A Binaural Walk in Riverdale Park

Take a walk in my ears...

This is my first time playing with a new binaural set-up from Sound Professionals: these two tiny microphones sit just inside your ear, allowing you a more affordable way to capture binaural audio. (There are also many tutorials online on how to create your own binaural microphones, but I am truly terrible at soldering, so this seemed like a safer and faster route.)

If you’re not familiar with binaural recording, let me give you a quick rundown: it’s a way to try and capture the dimensionality of a sound. We get a sense of sound location in space through what is called the “duplex theory” of localization. We have two ears on the sides of our head (rather than one giant ear in the middle) because differences in when the sound arrives at each ear and the relative volume in each ear can tell us where the sound is coming from. Which is important if you want to run away from the growling puma rather than towards…

The quintessential binaural microphone is the Neumann (as usual!) with the dummy head. You need a head in between the ears because the occlusion from the head itself is also what effects differences in the intensity of the sound. And not just of the relative volume, but also of which frequencies are able to reach each ear. So Neumann has a dummy head. But the Sound Professionals binaural microphone places the mics on earpieces so that you can use your own head instead. And that’s what I did here!

This is part of a walk I took in Riverdale Park, which is a few blocks from where I live in the Bronx. This park is interesting because it’s really less of a “park” and more of a walking trail through the woods that run along the Hudson River, with the Metro North train line also running along the river side (and preventing river access, which is a whole other conversation). Partway through, the wind picked up quite a bit and distorted the recording, so I’m only giving you the first 11 minutes (which may be more than enough!)

I find it so interesting that in listening back I hear all of the city sounds that my conscious attention blocked out as I was walking: construction workers, helicopters, planes, and later the Metro North train itself. I notice how fast I’m walking. And I’m also interested in what the experience of listening is like for someone else. After all, this is my head! This is closest to how the world always sounds to me. Would it have sounded different if someone else was wearing the microphones? In putting you in my shoes (and ears) are you listening a little differently now?