讓聲浪更“猛”

讓聲浪更“猛”

這或許是文藝咖的好消息：雙聲道立體聲技術(shù)被提升上了一個新高度。你只需要一個耳機(jī)，一臺電腦與一個提供立體聲音效的網(wǎng)站，便可以享受超豪華的聽覺盛宴。

測試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識：

artificial人工的[ɑ?t?'f??(?)l]

binaural雙耳的[b?'n??r(?)l; ba?-]

lurk潛伏[l??k]

Princeton普林斯頓（美國新澤西州中部的自治市鎮(zhèn)）

hifi高保真（High Fidelity ）

aerospace航空宇宙['e?r?spe?s]

3D for the ear takes sound to another level（714 words）

By Jonathan Margolis

Improvements in sound reproduction can come as a delightful shock.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard music on stereo headphones. It was 1979 in Harrogate,North Yorkshire,where a shop had a new thing on display called a Sony Walkman. Within seconds,I was so enchanted by the sensation of sound seeming to be inside your head that I paid more than a week’s wages on the spot for it — ￡79,I believe.

By today’s standards,that first Walkman,with its cassettes and simple on-ear headphones,would sound more awful than awesome.

But here’s a rarely spoken truth about recorded music: even with a high-end hifi system costing thousands and playing the kind of expensive high-quality digital recordings now available,it would still be impossible to confuse a recording with a live performance.

Stereo records have been around since 1953 but stereo still sounds artificial,just as film or TV drama dialogue is quite different from real life conversation.

There’s a fascinating improvement coming. It’s called binaural recording and although it,too,has been known about for a while — Lou Reed released three binaural albums in the 1970s — the technology didn’t take off when basic stereo was still being introduced.

But this successor to stereo is finally emerging from experimental status.

Binaural really is awesome. You don’t need more than a PC and headphones to experience it. Just go to one website that supplies binaural music,hdtracks.com,download a ￡20.50 sampler album called You’re Surrounded,and see if you don’t agree that it’s uncannily real.

In binaural recordings,the musicians seem to be all around you. It’s like 3D for the ears. There’s even an audio illusion of sound coming from behind and above you — like surround sound in a cinema,but much more realistic.

Binaural is recorded with a spooky-looking moulded human head with a microphone in each ear. This rig simulates how our ears gather sound. Hearing can sense the direction sound comes from because ears aren’t just random flaps of gristle,but brilliantly evolved sound-gathering mechanisms.

I went to a recent recording session for a commercial binaural album in a disused church in Brooklyn,NY. The acoustics of such a building made the recordings sound more evocative than they would in a studio. The session was run by David Chesky,a composer,audio innovator and founder of the website HD tracks.

The lead artist performed a few feet in front of the $15,000 dummy head,with other musicians around him. When I listened to the raw recording,it was an exact reproduction of the performance. Everyone was in the right place.

Mr Chesky explained during a break that he believes binaural audio will elevate virtual reality to the next level.“With a next-generation VR headset and binaural sound,it won’t be virtual reality. It will be indistinguishable from reality,”he said.

One of the limitations of binaural,however,is that it requires headphones,which do detract a notch or so from the perfect simulation of reality.

Except there’s a development here,too. Next stop on my magical binaural tour was eight subway stops away,at the Upper East Side apartment of Edgar Choueiri,professor of applied physics and aerospace engineering at Princeton University. Mr Choueiri is also a hifi enthusiast and collaborator of Mr Chesky. And he has developed a method of bringing binaural reproduction to loudspeakers.

You don’t even need special speakers or a dedicated room to hear it. What you need is one of Mr Choueiri’s black boxes — the Bacch Stereo Purifier — which cost $55,000. Some 24 have already been sold in New York and Hong Kong.

Now,binaural delivered through headphones is extraordinary,but without them,it is otherworldly. I can only describe it as like being in an audio hologram. It can plant a whisper in your ear as if there’s a ghost in the room.

Mr Choueiri’s invention can even conjure up mild binaural effects from old,non-binaural recordings. Listening to some Beatles tracks was like being at Abbey Road Studios,with John,Paul,George and Ringo all around you. Layers of information no one knew were there have seemingly lurked on some recordings for decades.

Even a man who is,after all,an actual rocket scientist,is not quite sure yet how that happens.