BETTER HISTORY THROUGH BINAURAL

I have deliberately spaced out discussion of binaural recording and playback over a good many months here. That's because I'm aware that this is a somewhat special audio area--a fascinating hobby, a source for much profound pleasure, but one not likely to become a major commercial operation. Binaural will never be big-time. If it tries, it will simply be swallowed into stereo. So if you are looking to make millions (or lose them), turn elsewhere. Enough competition is already on hand for that, what with new digital recording systems, a digital radio system, and enough audio/video to sink the proverbial battleship. But, sound hobbyists and recording enthusiasts, indoors and out, read on! By binaural, of course, I mean true binaural, taken down via pairs of ears/ mikes somewhat less than a foot apart, with or without an intervening head, dummy or alive. And always, always, played back for listening via headphones. Not loudspeakers. True, some recognizable binaural effects can be achieved through loudspeakers with special selective circuits to enhance channel separation. I've heard them. A modified stereo, I'd call it. And not necessarily--so far--for the better. We keep expanding stereo in dozens of forms and approaches, and here is one more. If, in the end, present-day stereo can be improved by these bin aural additives, then this is all to the good. But as to reproducing binaural sound through speakers, I ordinarily find the effects (again, so far) just plain feeble and at times disturbingly unreal compared with the "original"--that is, the same through 'phones.

My own binaural experiments over many years-I began to "discover" this sound back in the "binaural" era, around 1953-have been sparse but, minus lab and minus kibitzing assistants, on the whole rather thorough. I followed where the medium led me, observing, then checking, in order to define the limits and parameters of this kind of sound reproduction. And there was-happy thought!-nobody to gainsay me. As I've said many times, scientific observation can be done both by highly trained professionals n teams and by the lone wolf who simply uses his best wits and observations.

Expensive labs can fallen masse into corporate and/or advertising wishful-think. It's only too easy. Individuals can stumble on the truth, even by sheer accident. The effect of binaural recording is entirely subjective. It's inside the head. It's in the senses.

Thus, I've progressed by fits and starts, mainly as new and easier equipment came to hand. Imagine if there had been a stereo Walkman back in 1953! Instead, I had the extremely heavy "binaural Maggie," the staggered-head, two-channel Magnecorder PT-6. Maybe Bert Whyte had the other. (I suspect there were very few of them manufactured before the "stacked" heads, both tracks recorded in the same plane, took over every thing, and thus led to today's multiple stacked heads and the ingenious whirling dervishes inside our VCRs and DATs.) I hauled Maggie up and down stairs, across acres of college campus at Washington University, down the length of endless city blocks--NO PARKING--and then went to get amps, two tall mike stands, mikes, and so on for another load. And this mostly without help. There was a blessed hiatus from that, and then came the first home tape machines. After this, the same with two channels-stereo, as it was by then called.

In 1959, I spent a month in the deep South with the first of these machines, the name of which I forget, and an accompanying pair of small crystal microphones, plus stands. Once again:

Stairs, steps, greensward by the mile, city streets, but so much less weight! The machine's "fi" at 7 1/2 ips dropped to zero at around 6 or 7 kHz, and at 3 3/4 ips it was abysmal. Moreover, the distortion was merely nominal, i.e., horrendous, easily outdone by the crystal mikes, which produced an edge you would not believe. (Some advantage to that: Distortion in the middle highs can make speech more easily intelligible with a cutoff such as we had in those days, and I took down a lot of speech.) Nevertheless, the young music students (it was a music school) were fascinated both by my stereo and by the headphone sounds I let them hear. (Permoflux still, the same 'phones I began with.) In all truth, I tiptoed around like a cat, tried to set up unobtrusively, and was as invisible as possible. But even so I aroused the annoyance of the school's leaders for distracting those students towards the nonessential-audio. This was a MUSIC school with a vengeance.

In the end, I left that place early, and I take it for granted that there was absolutely NO further mention of frivolous audio matters. Those kids, from age 12 to 16, were out to learn to play classical instruments, and so they did. Just recently I had a letter from a middle-aged professional oboist in Spokane, Washington. He remembered the summer of 1959 with pleasure-he was one of the kids who helped me carry my stuff around. Very subversive, this audio biz, at least in those days.

