London Sound Survey

I thoroughly recommend this site for ambient recordings made in and around London.

www.soundsurvey.org.uk

What is Binaural Recording?

This blog centres around binaural recording. So what is binaural recording?

Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses a special microphone arrangement and is intended for replay using headphones. Dummy head recording is a specific method of capturing the audio, generally using a bust that includes pinnae (outer ears). Because each person’s pinnae are unique, and because the filtering they impose on sound directionality is learned by each person from early childhood, the use of pinnae during recording that are not the same as the ultimate listener may lead to perceptual confusion.

The term “binaural” has frequently been confused as a synonym for the word “stereo”, and this is partially due to a large amount of misuse in the mid-1950s by the recording industry, as a marketing buzzword. Conventional stereo recordings do not factor in natural ear spacing or “head-shadow” of the head and ears, since these things happen naturally as a person listens, generating their own ITDs (interaural time differences) and ILDs (interaural level differences). Because loudspeaker-crosstalk of conventional stereo interferes with binaural reproduction, either headphones are required, or crosstalk cancellation of signals intended for loudspeakers. As a general rule, for true binaural results, an audio recording and reproduction system chain, from microphone to listener’s brain, should contain one and only one set of pinnae (preferably the listener’s own) and one head-shadow.

With a simple recording method, two microphones are placed 18 cm (7″) apart facing away from each other. This method will not create a real binaural recording. The distance and placement roughly approximates to the position of an average human’s ear canals, but that is not all that is needed. A typical binaural recording unit has two microphones mounted in a dummy head, inset in ear-shaped moulds to fully capture all of the audio frequency adjustments known as head-related transfer functions that happen naturally as sound wraps around the human head and is “shaped” by the form of the outer and inner ear.

Today, “in-ear” or “near-ear” microphones are now readily available and can be linked to a portable digital recorder, bypassing the need for a dummy head by using the recordist’s own head. Clip-on binaural microphones using the recordist’s own head are offered by Core Sound, Sound Professionals and Soundman amongst others.

Once recorded, the binaural effect can be reproduced using headphones. Binaural reproduction does not work with mono playback; nor does it work while using loudspeaker units, as the acoustics of this arrangement distort the channel separation via natural crosstalk.

The result is a listening experience that spatially transcends normally recorded stereo, since it accurately reproduces the effect of hearing a sound in person, given the 360° nature of how human ears pick up nuance in the sound waves. Binaural recordings can very convincingly reproduce the location of sound behind, ahead, above, or wherever else the sound actually came from during recording.

Any set of headphones that provide good right and left channel isolation are sufficient to hear the immersive effects of the recording, and anyone who has even a cheap set of headphones can enjoy the recordings. As with any playback, higher quality headphones will do a better job of creating the illusion.

Binaural recording in Place de la Bastille

Bastille; Manifestation ‘sans-papiers’ – 29-05-2010

Last Saturday I went out sound-hunting searching for more binaural street recordings to add to my Paris Soundscape collection. First stop was the Gare de Lyon where I made a ten-minute recording of the ambient sound in the station. Unfortunately, the station was not particularly busy and the recording I made reflects the lack of activity, quite unlike the recording I made recently in the Gare du Nord which is much more lively. From the Gare de Lyon I walked via the Porte d’Arsenal to Place de la Bastille where, to my delight, a demonstration was in progress. Ideal territory for a street sound-hunter.

There, I found hundreds of  ‘sans-papiers’on the steps of the opera Bastille. It seems that, according to the CGT union, about 1.500 of them were occupying the steps of the Bastille opera  in pursuit of their claim for a defining text from the French government on the criteria for the regularization of the ‘sans-papiers’.  The occupation in front of the opera started on Thursday at the end of the wider Parisian demonstration against the end of the retirement age of 60. Eleven trade unions and associations supporting the movement were present including the PCF (Partie Communiste Français) including their national secretary, Marie-George Buffet, the PS (Partie Socialist) with Pascale Boistard and the Anti-Capitalist Party represented by their leader, Olivier Besançon.

I have attached a very short extract of some of the speeches. The original recording is much longer and was recorded in wav format. In order to conserve space on this blog I have compressed the file to MP3.

