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Binaural Recording Technology: a Historical Review and Possible Future Developments

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Binaural Recording Technology: a Historical Review and Possible Future Developments See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233582452 Binaural Recording Technology: A Historical Review and Possible Future Developments Article in Acta Acustica united with Acustica · August 2009 Impact Factor: 0.78 · DOI: 10.3813/AAA.918208 CITATIONS READS 9 810 1 author: Stephan Paul Federal University of Santa Catarina 43 PUBLICATIONS 52 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Available from: Stephan Paul Retrieved on: 16 May 2016 ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Review Article Vol. 95 (2009) 767 –788 DOI 10.3813/AAA.918208 Binaural Recording Technology: AHistorical Reviewand Possible Future Developments Stephan Paul Laboratory of Vibration and Acoustics, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. [email protected] Summary The facsimile or true-to-original reproduction of sound events is of great interest in acoustics and related areas and has been researched for manyyears. One form of achieving this is binaural technology.Manyconsider binaural technology avery modern technology and some even consider that it is strictly related to and was invented for sound quality research. However, binaural technology,especially recording technology,has been established for some time and, in fact, the first steps were made in around 1880. Over the decades this technology has made enormous advances, due to the dedication of manypeople, butsome challenges related to achieving atrue facsimile are still to be resolved. The most important milestones and also the remaining challenges are presented herein and the prospects for the near future are discussed. PACS no. 43.38.Md, 43.60.Dh, 43.66.Pn, 43.66.Qp, 43.66.Ts, 43.66.Vt 1. Introduction 2. On the understanding of binaural hear- ing and technology Recording and reproduction of sound signals in such a waythat the sound event is restored entirely has always Due to the nature of this article, which is ahistorical re- been of special interest to people engaged in the recording, view, ashort note should be givenonearly research into transmission and reproduction of sound. To achieve this binaural hearing and about the term binaural itself. Ac- objective several techniques have been developed, includ- cording to Wade and Deutsch [1], who compiled acom- ing stereophonic techniques and binaural recording and re- prehensive reviewofearly research into binaural hearing, production techniques. The latter are also known as head- the work of Wells in 1792 and Venturi in 1796 were prob- related stereophonyordummy-head technology. ably the first studies ever on the topic of binaural hear- ing. During the nineteenth century and at the beginning of Within the last fewyears, interest in binaural recording the twentieth century other researchers dealt with binau- and reproduction have increased once again, due to ad- ral hearing, such as Wheatstone [2], Dove [3, 4], Seebeck vances in auralization and also the popularization of the [5], Alison, Steinhauser [6], Thompson [7, 8, 9] and J. W. Internet, where users can findalarge number of binaural Strutt (Lord Rayleigh)[10]). Theylargely agreed that the recordings or simulations. Manyofthese websites, nearly presence of twosound receivers, the ears, is responsible all commercial publications and even some published con- for alarge portion of the sophistication of human sound ference papers, give the impression that binaural technol- perception, enabling localization and distance perception ogy,especially manikins and artificial heads, are relatively of sound sources1. recent inventions. However, attempts to obtain signals and The term binaural itself was, according to Wade and reproduce true-to-original sound have been made for over Deutsch [1], coined by Alison in 1861 to describe that 100 years, and manypeople have spent considerable effort twoears are involved in human hearing. Accordingly,the on the development of the technology. term wasoften used until the 1970s for techniques that This article will reviewsome important milestones in recorded or reproduced twosignals destined for the two 2 the development of manikins and artificial heads and will ears ,not necessarily to describe signals that have been give abrief outlook of possible future developments. modified by the human body,and would therefore corre- spond to the signals at the eardrum of alistener.Also, the 1 Other important binaural effects such as the cocktail-party effect and the precedence effect (Haas-effect)were discovered later. Received25September 2008, 2 Kinns misused the term binaural even in the title of apaper on beam- accepted 30 June 2009. forming using twoclosely spaced microphones [11]. ©S.Hirzel Verlag · EAA 767 ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Paul: Binaural recording technology Vol. 95 (2009) term does not necessarily describe techniques that mod- ify the signals similarly.Consequently,systems that deliv- ered two-channel sound were called binaural, as well as stereophonic, the