Virtual Barbershop: an auditory illusion of the binaural recording

Binaural Recording is a special way of recording audio which basically uses a special microphone arrangement at a specific distance which approximates the position of an average human’s ears. Binaural recoding is different from stereo recoding in a way that conventional stereo recordings do not factor in natural ear spacing or “head-shadow” of the head and ears, since these things happen naturally as a person listens. A typical binaural recording unit has two high-fidelity microphones mounted in a dummy head, inset in ear-shaped molds to fully capture all of the audio frequency adjustments that happen naturally as sound wraps around the human head and is “shaped” by the form of the outer and inner ear.

Binaural recordings can very convincingly reproduce location of sound behind, ahead, above, or wherever else the sound actually came from during recording. Virtual haircut or virtual barbershop is one of the most famous binaural recordings of all times:

(Before listening to it, make sure that you have your headphones on)

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