Podcasting Hacks

Podcast in Surround Sound

Use binaural microphones to give your podcast a three-dimensional sound field.

Podcasting brings listeners into your life. Podcasting with binaural microphones brings listeners into your head. The idea is simple: use two microphones to simulate your ears. The microphones [Hack #13] are usually small lavalier omnidirectionals that should sit as close to your ears as possible. Some people have even rewired headphones so that embedded lavaliers sit right on top of their ears. Others have gone as far as to build models of the human head with microphones that sit inside the ear canals.

Ideally, the two microphones will be matched exactly. Enthusiasts will go as far as to request two microphones with sequential serial numbers. Of course, this perfect matching costs money. A matched set starts at around $200 or $300. But cheaper unmatched sets that are suitable for experimentation and podcasting are available in the $30 range.

Figure 3-10 shows the Low Cost Binaural Set ($75) from Core Sound (http://core-sound.com/), hooked up through its filter and into a Marantz 660 solid-state recorder [Hack #69] . The recorder has a left and right XLR input, both of which are tied into the microphones that connect to either side of the glasses right above your ears.

Figure 3-10. A set of binaural microphones on glasses, attached to a Marantz 660

The signal from the left lavalier ...