, which is constructed with bone- and flesh-like denisities, and accurate cranial cavities (ears, eustacian tubes, sinuses etc).

The patent office decided it wasn't different enough from other binaural systems to grant it a patent in the end, and various people thought there was a certain amount of snake oil involved in Zucarelli's system, but it certainly seems to work to a certain extent!

Hugh

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Tesco Value Tonmeister

Edited by hughb (13/04/06 10:41 PM)

Yes, the up and down meanderings confuse me the most. How can this happen when only using stereo, therefore only one sound source either side?

Thanks for the 'Holosync' link Tim I have ordered their free CD with anticipation and the VAPS link cleared a few technical things too.

My mate who originally played me the matches thing also mentioned that there was a Pink Floyd album that used this technique.

Upon more research I have discovered that you probably need an expensive encoder to create the effect. Is there any 'budget' way of doing the same?

(I suspect not!)

Quote Neil C:

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Do these techniques differ in effect from person to person?

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Yes, and that's part of the problem. It is not purely a physiological thing either. There are a lot of psychological aspects -- experience and expectations play a big part in what you hear in terms of positional information.

While I was training BBC radio folks we often set them binaural recording projects, with end of course playbacks to 20 people or so in a darkened room, all wearing headphones fed from a distribution amp. it was quite usual for those not involved in a specific recording to localise the majority of sounds to the sides and rear, whereas those involved with a production localised the same sounds in front. This seemed to be larely because they had either experienced the original recording and so knew the sounds were supposed to be in front, or had similar expectations.

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Quote BigAl:

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Watching casually on my stereo TV, some sounds appeared almost behind and certainly more than a hard pan.

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There are two possibilities. Most stereo TV sets have some sort of extra wide sound mode -- ambeince or super surrousnor some other ctachy name. Essentially, this phase inverts (or phase shifts) one channel relative to the other to make the TV speakers sound much wider apart than they really are.

The other reason is that you were watching programmes that had Dolby Stereo encoded sound tracks. Anything intended for the rear channel is phase inverted in one channel relative to the other, and if not decoded with a suitable Dolby ProLogic decoder, will produce a sound that is hard to localise. The brain decides the easy option is to assume it is well out to the sides or even behind you... This technique doesn't provide stable imaging, but it is handy as an effect to get a spacious effect from a two channel source.

Hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

It certainly brings Celebrity Fat Club to life.

I think in general even if you cannot localise the sound as such, when you home into it, you can (sort of) and it probably adds a bit of realism because it's usually background noise rather than the main dialogue ro anything promenant.
Mind you, I'm not really a fan of surround in general, especially in the home.
People seem to think that by spending a few hundred quid on a surround system with a 42" plasma, they have a cinema at home.

PS. Didn't Paul White have a good comment (which appealed to me) about looking into the future in an editorial a few months ago.
So many tens or hundreds of years in the future and surround still hadn't been embraced by the masses.

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Jack of all trades, master of some.

Does that mean that in theory you could have a surround system with a mono or stereo source with no clever tricks like phase or whatever.
Instead, the room if full or different reflective materials which respond to different sounds or frequencies.
It could be a pretty ugly room.

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Jack of all trades, master of some.

For anyone brave enough to attempt a DIY approach this is an interesting link:

Apple 3D Mixer Audio Unit

.

Loads more stuff here:

http://brain.web-us.com/binaural.htm

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Studio: www.kymatasound.com

This is not holophonic... this is, as Hugh said, Binaural. The maine reason why u can hear sounds coming (more or less) from all around u is because this system reproduces Interaural Time Differences and Interaural Level differences (the difference of time and level between both of your ears). There are two issues with this extract:

-it is played back in mp3, which largely degrades ITD, as some studies proved (because ITD perception is much more sensitive than usual time differences we can use in other recordings: at a maximum, ITD should be about 0.6 ms, and we can percieve ITD differences of a few tens of microseconds).

-it is not your head, meaning not the same shape, hence a different perturbation of acoustic fiels

-when listening in real, an other thing that helps us percieve sounds in space in micro-movements of the head, which we are not aware of (some scientific experiments demanded to subjects not in any way to move their heads to percieve sounds and still, very small movements, enabling very small changes of ITD and ILD, where mesured)

Scientific studies today focus on individualization of these criteria without having to record many impulse responses on everybody in difficult conditions (see Rozen Nicol, Sylvain Busson and Brian Katz works, among many others). This would enable us not to percieve sounds alway at the back anymore. If you want to play with kind of sound, u can get one of LISTEN's HRTFs databases on IRCAM's website, and use it in convolution reverb. Or if u have signal processing tools such as Matlab, things are even easier... and very funny ;-)

Holophonic, on the other hand, is a technique using Huygens-Fresnel principle, which basically reproduces a sound field using an infinity of sound sources (loudspeakers, for example). The difference with a simple 48 loudspeaker panning law (the simplest version of holophonic, Wave Field Synthesis, often uses about 48 loudspeakers) is mainly a more realist rendering when you are moving in the room: the sweet spot is much enlarged, so that if u move laterally, close sound sources will remain at the same place and far sound sources will seem to follow u, a bit like when you are in a train and the sun is following you although trees remain at their place...

