68 SoundSystem DMX
3D Audio – The Background.
"3D audio" ... That does sound interesting. But it also sounds similar speech synthesis,
motion-tracking, artificial intelligence, bio-scanning, and credit card payment over the Internet.
In other words: wow, cool technology - but it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Is that
your impression too? Then follow us on a short look into today's possible technological
wonders, the objectives and background of these still young but future-looking technologies.
All good things come in twos.
Most people come with two ears. Both are usually similarly well-linked or very well-linked to
the brain. Hearing – stated simply is the combination of listening and the brain - it offers us
the ability to recognize sounds and even locate them, i.e., the direction they come from, with
some accuracy. Hold one ear closed. Carefully turn around with your eyes closed in a circle
and wait for the phone to ring. ... You'll be able to tell that the phone is ringing, but it is
doubtful that you will be able to determine its position at first. A cool experiment when it
works*.
*and a long wait when no one calls ... ;-)
Industrious developers determined from this experience that you can be trick as to the
position of a sound with speakers and even better with headphones. And rightly so, our
acoustical world picture can actually be perserved and not only that: with the help of high-
capacity processors, sounds or music can be partially free and positioned around the listener
in real time.
Let's return once again the beginnings of this development. Perhaps you still remember the
first attempt by developers to stay faithful to the motto "what comes after stereo?". By the
mid-70's there were records and tapes with so-called binauralrecordings. Microphony was
pretty special: two small microphones were placed on the inside of a plastic model skull to
scale and complete with ears and auditory canal. Stereo recordings were made in this way
which when listened to with headphones made possible an astonishing approximation of the
sound environment.
Other attempts were made placing 4 speakers which gave us the so-called quadrophony. Up
until today, many are still upset to have paid a small fortune at that time for such devices ...
All these attempts did was prove that with "Stereo" you can only get a 2-dimensional
playback. An audio signal can only be positioned between both speakers and not before,
behind, or even under them.
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