AES San Francisco 2008
Consumer Products and Applications Event M2
Friday, October 3, 9:00 am — 11:00 amM2 - Binaural Audio Technology—History, Current Practice, and Emerging Trends
Presenter:
Robert Schulein, Schaumburg, IL, USA
Abstract:
During the winter and spring of 1931-32, Bell Telephone Laboratories, in cooperation with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, undertook a series of tests of musical reproduction using the most advanced apparatus obtainable at that time. The objectives were to determine how closely an acoustic facsimile of an orchestra could be approached using both stereo loudspeakers and binaural reproduction. Detailed documents discovered within the Bell Telephone archives will serve as a basis for describing the results and problems revealed while creating the binaural demonstrations. Since these historic events, interest in binaural recording and reproduction has grown in areas such as sound field recording, acoustic research, sound field simulation, audio for electronic games, music listening, and artificial reality. Each of theses technologies has its own technical concerns involving transducers, environmental simulation, human perception, position sensing, and signal processing. This Master Class will cover the underlying principles germane to binaural perception, simulation, recording, and reproduction. It will include live demonstrations as well as recorded audio/visual examples.