by Roger Nichols
It is now February 3, 1997, and I am writing my January 1997 column which has to be turned in by December 9, 1996. (Confused already?) As it turns out, it doesn't matter (the third type of matter along with matter and anti-matter) when you think it is, it just matters when I think it is. When it comes to faster than light travel of any kind, it is always based on the reference point involved.
As an example, consider a shadow, that dark spot that is left behind when you place something in front of a light source. Put your finger about three inches from a light bulb and look at the shadow on the wall. Move your finger over about two inches so that the shadow now falls somewhere else on the wall. The shadow on the wall is moving hundreds of times faster than your finger. If the shadow is further away from the light source, then the shadow will move even faster. If you move the wall far enough away from the light source the shadow will be moving faster than the speed of light. I am at this very moment trying to figure out how to apply this to digital delays.
I have figured out how to compensate for some of the delay in MIDI sequencing. I took two identical MIDI sequencers, started the sequences at the same time and then shipped one of them via FedEx and the other one via UPS. They were routed around the world in opposite directions and scheduled for Saturday delivery back here in Nashville. When they returned, I noticed that the one that traveled Eastbound was 0.000001 seconds ahead of the one that traveled around the World in the Westerly direction. I also noticed that the Eastbound package carrier charged me for an extra day because of the International Date Line crossing. This may be the solution for any recording project that is experiencing MIDI timing problems and also has big FedEx budgets.
Audio Cables
It has been known for quite some time that sound travels faster in water than in air. My first experiments have been with water filled audio cables. Actually, I just ran some speaker wire through a garden hose. The sound was much cleaner and my overheated voice coils were cooled by the leaks. Wharfdale, an English speaker manufacturer, used to fill their speaker cabinets with sand. My next project will be to fill my speaker cabinets with water. As a mater of fact, I plan on using heavy water, D2O. Now that I think about it, they used to power the Wharfdales with Leak amplifiers.
Holophonic Sound
About fifteen years ago I heard a demo of a 3D sound system called Holophonics. The recordings were done with a binaural head and processing electronics that retained the imaging cues needed by the human brain. One of the demo recordings was of a person cutting your hair. The image sounded like it was coming from behind and above. My initial reaction was that the cues were psycho acoustic. Your brain must be saying that the image is behind you because your hair is behind you. I dismissed the system as cute, but not something I would be able to use in every day recordings.
A couple of months ago I was in Buenos Aires for an Audio Expo and ran into a fellow named Christian who wanted to show me the system again. I agreed, and went over to his house to listen to the system. I thought it would be another bout with the demo recordings. I was wrong. He had a Holophonics head named Ringo and the associated processing unit. I was able to listen through headphones to the live signal from the head microphones through the Holophonics processor. It was amazing.
The spatial perception was as close to perfect as you could possibly hope for. With my eyes closed, I could easily tell whether Christian was behind me (OK, I kept one eye open for that part), to the right, to the left, standing on a chair, or crouched down near the floor. He walked into another room, and I could tell that he then walked down a hall off to the right from the attached room. I also had 3D perception of sounds that were outside of the house. A plane flew over the house and I could tell that the plane was coming from my right and was to the West of the house. When a car passed by the house I could tell which street it was on and which way it was going.
For comparison, Christian turned off the processor so that I was only fed the binaural signal from the head. I could no longer discern up or down, and front to back was very difficult. Left to right seemed to be pretty good, but the quality was muddy due to the ambiance of the room.
Your brain can easily ignore extraneous sounds because you can tell where they are coming from and disregard them if they are not necessary for the information at the focus of your attention. With binaural recordings and other 3D systems that I have heard, your brain does not receive enough information for processing. With the Holophonic system, the correct information is preserved to enable your brain to do what it is very good at, throwing away unwanted information.
Holophonics requires no decoding during playback and also works very good with speakers. A couple of major movie companies are looking seriously at incorporating Holophonics into film soundtracks. Initial tests show that the 3D space in the movie theater is 10 times more realistic than with current surround systems. Watch this space for further developments.
Time March Is On
As they say, "Time is fun if you are having flies." It seems
like I just got here and it is time to go. If my next column was going to
be about sex and audio, how could I safely broach such a subject? Answer:
With an ample supply of conundrums.