But I came home with a batch of highly informative tapes, however distorted. My stereo-intended recordings, made with loudspeakers in mind, were just so much more early stereo and not very good at that. I recorded the formal concerts that ended each week of practice. But to my delight, the deliberately binaural tapes of the endless rehearsals of the music (complete with starts and stops, groans, giggles, patient coaxing by the teacher/conductor), and especially the successes (after many tries, with much laughter and buzz of conversation), were startlingly impressive. Out of one of them I edited what to me was a wonderful radio pro gram, the struggle to play a piece of the Beethoven "Eroica" Symphony, beginning with squawks and groans and no sense at all, ending at last with a recognizable rendition of the music.

We broadcast it from WNYC New York in 1960, via separate AM and FM channels, and it was promoted as in tended for 'phones. Two receivers, one AM and one FM, each hooked to an ear via its 'phone. (FM stereo was still some years away.) I wonder how many listeners heard it binaurally? That program clinched an aspect of binaural recording that was becoming more and more obvious to me: This medium is nothing special for a formal concert, for any formal recording such as 50 million stereo published re leases. But, on the other hand, it is absolutely marvelous for any sort of informal "surround sound" event, from a music rehearsal to a cocktail party.

The more "interruptions" and unintended distractions-like people off in the distance, giggles startlingly a few feet to your right, a sneeze to your left, a dog barking in the distance-the better! My music rehearsals in binaural were, as a friend used to say, a gas. (In case you don't remember that slang, it means terrific.) I had a similar experience at about the same time at Music Mountain in Connecticut, where the Berkshire String Quartet gave weekly summer concerts n a marvelous long wooden hall, arched beams overhead, said to have been made out of two Sears, Roebuck and Co. portable houses.

(This has to be apocryphal; if the in sides were removed, the houses would have collapsed in a heap.) I knew the members of this superb quartet and got permission to record a concert or two in that new medium, stereo. I did, with pleasure, but no special results.

Others could do that far better than I could and with fancier equipment. But then, inspired by experience, I asked if I could attend a day's rehearsal and experiment with something else, bin aural recording. This time the musicians were wonderful. They ignored me even when I practically tripped over them, trying to see how close and how far I could advantageously place my mikes! The momentous answer was, anywhere. For binaural, that is. At any distance at all, from the back of the hall many yards away to a foot or so from the musicians' instruments. It did not matter. Wherever I went, the play back sound was exactly what I heard on the spot. It was a good hall. The acoustics, though too live without audience, still made it possible to listen "live" almost anywhere in the big space. That hall is still functioning and it is still one of the best, with an audience in attendance to damp down the shiny sound.

So I learned a new principle. Any thing that sounds okay or interesting to the living ears will sound the same (or better, with a bit of volume enhancement) when recorded and played back binaurally. Anything. Can you say that of stereo recording for loudspeakers? One of my bright thoughts-still viable today-was binaural for students who wanted to record lectures. You know the problem. Can't get close enough.

The professor walks around and back and forth, ignoring any nearby mikes, as professors always do. At a distance he records unintelligibly. He mumbles, he shouts, he makes asides. No use.

Not so in binaural sound! If you can hear what he is saying from your seat with your own two ears, binaural re cording there will bring him to you just as clearly, or a bit more so if you turn him up a bit. You can sit at the back of the hall and attend the lecture all over again with the very same sound. Try it.

Try it on today's tiny recorder! Never was binaural so easy to achieve. Listen on 'phones, of course.

The epitome of my recordings of "incidental" sounds in binaural came a bit later, with better equipment. I set up two mikes, 6 or 7 inches apart, on a chair and recorded an entire cocktail party for some dozens of people, preparatory to Thanksgiving turkey. At slow speed, with by then better quality, this tape ran unbroken for at least an hour of an increasing buzz of talk, everybody talking at once.

As a loudspeaker recording, it is unintelligible. Three minutes and you give up. Through 'phones, suddenly you are surrounded by live people, startlingly real. And you can understand! You find yourself in the midst of small conversations, on one side or the other; you can listen to each, as you wish.

Exactly as in the living situation. It was an astonishing experience, and the only flaw in the whole recording was when a couple of kids tipped the mikes onto heir noses. I didn't discover this for minutes--I was part of the conversations. Unfortunately, at least half of those familiar voices are now gone.

Dead 30 years, maybe more. But the tape still is there. Can you begin to understand the power of this very uncommercial form of audio recording? Oral history of a sort nobody has yet tried. Except maybe me.

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY; adapted from Audio magazine, Feb. 1992)

= = = =