(not sure I'm clear enough, though, I tend to confuse people when I'm explaining all this... ;-) )

Laurent

I'm sure we have had this debate before, but cannot locate the thread.

Maybe it's the meds I'm on.....

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Samplecraze
Stretch That Note

Quote hughb:

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I did a presentation on Holophonics about 18 months ago. I seem to remember that quite a lot of Pink Floyd's 'The Final Cut' is recorded using the technique, which involves a very accurately specified dummy head.

---

They also toured with a specially built mixer, so they could pan the organ/synth or backing tape between the PA speakers (quadraphonic, or four PA stacks at least!). It had a funky name, but I can't for the life of me remember it now...

Not sure how successful it was, but apparently did very cool things to tapes of people's footsteps...

Hewesy

edit, prob nothing to do with the thread, thought it might be interesting though as to how to achive this "live".

Edited by Hewesy (31/07/06 03:12 PM)

I may be wrong, but I think this particular effect is very difficult to achieve Live (I mean I don't think it is possible at the moment to use a dummy head and get this precise a result for a large audience: to use binaural on a speaker set, u need to use Transaural technology, and it works only on a small sweet spot. There are ways to enlarge the sweet spot but not enough for a large audience... ). I believe it was more like "simple" quadraphonic, maybe with height enhancement...?

U can still achieve this kind of impression with WFS or real holophonic, but since for a space of a few square meters, it needs about 50 loudspeekers, I can't imagine producer wanting to use thousands of loudspeakers for their concert ;-) Some sort of general compromise might be found, though, but it will be more likely to be a simple panning over 5.1 or 10.2 or 22.x or something like this system... I believe...

Yeah, i thought this was Binaural too - Holophonic is something different.

"Developed in the 1980s by Hugo Zuccarelli, Holophonic Sound uses the same “multiple exposure” premise as that used to create holographic images (“holograms”). Holophonic Sound is produced by recording the interference pattern generated when the original recorded signal is combined with an inaudible digital reference signal. The recorded sound produced is so realistic, some people claim they can smell sulphur when they listen to a holophonic recording of someone striking a match! It appears that Holophonic Sound waves stimulate our brains to reproduce very realistic and truly three dimensional sound within us, thereby stimulating other corresponding responses that our brains expect to accompany the sound, (like scents or other sensations). Even more interesting is the fact that researchers report that some hearing impaired people can “hear” Holophonic Sound - again because it stimulates their brains even though their audio receiver mechanisms are not working properly."

"Holophonic Sound - 3D Audio with Just Two Speakers, by Joe Kissell: http://itotd.com/index.alt?ArticleID=108

Holophonic Sound on the BioWaves Web site: http://www.biowaves.com/Links/Hearing/HugoZuccarelli.cfm

Hugo Zuccarelli’s Web site:
http://community-2.webtv.net/zuccarellix/holophonicstmand/ "

I heard they're doing a lot of research into practical applications of binaural recording and other algorithmic techniques at York uni - my cousin's there now, he showed me some stuff, it's incredible. They had a recording of a band in a room - the stereo image was so powerful it was frightening.

Yeah, only the text about holophonic is clearly a commercial one. I've been able to listen to a "good" holophonic sound many times, and I don agree with this man. First, if u recording holophonic, the rendering is quite poor because of some limitations like the fact that u can't choose where u want to put your speakers and u need to have the exact same configuration...
But holophonic synthesis (with close mike pre recording, by example) can sound nice... if you move in your room. If you don't, then it's just like any multichannel set...
The rendering is not particularly more realistic than with an other mike method. The only kind of recording I know that are really realistic, but still suffer of some limitations, is Binaural. There is much research done on spatial sound (Wave Fiel Synthesis, High Order Ambisonic or Higher Order Ambisonic, vector-based panning, Binaural, transaural, and so on...), but these research suffer of a major drawback: not many sound engineers try these systems. In places like the University of Surey or in Germany, though (and soon in France), some laboratories try to combine scientific research on the subject and use of these systems for real world recording... If you are interested in such systems, do not hesitate to contact research laboratories working on this, they'll be glad to share their experience with u...

