Gadgetory

hey you should wear headphones for this it's gonna be pretty cool I mean it'll be cool without them but trust me it'll be a lot more cool if you put on headphones a couple years ago I was on the internet looking at pictures of Radiohead in the studio because look at me of course this guy's on the internet looking at pictures of Radiohead in the studio and I came across this picture of Thom Yorke the lead singer playing piano with this little mannequin head with a hat on and little audio cables coming out the ends of it and I was like what is this thing luckily there's an even nerdier person on another Radiohead site who was like this is a binaural microphone it's a special type of microphone that has two microphones embedded in the ears and when played back on headphones it will sound like Thom Yorke is in the room with you playing piano just for you this blew my mind I got extremely into binaural audio and guess what listen to this this is binaural audio right now if you're wearing headphones over here there's people walking on the other side you should you get at car honk maybe they'll replace that in space cut the other camera so well how we're doing this is with this other microphone it's not a mannequin head this is made by three do and check this out get a little close here so this looks like a real ear and it actually flexes like a real ear so it looks kind of funny but it actually plays an important role and the way we hear things before the sound gets the microphone it bounces around all these little surfaces and shapes sound in the same way your ear would shape sound before it reaches your eardrum hello my dear you should be hearing me on your left side right now and now you should be hearing me on your right side my dear initial googling zuv the keyword binaural will lead to some goofy results the most popular being binaural beats now these aren't recorded with a binaural mic they're just different tones in different years meant to elicit such things as creativity sleep concentration sexual stimulation opening your third eye all kinds of stuff it's not really science but it is pseudoscience and if you believe in it hard enough maybe the placebo effect will kick in do you feel your third-eye opening but by far the most popular form of real binaural recording comes in the form of ASMR videos you know those videos where people crinkle paper or talk very softly please for some people this triggers a very pleasurable tingly feeling the virtual barbershop is a classic follow me as I move around the back of the head to the left then there's also ASMR unboxing videos there's tons of these and then there's this guy this guy is very cool he has so many views I'm pretty sure this is his job oh my god but let's get deeper into the science of vinyl the same way we use two eyes to see in 3d we also use two ears to hear in 3d the way we do that is arrival time loudness and frequency range or Tambor so when my girlfriend's bird chirps it arrives first in the right ear and then a tiny fraction of a second later it arrives in the left ear not only that but it should be a little bit louder in the right side finally the timbre or distortion of that sound wave through the space bouncing off the walls around your head and when that sound finally arrives in each ear the shape of the sound has changed so much that the difference between the same sound of the left ear and the right ear can tell us where it came from that's why things like distance between ears their shape and the density of the material between them is so important I know you're probably thinking what about 5.1 audio yes 5.1 is immersive but it's not exactly the same let's say you're watching a movie and an explosion happens on the left side of the screen it's been paired with the sound of that explosion coming out of the left speaker wow that's a very cool effect it's still not by normal Dolby 5.1 and Dolby Atmos can't replicate it even though they're so complicated really for binaural recording you just need those microphones to simulate human hearing and a left and right channel and the thing is this isn't even a new idea people have been using techniques like this since the late 1800s look at this lady but binaural audio has grown in popularity due to one huge thing VR virtual reality right now VR headsets do a pretty good job of tricking our eyes but they usually ignore our ears the good news is that's changing pretty fast there are a decent number of companies working on not only on aural microphones but also the software that simulates binaural audio for virtual spaces and there are a few tests of this concept floating around the internet one of the most impressive was this virtual Beck performance where they made this 360-degrees stage and covered it in not only here on at sixty degree cameras but also tons of these Omni binaural microphone heads using face tracking the video and audio followed the movement of your head it worked out pretty well it's pretty cool it's too bad that it's back I'm just kidding back Beck's alright it was very cool oh and the Omni binaural microphones were made by 3d oh that's the same company that made the microphone we were using at the beginning of this video so you might not be able to tell but this is actually the outro montage to this video you might not be able to tell because it doesn't have like a cool song that it's edited to but I just wanted you to be able to hear this audio you know stand clear of the closing doors please so that is binaural audio and here is one of my cats eating wet food and here's Bev thanks for watching