Notes about the Bastille area of Paris

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Bastille was a fortress-prison in Paris, known formally as Bastille Saint-Antoine—Number 232, Rue Saint-Antoine—best known today because of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, which along with the Tennis Court Oath is considered the beginning of the French Revolution. The event was commemorated one year later by the Fête de la Fédération The French national holiday, celebrated annually on 14 July is officially the Fête Nationale, and officially commemorates the Fête de la Fédération, but it is commonly known in English as Bastille Day. Bastille is a French word meaning “castle” or “stronghold”, or “bastion”; used with a definite article (la Bastille in French, the Bastille in English), it refers to the prison.

Early history of the Bastille

The Bastille was built as the Bastion de Saint-Antoine during the Hundred Years’ War. The Bastille originated as the Saint-Antoine gate, but from 1370–1383 this gate was extended to create a fortress to defend the east end of Paris and the Hôtel Saint-Pol royal palace. After the war, it was reused as a state prison, with Louis XIII the first king to send prisoners there

Plan of the Bastille.

The Bastille was built as an irregular rectangle with eight towers, 70 meters (220 ft) long, 30 meters (90 ft) wide, with towers and walls 25 meters (80 ft) high, surrounded by a broad moat. Originally there were two courtyards inside and residential buildings against the walls. Pairs of towers on the east and west facades served as gates through which the rue Saint-Antoine passed. In the 1400s, these were blocked up, and a new city gate was created to the north on the present day rue de la Bastille. A bastion on the eastern approaches was built later. A very significant military feature of the building was that the walls and towers were of the same height and width and connected by a broad terrace. This enabled soldiers on the wall head to rapidly move to a threatened sector of the fortress without having to descend inside the towers, as well as allowing placement of artillery. A similar provision can be seen today at Château de Tarascon.

Storming

The archives of the Bastille show that the building largely held common criminals (forgers, embezzlers, swindlers, etc.), as well as people imprisoned for religious reasons and those responsible for printing or writing forbidden pamphlets. People of high rank were sometimes held there too, and so the prison (which could only hold a little over 50 people) was far less sordid a place than most of the Parisian prisons. But the secrecy maintained around the Bastille and its prisoners gave it a sinister reputation.

The confrontation that led to the people of Paris storming the Bastille on 14 July 1789, following several days of disturbances, resulted from the fact that gunpowder and arms had been stored there, and the people (whose fears had been raised by a number of rumors) demanded access to these. The later idea that they wanted to free the prisoners (only 7 of whom remained) has been discounted. The regular garrison consisted of 82 invalides (veteran soldiers no longer capable of service in the field) under Governor Bernard-René de Launay. They had however been reinforced by a detachment of 32 grenadiers from one of the Swiss mercenary regiments summoned to Paris by the King shortly before 14 July.

A crowd of around 8800 men and women gathered outside around mid-morning, calling for the surrender of the prison, the removal of the guns and the release of the arms and gunpowder. Two people chosen to represent those gathered were invited into the fortress and slow negotiations began.

In the early afternoon around 1:00, the crowd broke into the undefended outer courtyard and the chains on the drawbridge to the inner courtyard were cut. A spasmodic exchange of gunfire began; in mid-afternoon the crowd was reinforced by mutinous Gardes Françaises of the Royal Army, and two cannons, all of which were originally supposed to help the governor protect the prison. De Launay ordered a ceasefire; in spite of his surrender demands being refused, he capitulated and the vainqueurs swept in to liberate the fortress at around 5:30.

When the rioters entered the Bastille, they collected cartridges and gunpowder for their weapons and then freed the seven prisoners (which they had to do by breaking down the doors, since the keys had already been taken off and paraded through the streets). Later, the governor and some of the guards of the Bastille were killed under chaotic circumstances, despite having surrendered under a flag of truce, and their heads paraded on pikes.

As a symbolic gesture, the key to the west portal of the Bastille was presented on March 17, 1790 by Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington and is displayed in George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon^.

