Binaural in Music Production
Many audio engineers find the use of binaural recording severely limiting. One issue is that microphones must be in a fixed position, giving the engineer less control over placement which will affect the sound. As well as this, there is little an engineer can do to affect spatial effects, overall balance or equalisation of sounds, stereo width and fidelity of the sound as these are largely determined by binaural sounds characteristics. Due to the high demands of the music industry, each individual instrument or sound requires a specific microphone and processing (Danso, 2017).
There are, however, some engineers, producers and productions that use binaural effectively.
Tchad Blake is an engineer known for being adventurous with his work. During his career, he has developed a unique sound using techniques and equipment such as low-fidelity distortion, vintage hardware and homemade mic filters (Huey, n.d.). Binaural is an area he has become particularly interested in and is known for his work in binaural recording. He has developed his own binaural headset as described in a Tape Op interview. ‘I got a couple of ECM 50s and just put them in my ears and it worked really well. Not great frequency response, but you can floss with it afterwards.’ ‘Mine looks like a broken pair of headphones with mics hanging over the ears. I actually just let the mics hang.’ (Murray, 2000). This binaural headset is clearly demonstrated in this short documentary. For best results, watch Figure 6 wearing headphones.
Figure 6 Tchad Blake 'Binaural Recording' Documentary
He later discusses how he also uses a Neumann KU-100 binaural head in much of his work which sounds better than his homemade setup due to the fact it uses KM-100 mics, which are similar to KM-84s. He explains how he always uses the binaural head as a drum overhead microphone.
‘That's my overhead. I haven't used conventional overheads in years. I place that slightly in front of the drums, maybe a couple of inches above the top cymbal line, facing the drummer. I try to get a lot of the drums from that. Maybe use a couple bottom tom mics if I need to. Kick and snare mics, though I don't always need to. Sometimes it's just the head.’ (Murray, 2000).
The interview details how much of his binaural work is similar to field recording and how it will be released under the sub record label Document, of Peter Gabriel's Nomad Select (Murray, 2000).
Known for his passion and expertise in binaural recording, Blake was brought in to produce Pearl Jams’ sixth studio album, ‘Binaural’, released 16th May 2000. Binaural sound was utilized on several of the tracks such as ‘Of the Girl’. Blake also mixed several of the tracks on the album.
Another example of the use of binaural in modern music production is in ‘Rolling in the Deep’ (2011) by Adele. In an interview with producer Paul Epworth and mixer Tom Elmhirst, they detail how they took inspiration from Tchad Blake using the equipment they had available to them. In this case they used the binaural set up as an ambient mic to create width (Tingen, 2011).
‘The main reason for recording at Eastcote was that I wanted to try and emulate Tchad Blake’s binaural head sound from those Tom Waits records from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. We recorded into Pro Tools at Eastcote and used a binaural head but with a couple of Schoeps [mics] either side – we couldn’t get out heads on a Neumann – and we placed stuff around the room to get the stereo width. Mark Rankin [the engineer on the Eastcote sessions] close-miked everything too, and we blended the close mics and head mics to get desired depth.’ (Tingen, 2011).
Other times where binaural sound has been used is in the album ‘Holy Fire’ (2013) by Foals. Again, it was used as a room mic to capture the width and ambience. ‘We also had another four room microphones scattered around that were used most of the time, and a Neumann KU 100 Binaural Dummy Head.’ (Tingen, 2013). In another article, Tingen explains how Janelle Monàes’ ‘The Electric Lady’ (2013) had ‘natural finger snaps recorded with a binaural head’ (Tingen, n.d.).
Figure 7 Holy Fire Binaural Recording
Macy Grays’ 2016 album ‘Stripped’ was recorded entirely in binaural in a church over 2 days. A single binaural dummy setup was used and it was recorded live with no overdubs. As well as this, it was recorded in 24-bit, 192KHz with no processing to the recorded audio. It was released under the record label Chesky, which is known for using and releasing high quality audio (Tingen, 2016). The founders, David and Norman Chesky, were also later the founders of HDtracks.com, a website specifically for purchasing high quality audio (Archer, 2012). Chesky records have recently introduced its ‘Binaural + series’. They claim their Binaural + series uses binaural that sounds realistic on headphones and also sounds good on speakers. They believe the current trend in headphone consumption means high resolution designed for this use will be popular (Chesky.com, n.d.).
Figure 8 Example of a Binaural + Series Recording
David Chesky explains how crosstalk filters in the binaural + technology which enables it to be played back accurately on speakers.
"Ralph Glasgal has a place called the Ambisonics Institute, where he's been working on crosstalk filters from a theoretical perspective. Choueiri went from there, and developed the BACCH [Band-Assembled Crosstalk Cancellation Hierarchy] filter, an amazing filter that operates to audiophile standards.” (Serinus, 2012).
It’s possible that this could be a way of reviving binaural sound. Chesky explains how the filters will one day be used in all consumer products to enable all binaural to be played back accurately on loudspeaker systems. He believes one day audio played through speakers will be able to re-create the original recording venue (Serinus, 2012).