If anyone is curious what the story behind this is. There is a now defunct company called QSound Labs that were pioneers in the 3d audio space back in the 90s. They made both hardware and software integrations of their tech which found it's way into arcade games and movies (Capcom was a customer of theirs).
They made this particular audio clip in 1996 for one of their customers, Starkey Labs. Starkey was using an implementation of the 3d tech to produce hearing aids that would allow the wearer to tell what direction sound was coming from. Previous hearing aids had one mic and one speaker per hearing aid, meaning that they just amplified whatever sound was coming in. You'd be able to tell left from right as the volume would be different in each ear, but you couldn't tell if a sound was coming from behind or in front of you. In human hearing we are able to tell front from back due to the shape of our ears. The cartilage that makes up the external part of your ear is obviously more prominent on the back side of your ear, this causes a muffling of sounds from behind that has a specific frequency signature, our brain interprets this as things behind us.
This recording was created as an ad of sorts for Starkey's new Cetera hearing aids that featured an algorithmic system that would add these frequency changes to allow the wearer to better pick up direction of the sounds they were haring.
Cool story behind the creation of this audio.
What's the story behind it?
Stolen comment:
If anyone is curious what the story behind this is. There is a now defunct company called QSound Labs that were pioneers in the 3d audio space back in the 90s. They made both hardware and software integrations of their tech which found it's way into arcade games and movies (Capcom was a customer of theirs).
They made this particular audio clip in 1996 for one of their customers, Starkey Labs. Starkey was using an implementation of the 3d tech to produce hearing aids that would allow the wearer to tell what direction sound was coming from. Previous hearing aids had one mic and one speaker per hearing aid, meaning that they just amplified whatever sound was coming in. You'd be able to tell left from right as the volume would be different in each ear, but you couldn't tell if a sound was coming from behind or in front of you. In human hearing we are able to tell front from back due to the shape of our ears. The cartilage that makes up the external part of your ear is obviously more prominent on the back side of your ear, this causes a muffling of sounds from behind that has a specific frequency signature, our brain interprets this as things behind us.
This recording was created as an ad of sorts for Starkey's new Cetera hearing aids that featured an algorithmic system that would add these frequency changes to allow the wearer to better pick up direction of the sounds they were haring.
They have this recording and more on their site https://www.qsound.com/demos/binaural-audio.htm
I didn't know that. Interesting!