computerboom: Holophony is Holography but for sound! Amazing.
The sound you will hear below is so realistic it’s impressive. Not like 5.1 surround sound, the sound you hear goes all around you then up and down. The concept behind producing this realistic sound is called Holophony. To sum it up, think Holography for sound.

Click on above link and check out the two examples – make sure you are wearing headphones. Nice to see that a few people are interested in this technique. I first witnessed it over thirty years ago. A special exhibit accompanying the Photokina (largest Photography tradeshow in the world) in 1974 or 1975 was demonstrating dummy-head recordings. I remember standing in a dark room and looking up because my ears were convinced that a helicopter was right above me…

Then the WDR radio station in Cologne started recording crime stories with a dummy-head and anybody listening to the broadcast with headphones would get a startlingly realistic audio image. A door creaking, a bad guy walking across the room, a cigarette being lit. Aside: in the seventies the Cologne band Can recorded a whole album in Holophony.

Ah, how I would love to be able to listen to new dummy-head-recorded productions. More people listen with headphones than ever before because of the iPod. If only the BBC or some other broadcast company would record plays with this method… I would certainly pay to download that.

If only this Neumann dummy-head wasn’t so expensive – about $7,500 is the minimum one has to pay. It would be cool to have my current quartet sit around the head and record an album – using acoustic bass, two guitars and hand-percussion…

Hm, maybe this can become a reality. I found a rental… to be continued…

Update: the rental place is in Canada… maybe we can find one in L.A.?

Update 2: Spoke to Davo and he likes the idea. Imagine him getting up during a song and walking around the dummy-head while playing shekere… Maybe in August, after the brief Cali run?