My buddy Hrafn over at Think Artificial found this fantastic audio recording that sounds exactly like you’re getting a haircut. I thought it was so cool that I had to do some research.
These are called Holophonic sounds and are made to be listened to with headphones. They are recorded with a dummy head that has two microphones, one in each ear. The shape of the head and ears must be similar to a human head.
Select the red play button to listen
The Virtual Haircut (Download Zip):
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The Holophonic Matchbox (Download Zip):
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A Woman’s Voice (Download Zip):
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Blow Drying (Download Zip):
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Tuning Fork (Download Zip):
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Shears (Download Zip):
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Dogs Running (Download Zip):
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Dogs Barking (Download Zip):
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Loud Frogs (Download Zip):
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Sexy Woman’s Invitation (Download Zip):
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Jazz Band (Download Zip):
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Flutes in Singapore (Download Zip):
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Digital Vivaldi (Download Zip):
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Crumpling Bag (Download Zip):
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that was really cool it was really weird to
ok that womens voice gave me a chill..and then the virtual haircut…wow those are amazing and i would never think of doing such an awesome thing..wow great job! (:
Could you please put the files up as .mp3 ?
I’ve now uploaded the files. They are Zipped because if I put MP3s up they automatically convert into players. This should allow people to download them and listen to them on an iPod or whatever.
John
anyone know where I can find any more?
How to make it? i would like to do that.
There is an audio cassette tape from the 1990′s that employs this in a holophonic radio-style drama except you can hear the people walking around you as if you’re right there. Look it up, it’s Steven Kings, “The Mist” It’s not scary per se, but very enveloping.
what was the woman saying?
Excellent!
there are many more here:
http://funnylinkz.blogspot.com/search/label/Audios
Thanks for the pointer Raman! I’m going to add these and a few more to the post.
John
Hotlinking to other people’s files is considered poor netiquette. It is much preferable to link to the person’s site instead. Otherwise you are using their bandwidth, without them getting the benefit of visitors (e.g. if you get linked on boingboing, his bandwidth will go through the roof). Unless you have asked permission from the owner of quietamerican.org, I’d recommend you remove those particular files.
Very Funny
Wow. I can’t believe someone just lectured me about hotlinking.
In the future it would probably be better not to accuse someone of being unethical until you’ve clearly thought through the logic. But of course, it’s always easy to take pot-shots without thinking when you are being anonymous, isn’t it.
John P.
@ John,
Aaron here from quietamerican.org…
Fwiw the tracks you link to *are* the album, they total about two hours. Almost all of the work I do is available under Creative Commons on my site, the CC license is on the contact page. I do sell people CDs but that’s usually because they want full-fidelity versions, they want an object to hold with cover art, they want to support me, to give as gifts, or because they don’t have the bandwidth to download the tracks.
I don’t mind people linking with credit, though I usually do prefer a link to the page instead of “deep linking” it’s not a big deal. I understand that flash players are more convenient. In this case people might be interested to know how that album was made — it documents a series of sound sculpture that randomly mix several layers of selected source sounds to create a never-repeating soundscape; the point being, I recorded the sounds and built libraries of them, but I didn’t ‘compose’ those tracks… chance did…
Fwiw I get a lot of traffic already, thanks ;) — much of it is going to the one-minute vacation project. I have gotten hit by BoingBoing and digg a few times, but until I go overbandwidth my host is pretty stout.
Final comment ~ my recordings aren’t holophonic or true binaural recording (though I do have mics to do that, which are small enough to stick in your ear canals…); they’re made with mics that compromise between true binaural more conventional stereo. True binaural can sound noticeably odd over normal speakers.
Aaron,
Thanks for stopping by and clearing that matter up. I’m glad to hear that you’ve gotten some good exposure for these recordings in the past. I think they are quite interesting myself.
If you get to the point where the downloads are becoming a burden on bandwidth just let me know and I’ll either remove them or put copies on this server. One of the good things about the embedded player is that you don’t need to wait for them to completely download to begin playing. This also means that if someone stops the playback the download ceases as well.
Thanks also for explaining the difference between how your recordings are made and true binaural. Either way, they do sound cool through a set of headphones. :-)
Take care,
John
Wow, that’s freaky! The woman’s voice track is so real. I could almost feel her breath on my neck as she whispered in my ear. Same for the haircut. It made me feel physical sensations as if I were actually in a barber’s chair getting the haircut. That is utterly fantastic!! Thanks for the find.
Yes, the tricks our mind can play on us are quite interesting. It sometimes makes me wonder how much we can trust our own senses when it comes to how we perceive reality. It also makes it easy to see why a disease like Schizophrenia can do this to you.
John
Hi John,
Urp, I just checked and saw that I’m at over 90% of my monthly b/w at the moment, for some reason there was a huge spike today about 10x my normal traffic — since I last checked in I’ve been riding a wave of about 3-4x normal, but this is going to push me over the edge… :/
With that in mind, could I take you up on your kind offer for local hosting and/or temporarily disabling those links (or linking to much smaller files on my site)?
(Glad this didn’t happen next week, I’ll be at Burning Man all week and wouldn’t have known my site was down until I returned!)
Best,
Aaron
Sorry about that Aaron. You may be seeing pass through traffic from this page because it’s been getting a lot of play in the last few days. Yesterday the article was read over 2,600 times and over 1,000 already today. Sorry if this has been pushing your bandwidth over the edge, but the good news is that means that lots of people are enjoying your work! :-)
I still have a rediculous amount of bandwidth available (I’m at like 3% of my monthly alotted bandwidth on this box) so when I get a chance I’ll put them here on my server to take the strain off. In the meantime I’ve disabled the embedded player so hopefully that stops the pass-through load.
If there are a few of your smaller recordings which you would like featured on this page please let me know which ones you think are most appropriate (given the holophonic nature of the page). I have listened to some of them but I certainly didn’t have time to go through many. You have such an extensive collection! ;-)
John
The woman was saying “I’m getting closer, I’m getting closer” and, upon reaching your ear, she said “I’m really close”
it is great ….
please listen ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’…..instrumental track from the 1970 Pink Floyd album Atom Heart Mother….
they did a great virtual space in it….anybody want this track please mail me i will send to you
girishav_2000@yahoo.com
Cool sounds but do they have a purpose like medical purpose or something or are they just for fun?
S.
Thanks for posting these! My students came across your site and it served for unique classroom experience. =)
Do you have holophonic of ocean wave or waterfall ?
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