latter term probably being coined in the 1880s. Bell may have been the first to have mixed up the twoterms when he wrote about “stereophonic phenomena of binaural audition” [12]. Bell understood stereo as be- ing related to the spatial impression provided by hearing with twoears (binaural). Also, Blumlein’sfamous patent on stereo [13] used the term binaural in its description. Fletcher,inthe 1920s, may have been the first to use the term binaural for arecording technique and Hammer and Snow[14] were probably the first to distinguish be- tween binaural and stereophonic pick-up. Theyconsidered asystem fully binaural when the signals acquired with adummy head (e.g. “Oscar”)were reproduced by head- phones. Systems that do not comply with this require- Figure 1. Diagram of the microphone and transmission set-up ment were then called stereophonic. The terms “dummy used for the first documented stereophonic transmission by Clé- (head)” or “artificial head” were also already used in the ment Ader in 1881, after [19]. 1920s [15, 16]. At the end of the 1930s De Boer and Ver- meulen introduced the German term “Kunstkopf”[17], a term that wasalso adopted by English-speaking authors. The pick-up consisted of multiple carbon pencil micro- In the 1950s Snow[18] also gave distinctive definitions for phones, placed pairwise on the stage. The signals were binaural and stereophonic sound pick-up, butconsidered transmitted pairwise (Figure 1) to be reproduced with the imprecise definition of terms acommon phenomenon monaural headphones, typical of early telephones, one for in newdevelopments. each ear. The distinctive definition of Hammer and Snoworthe Hospitalier [19] compared Ader’sinvention with stere- terms coined by Fletcher,Firestone, and DeBoer and Ver- oscopy, butdid not coin the term stereophony3.Later the meulen were not generally adopted and until the 1970s the invention wasnamed théâtrophone in France and elec- terms binaural and stereophonic were used mostly as syn- trophone elsewhere, and it wasused commercially until onyms. 1932.4 Later mixed terms such as “binaural stereophony”, Genuit, Gierlich and Bray [27] as well as Stahl [28] “dummy head stereo(phony)”, “head-related stereo- maintain that as early as 1886 artificial heads were used (phony)”or“Kunstkopfstereophonie”were also created. in the Bell laboratories. Nevertheless, the author of the Today the term binaural technology is used to describe present article can not confirm this fact, and it should be the fact that twosignals are obtained, stored or reproduced noted that, in fact, Bell Laboratories as aresearch institu- in such away that the signals correspond to the sound sig- tion of this name came into existence only on 1st of Jan- nals that would be found at the eardrum of alistener,or uary 1925 when WE Engineering and AT&T Engineering another well-defined reference point in the ear canal, af- formed the Bell Telephone Laboratories.5 Also one should ter being modified by the human body.Byobtaining and bear in mind that the microphones available in 1886, see reproducing these signals the auditory event can be repro- Beranek [29]6 for short overviewofearly microphone de- duced as closely as possible, that is, the signal is true-to- velopments, would hardly fit into an artificial head. If one original. assumes instead that the signals were captured without mi- crophones and transmitted using tubes, then such an artifi- 3. Initial steps: From pairwise microphones cal head would have been possible. The fact that humans can localize sound sources using their binaural hearing ca- to the first manikin In order to provide better audio transmissions of opera 3 There are some sources that affirm that the English term stereophonic pieces, experiments with several pairs of spaced micro- wasfirst used by Western Electric Inc. phones started as early as 1881 when Ader filed apatent 4 Formore information on Ader’sinvention and its commercial use see on “Improvements of atelephone equipment in theatres”. e.g [22, 25, 23]. The same year,under his guidance, the first wire trans- 5 Also, Jont B. Allen, formerly at Bell Labs., and Gary Elkostated in mission of paired microphone signals from the Paris opera apersonal communication that theywere not aware of the fact that a house to rooms in the Palais of the Paris Electrical Ex- manikin had been used before the 1920s. Jont B. Allen is aware that in around 1920/21 Goehner made the first artificial head for astereo system position more than twokilometers away were carried out and that Alexander Graham Bell came to the labs to see it. Unfortunately, [19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24]. The same pick-up systems were Lucent Technologies, which incorporated the former Bell Labs., did not also during the Paris Electrical Exposition of 1881, in- respond to arequest for access to the historical archivesofBell Labs. stalled in L’operacomique and Le téâtreFrançais [20]. 6 See also some corrections and comments made by Miessner [30]. 768 Paul: Binaural recording technology ACTA ACUSTICA UNITED WITH ACUSTICA Vol. 95 (2009) pabilities wasused as early as in World WarI,for localiza- tion of both aircraft and submarines.
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