Quote emmet02:

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An engineer friend of mine played me this piece of audio recorded in 'Holophonic sound'. ... I've done a bit of research and found out that it was developed by Hugo Zuccarelli in the 80's and both Peter Gabriel and Paul McCartney were interested in the technology but I have found very little in the way of explanation of the techniques involved.

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Quote emmet02:

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I've read that that the original recorded signal is combined with an inaudible digital reference signal. I've seen this on quite a few sites i've been on but none really go into much depth.

If anybody finds anything juicy let me know!

---

Holophonics, invented by Hugo Zuccarelli, is a binaural technique using a special dummy head called "Ringo". The head is best described in US patent 4,680,856. The patent abstract describes how Ringo is:

"... equipped with anatomical features which accurately reproduce the shape of the auricles, the auditory meatus, the Eustachian tubes, and the nasal and oral cavities. Membranes responsive to sound pressures are located at the positions of the ear drums or other auditory organs."

The technical articles were all published in New Scientist magazine in 1983. The references are:

• "'Tomorrow's sound' is a blast from the past" by Barry Fox, New Scientist, Volume 98, page 24 (7 April 1983)
  
• "Ears hear by making sounds" by Hugo Zuccarelli, New Scientist, Volume 100, pages 438 to 440 (10 November 1983)
  
• "Letters: Zuccarelli's theory" by A. J. Baxter and David T. Kemp, New Scientist, Volume 100, page 606 (24 November 1983)
  

Zuccarelli's article is basically nonsense. David Kemp's letter begins, "Not since 1 April last have I read a 'scientific' article so devoid of scientific understanding, logic and rational thought ...".

This doesn't mean that the "Ringo" dummy head doesn't work. As you have discovered it works extremely well, but works the same way as any other binaural dummy head recording technique.

Regards,
Martin

Thanks for that... even if it is four years after the last post in the thread!

But welcome to the SOS forums anyway.

Hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Quote Tim.:

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I’ve got several binaural records, most notable ones are by Can and Lou Reed.

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Hi Tim, could you tell me which albums by Can are binaural? Are they binaural versions of otherwise non-binaural albums?

Thanks

Quote Hugh Robjohns:

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Thanks for that... even if it is four years after the last post in the thread!

But welcome to the SOS forums anyway.

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I rely on Google Alerts to inform me of threads of interest. They can sometimes be a little slow, particularly with the Sound On Sound forum.

Regards,
Martin

Quote coool:

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the first 2 albums by PsychicTV (1984 ish) used holophonic techniques, including the sound of being buried alive. i think it used a skull shaped transducer .. extremely life like sound but i only ever really heard it on a cheap 1980's hi fi, and ive never come across the cd's

grainger

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I have Dreams Less Sweet on CD- they did a brief reissue once. I always like the Tibetan Bowls bit with the headphones on. Close your eyes & the effect is something else...

It's on ebay btw (not my copy I hasten to add), just do a search on the title

Happy album isn't it? In fact I'd go so far as to say "poppy". If I was any more disturbed than the album itself that is.

In Thee Nursery actually scared a mate of mine. Terrified her. Mad.

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cheers, Rob

Edited by Rob R (31/05/10 10:30 AM)

Quote Martin Leese:

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I rely on Google Alerts to inform me of threads of interest. They can sometimes be a little slow, particularly with the Sound On Sound forum.

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A little?

On the basis of this thread, you might want to consider semaphore or carrier pigeon?

Since most if not all of the above links are long dead, I've found this, but it takes ages to load... see if you can make it work!

it's taking blimmin ages though... ah.. doesn't like my firefox, but ok with safari...

The rain storm fails to load, but I do recommend a haircut!

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cheers, Rob

Edited by Rob R (01/06/10 06:44 PM)

One thing I've noticed is that, I think the brain is aware of where we are when considering the reflections. I mean, when the binaural image matches the room you're in, the effect is more convincing. The 'virtual haircut' was particularly convincing because I was facing a wall (like in a barbers chair) and I think the room probably matched my own.

Listening to a storm while sitting in a corridor is likely to be less convincing. I was pretty dissappointed when I took my recordings (and headphones) to my friends house and it didn't have the same effect as when played in the same room it was recorded.

1. Azimuth coordinator (Pink Floyd quadraphonic joystick)
2. Surely time for SOS to profile the real Dave Stewart and a classic Eurythmics track - would love to know about some of the production, especially the drums and some of the weirdly blinding guitar solos - Ball and Chain is a good example - and natch how they recorded Annie's vox...