Saturday, February 4, 2012

3D Sound from Princeton

I went to a fancy lecture last night by this guy, Edgar Choueiri, who is working on a 3d audio technology he called BACCH, which is essentially a filter with some crazy math applied to stereo recordings that is supposed to give the listener a realistic experience.  I'm not quite sold on it.  I only heard it used with weird sound effects, like flies buzzing around the head.  I'd like to try it on recordings with sounds I am familiar with, like music.

Here's a video that explains it, and has a few examples that are designed to employ your laptop speakers to experience the effect.


Here is what Princeton says about it, from http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/video/player/?id=3990:

Edgar Choueiri, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has developed a way to play true three-dimensional sound recordings over regular loudspeakers, such as those found in televisions and computer laptops.
The technique may one day be used to allow 3D televisions to produce lifelike sound and to help people with certain types of hearing impairments locate noises. Segments of the video above incorporate Choueri's 3D filter to demonstrate the phenomenon.
The filter is designed to work with loudspeakers - not headphones - and can be experienced through standard computer speakers. (Make sure the right and left speakers are on the correct sides.)
Note: If you are using a recent Apple MacBook to view this video you may not be able to hear the demos in 3D due to a known problem in the MacBook design, related to the location of the internal "subwoofer," which creates a strong left-right imbalance in the audio. This could not be compensated for while creating the 3D audio for this video.
Video by Michael E. Wood

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