Affordable Binaural Microphones? – Gearspace.com

i see someone took a similar route to me in the last post. i got my redhead with a brush cut dummy head FREE from a beauty school. they refused to take money for it, and had other used heads lying around.

hmmm… i never bothered to look for binaural here and stumbled on this thread with an “affordable” keyword search.

i built my own dummy head out of an undersized beauty school practice head using 2-3 packs of liquid metal to make my sure PZMs the right width and angled them forward about 10 degrees each. they mount to the head with velcro. i bought the SPECIFICALLY for binaural recording. like recordings i’ve heard with the sennheiser and that new “non-head” mic there’s a demo of on youtube, the small condensers sometimes have that “metallic crunch & ping” sound, especially on close sounds and my head has a vague center image, BUT i’ve made outdoor field recordings where the rig REALLY captures the ambience and “air quality” of warm summer sunsets believably with my lowly sony TC5-DM deck.

i got the idea after reading that frank zappa used to wear a pair of PZMs to make binaural recordings of live performances back in the late 80s or early 90s. i’m sure you could find a pair of PZMs for way less than i paid for them these days.

when i get back to recording, i’d like to build a new dummy head using large diaphragm mics inside ear canals to get rid of that small condenser signature that ruins the effect a lot of the time and possibly improve imaging as ear canals are part of the timing etc. needed to re-create what our ears here. i’m thinking i’d mold the head with medium density silicone, maybe even over a fiberglass lined skull model for a sort of “poor man’s achen”

i also read that one of the reviewers at audio magazine, back in the 80s, made a head out of clay back in the 50s. clay would be REALLY great for damping resonances, but also prone to constant damage and it’s heavy.

if you can do the work, DIY might be the cheapest route. in talks with the owner of binaural source, he recommended cheap schoeps capsules for DIY.

while not true binaural (as in human head shaped to capture “all” of the timing cues that affect how we hear), i’ve always wanted to try a BS3D THE AUDIO BS-3D Binaural Sphere Stereo Microphone because i’ve been unimpressed by the sound of EVERY dummy head i’ve ever heard, including the sennheiser on one of the extras in the monsters inc DVD that sounds no better than mine. i bet the large diaphragms solve the metallic signature issue, if not make for more solid images

hope that helps

UGHHH! when is my image posting ban ever going to be lifted?!