Motherboard

Over at BinauralAirwaves.com audio geek nonpareil Aaron Soloway is busy crafting perfect recordings in a style most people will never even spend five minutes to appreciate. (Question: What is wrong with people?) Even so, it’s the way he’s making his racket that is truly noteworthy. By wearing an ear-bud-size super-sensitive microphone in each ear, Aaron records sounds so they’ll playback through headphones just as he heard them. All right, hang on.

Think of your favorite record. Chances are it sounds more or less like all music recorded by microphones strategically placed in a room. Not so impressive when you consider these binaural guys are creating sounds that make you feel as though you’re actually right there experiencing a sound as it’s happening. Trippy, right?

It probably comes as no surprise that most binauralist are insane. I mean, replicating sound? After making several recordings with a pair of standard binaural mics, Aaron realized his microphones could never perfectly reproduce sound entering the ear because, by design, the mics sit just outside his ear. So like any proper monomaniac he developed an alternative, investing in a head shaped apparatus called the “manakin” and ramming a pair of ultra hi-fi mics into some fake ear canals. He added a wig made of real human hair for good measure. At any rate, it’s great stuff.

Check out this spooky recording of a vocal installation Aaron found in the Grotta lighthouse on Binaural Airwaves. It sounds like your walking into a spooky Nordic cabin.

Here’s another one he made of a crowd on election night 2009 after that puppy was totally stolen from John McCain