Sunday Sound Thought 39 – Inherent Spatialization

As the year continues, many of these posts will be philosophical in nature. Some will be in contradiction to previous postings. These are not intended as truths or assertions, they’re merely thoughts…ideas. Think of this as stream of consciousness over a wide span…

I’ve been working on a 360/VR short, and also been testing various workflow approaches to derive the binaural mix-down for final headphone playback. In thinking about this process, panning and spatialization in particular, I’ve found myself frequently considering the inherent differences between a binaural playback medium and our more traditional playback array. Binaural encoders create the “forward” stage with varying degrees of success. Some are better than others, but…personally…I’ve found many of them still suffer from the between the ears perception. Overall, they seem to do better creating a space behind you than creating a space in front of you.

In our more traditonal playback systems, the forward stage is literally in front of you. Unless you stand on top of the LCR speakers, they’re always going to be in front of you. The traditional playback system just has an easier job of creating distance than binaural, simply because the playback sources are at a distance. Where they fail is creating a sense of presence within that space. There are no sound sources inside the circumference of a theatrical (or even home theater) playback system. You’d need wave field synthesis to pull that off. That’s where binaural has an easier time. This may have already been obvious, but the work I’ve been doing lately has been pulling these characteristics to the forefront of my mind…and there’s something in there that’s affecting the way I think about panning and localization in both types of projects.