Binaural Sound

Binaural sound is any sound that has been recorded to be binaural - to take into account the spatial properties of the human head, and to distort differently according to the shape of the head, and the distance from each ear.

As such, binaural sounds echo around the user in 3D space, and are calculated relative to the position of the user's avatar, such that the sound reaches each ear at a slightly different time, corresponding to the sound source's virtual position relative to the user. This allows the brain's natural ability to pinpoint sounds to come into play, and greatly increases the sensory realism of the environment.

See Also: Binaural, Feedback Channel, Sonification

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

Acoustic Ecology Acoustic Shock Auditory Display Auditory Localization

Binaural Sound Binaural Sound Synthesis Convolve Convolvotron

Sensory Substitution Device Sonification Soundscape SSD

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Location Matters in the Cochlea – The Ear Hears Differently Than Expected
Whether you are using a cochlear implant to replace the lost sensation of sound, or recreating binaural sound within a virtual environment, a precise understanding of how the ear works is always helpful.

Hearing with more than Just Ears

It might well be that current experiments with binaural sound for VR 3D recreation of sounds based on the relative positions of the ears, and the head shape of the listener, are not quite getting the full picture of sound reception. It seems facial skin also has a part to play.

Podcast: Woody Norris: Inventing the next amazing thing: Directional Sound
The talk is primarily focussed on demonstrating his new invention 'hypersonic sound'. It is essentially a way to precisely focus sound, or as the inventor puts it "put sound where you want to." This has obvious implications for 3D sound effects in virtual reality and channeled sound cones in augmented reality.

Two-way Link Between Sound and Fear Perception
It has long been known that sound can affect our emotions. A good tune or a sound reminding us of a terrifying event, bring associated memories to mind, that bring emotional states with them. What was not realised until recently however, was that the emotional state you are in when you hear the sound, changes the sound you hear in the first place. This makes sound a surprisingly potent tool for immersion feedback.

Echo vision: The man who sees with sound
The story of Daniel Kish, a man whose senses are out of balance; a man who sees with sound.

Sound in the Brain: An Orderly Orchestra of Synapses
Unlike the mapping of the sense of smell, which has odourant maps all over the olfactory bulb in no particular order, the sense of sound is remarkably well ordered. Synapses line up in an overlapping orchestra, with multiple redundancies, a study has found.

Looks more important than Sounds in Speech
A neurological experiment has confirmed that the McGurk effect - a long-known phenomenon where what you see overrides what you hear - is indeed codified directly into the sound processing regions of the brain. Meaning the McGurk effect is not something that can be barpassed in our virtual environments, and is not a trick of sensory perception, but rather is a cornerstone of sound perception itself.

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