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Originally Posted by EnOYiN /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Very nice recordings again. Makes me want to pick up a djembe and play along.
Now, I had a question about these recordings: How can you make sounds sound like they are coming from a certain direction?
I spefically mean the front and the back. The left and right are pretty obvious, but the front and back are a different story.
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The
Sonic Studios DSM ([size=x-small][size=x-small]Dimensional Stereo-surround Microphones) [/size][/size]mics I'm using in my recordings (and used on the "
Quiet American" series and for all
the Sonic Studios' demos) are omni-directional and are worn hanging from a pair of glasses-stems in these recordings just in front of the ears, so that they pick up the air-bound directional phase changes from reflections, reverberations, wind currents, nodal resonance and cancellations, etc.
and the head and body's own absorption and reflection alterations made to the sound hitting us and being reflected (or not) into our ears (direction awareness coming from nodal phase cancellations and reinforcements coming from the reflections, and awareness of the lack of thereof from the absorptions) - all these affecting the sounds as they are coming in towards us from different directions, changing the way the sound would sound if heard up close without these alterations figuring in.
If heard as a continuum, say, like one can hear clearly in
the shaking matches recording or
the rustling paper one, you can clearly hear the "filter-sweep" effect as the sound changes position. We use these cues subconsciously to cue directionality information(s) to ourselves. The relative changes to the ones heard previously help us determine the moving direction of sounds coming from a moving source.
The Pinnea (the "outer ear" folds) interact at specific frequency notches for a
quantized directionality sensitivity (that is, to help make it more obviously noticeable to our ears these otherwise subtle changes) creating specific "high-level warning" spots of focus so we hear the oncoming direction of attackers, predators and surround sound! For the sounds that sound like they are coming from behind us, I'd say the Pinnea is having the most pronounced effect on telling us about the phase info of those sounds and what direction they are coming from! The reflections off of our shoulders into the Pinnea would be the primary creators of that special phase information. These omni mics pick up that phase info directly - the Pinnea affect the notch filtering when you listen later on through your headphones, especially if the Pinnea is involved in the headphone's design like it is with Ultrasones, AKG K1000 "Speakerphones" and some other angled driver headsets.
I hope that points you in the right direction of understanding this! Especially the sounds from behind! Phase-altered (some might say phase-filtered) sound! Pretty wild, eh?
Terry
