History of Binaural
The binaural sound concept can be traced back to the early 1880s in the transmission of public performances (Pike, 2013). However, the first binaural dummy head experiments took place at Bell Telephone Laboratories and Philips Research Laboratories during the 1930’s. Engineers Steinberg and Snow, working at Bell, found using the dummy head technique makes use of the ability to ‘”to reproduce in a distant listener’s ears, by means of [headphones], exact copies of the sound vibrations that would exist in his ears if he were listening directly” (Failure and Success of Dummy Head Recording: An Innovation History of 3D Listening, 2016). Radios started to experiment with the use of binaural as early as the beginning of the 1950’s (Grentzer, 1953).
However, it wasn’t until 1972 that the first commercially available dummy head for binaural sound became available due to recording equipment being underdeveloped and the lack of an in depth understanding of human spatial hearing. When Neumann released the KU80 microphone dummy head, the popularity of binaural dramatically increased with journalists reviewing binaural sound highly and listeners demanding more binaural radio broadcasts (Failure and Success of Dummy Head Recording: An Innovation History of 3D Listening, 2016). Figure 3 shows documents that came with the KU80 when it was first released.
Click images to enlarge.
Figure 3 KU80
Figure 3 KU80
The first radio broadcast drama in binaural was ‘Demolition’ by the Berlin radio station RIAS. (Failure and Success of Dummy Head Recording: An Innovation History of 3D Listening, 2016). The BBC were also an important part of binaural radio broadcasting with a number of radio dramas broadcast in binaural, in particular in 1978 with the drama ‘The Revenge’. Binaural is still used in modern radio broadcast. For example, the BBC radio 4 documentary ‘Bravo November’ (2008) and ‘The Dark Horse’ (2002) both utilized dummy head binaural recording (Pike, 2013). There were some early critics of binaural sound, these being sound professionals. Although agreeing that binaural offered the spatial properties of a recording, the KU80 had technical flaws and limitations in the design. By the mid 1980’s binaural microphones had become regarded as a ‘failed technology’ (Failure and Success of Dummy Head Recording: An Innovation History of 3D Listening, 2016).
After binaural radio broadcasting had become such a success, broadcasters RIAS and SFB agreed to experiment and produce more recordings and experiment more. SFB decided to focus on musical recordings such as classical. The original purpose of the dummy head, created by Georg Plenge, Ralf Kürer and Henning Wilkens, was to capture an exact representation of how an audience member would perceive a musical performance in a concert hall when played back to test subjects. The reaction of SFBs’ first binaural transmission of a symphony orchestra in July 1974 was very positive.
After being granted extra funding, the company started experimenting with popular dance music of the time. There were still many recording engineers that did not believe in binaural recording, however, one that did was Wilhelm Schlemm. He was assigned the task of recording the SFB dance orchestra in Hansa-Studio in Berlin. Figure 4 is an image of Hansa Studio
where this was recorded.
Finding the sound to be lacking in interest in the studio, Schlemm chose to record the melody parts in Grunewald church which was highly regarded for its room acoustics. When demonstrated at the European Broadcasting Union, the conference report stated ‘“a number of delegates found this a very convincing recording and felt that the chorus and wind instruments were clearly distinguishable outside the hearer’s head.”’ (Failure and Success of Dummy Head Recording: An Innovation History of 3D Listening, 2016).
Figure 4 Hansa Studio
Although binaural had received highly rated feedback, it failed to take off into the mainstream of music. RIAS acknowledged there was a not a large enough amount of binaural recordings to make a regular broadcast.