Demolition

Remaining stones of the Bastille are still visible now on Boulevard Henri IV

The propaganda value of the Bastille was quickly seized upon, notably by the showy entrepreneur Pierre-François Palloy, “Patriote Palloy”. The fate of the Bastille was uncertain, but Palloy was quick to establish a claim, organising a force of demolition men around the site on the 15th. Over the next few days many notables visited the Bastille and it seemed to be turning into a memorial. But Palloy secured a license for demolition from the Permanent Committee at the Hôtel de Ville and quickly took complete control.

Pierre-François Palloy secured a fair budget and his crew grew in number. He had control over all aspects of the work and the workers, even to the extent of having two hanged for murder. Palloy put much effort into continuing the site as a paying attraction and producing a huge range of souvenirs, including much of the rubble. The actual demolition proceeded apace; by November, 1789, the structure was largely demolished. The cut stones of the fortress were used in the construction of the Pont de la Concorde.

The area today

The former location of the fort is currently called the Place de la Bastille. It is home to the Opéra Bastille. The large ditch (fossé) behind the fort has been transformed into a marina for pleasure boats, the Bassin de l’Arsenal, to the south, and a covered canal, the Canal Saint Martin, extending north from the marina beneath the vehicular roundabout that borders the location of the fort.

Some undemolished remains of one tower of the fort were discovered during excavation for the Métro (rail mass-transit system) in 1899, and were moved to a park (the Square Henri-Galli) a few hundred meters away, where they are displayed today. The original outline of the fort is also marked on the pavement of streets and sidewalks that pass over its former location, in the form of special paving stones. A cafe and some other businesses largely occupy the location of the fort, and the rue Saint Antoine passes directly over it as it opens onto the roundabout of the Bastille.

Binaural Recording in the Jardin du Luxembourg

Barrel Organ; J du L

Yesterday was a public holiday so I took the opportunity to spend the afternoon in the Jardin du Luxembourg. Equipped with my binaural microphones I made several recordings of the local sound colour for my Paris Soundscape project including a barrel organ, a string quartet, games of petanque, the chess players as well as some general atmospheres. A good day and a and a good sound haul.

A history of the Jardin dy Luxembourg from Wikipedia:

In 1611, Marie de Medicis, the widow of King Henry IV and the regent for the King Louis XIII, decided to build a palace in imitation of the Pitti Palace in her native Florence. She purchased the hotel du Luxembourg (today the Petit-Luxembourg palace) and began construction of the new palace. She commissioned Salomon de Brosse to build the palace and a fountain, which still exists. In 1612 she planted 2,000 elm trees, and directed a series of gardeners, most notably Tommaso Francini, to build a park in the style she had known as a child in Florence.  Francini planned two terraces with balustrades and parterres laid out along the axis of the chateau, aligned around a circular basin. He also built the Medici Fountain to the east of the palace as a nympheum, an artificial grotto and fountain, without its present pond and statuary. The original garden was just eight hectares in size.

In 1630 she bought additional land and enlarged the garden to thirty hectares, and entrusted the work to Jacques Boyceau de la Barauderie, the indendant of the royal gardens of Tuileries and the early garden of Versailles. He was one of the early theorists of the new and more formal garden à la française, and he laid out a series of squares along an east-west alley closed at the east end by the Medici Fountain, and a rectangle of parterres with broderies of flowers and hedges in front of the palace. In the center he placed an octagonal basin with a fountain, with a perspective toward what is now the Paris observatory.

Later monarchs largely neglected the garden. In 1780, the Comte de Provence, the future Louis XVIII, sold the eastern part of the garden for real estate development. Following the French Revolution, however, the leaders of the French DIrectory expanded the garden to forty hectares by confiscating the land of the neighbouring religious order of the Carthusian monks. The architect Jean Chalgrin, the architect of the Arc de Triomphe, took on the task of restoring the garden. He remade the Medici Fountain and laid out a long perspective from the palace to the observatory. He preserved the famous pepiniere, or nursery garden of the Carthusian order, and the old vineyards, and kept the garden in a formal French style.

During and after the July Monarchy of 1848, the park became the home of a large population of statues; first the Queens and famous women of France, lined along the terraces; then, in 1880s and 1890s, monuments to writers and artists, a small-scale model by Bartholdi of his Statue of Liberty and one modern sculpture by Zadkine.

In 1865, during the reconstruction of Paris by Louis Napoleon, the rue de l’Abbeé de-Épée, (now rue Auguste-Comte) was extended into the park, cutting off about fifteen hectares, including the old nursery garden. The building of new boulevards also required moving and rebuilding the Medici Fountain to its present location.

During this reconstruction, the director of parks and promenades of Paris, Gabriel Davioud, built new ornamental gates and fences around the park, and polychrome brick garden houses. He also transformed what remained of the old Chartreux nursery garden, at the south end of the park, into an English garden with winding paths, and planted a fruit garden in the southwest corner. He kept the regular geometric pattern of the paths and alleys, but did create one diagonal alley near the Medici fountain which opened a view of the Pantheon.

The garden in the late nineteenth century contained a marionette theater, a music kiosk. greenhouses, an apiary or bee-house; an orangerie also used for displaying sculpture and modern art (used until the 1930s); a rose garden, the fruit orchard, and about seventy works of sculpture.

Binaural Recording in Monmartre

I spent all yesterday afternoon in Montmartre recording the local sound colour. The trudge up the hill from the metro Anvers was a drag but the binaural sound haul at the top was well worth the effort.

Montmartre and art are inseperable. By the end of the 19th century the area was a mecca for artists, writers, poets and their disciples, who gathered to sample the bordellos, cabarets, revues and other exotica which made Montmartre’s reputation as a place of depravity in the eyes of the city’s more sober upstanding citizens. Many of the artists and writers have long since left the area and the lively night life no longer has the same charm.

But the hill of Montmartre ( the Butte) still has it’s physical charms and the village atmosphere remains remarkably intact. Mobs of eager tourists ascend the hill, most of them gathering in the most spacious parts, particularly where quick portrait artists and souvenir sellers thrive, as in the old village square, the Place du Tertre. Tertre means hillock in French. Elsewhere there are tiny, exquisite squares, winding streets, small terraces, long stairways, plus the Butte’s most famous vineyard where the few grapes are harvested in an atmosphere of revelry in early autumn. And there are spectacular views of the city from various points, especially from the monumental Sacré-Couer. The Butte has long been a place to have fun and this tradition continues with latter-day Edith Piafs singing in the restauraunts.

The Butte is absolute heaven for street sound recordists, with the chatter in the Pace du Tertre, the street musicians including the Edith Piaf look-alikes, the key-ring maker who has been plying his trade there for years and one of the very few  places in Paris where it is possible to record traffic-free birdsong.

Yesterday I recorded them all. I will add samples in due course.

Steam Train in the Bois de Boulogne

Bois de Boulogne – Steam Train

I recorded this miniature steam train in the Bois de Boulogne a couple of weeks ago. It travels from the Jardin d’Acclimatation to Porte Dauphin and back carrying passengers on the way. It was recorded in binaural stereo.

May 19th 2010

This is the first time that I’ve entered this new (to me) world of blogging. So here goes!

I have been interested in sound recording since I received a steam driven Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder when I was ten years old. I have been recording on and off ever since. Over the years I’ve recorded many different sounds on many different recorders. This has been my hobby rather than my profession but my interest in sound recording has never wavered.

I think that today is a wonderful time to be involved in sound recording.  In recent years technology has moved on at an almost alarming rate consigning the familiar UHER stoop, so well remembered by us old enough to have suffered from that particular affliction,  to history. Now, it is possible to record excellent sound quality easily and affordably without, for the most part, having to carry around bulky equipment. In recent years, I have taken advantage of the new tecnology to pursue my particular sound recording interest, street recordings.  Using a small pair of high quality binaural stereo microphones connected to a portable digital recorder I have collected some fascinating street sounds. I intend to increase this collection in order to provide an archive of the everyday sounds that we all encounter but often largely ignore. The human brain is a great filter of unnecessary sound whereas microphones capture everything. I find this fascinating.

I would be very interested to link up with others who share my interest in sound recording and street recording in particular.