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Article ID: CBB007112913

The Failure of Binaural Stereo: German Sound Engineers and the Introduction of Artificial Head Microphones (2017)

Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Volume: 23
Pages: 113-144
Publication date: 2017
Language: English

URI: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26454978

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Music Stereophonic sound systems Radio Sound reproduction Microphones Engineering, audio Technology and music Sound recordings Sound 20th century

In 1973, binaural stereo was introduced to the German public during the International Broadcasting Fair in Berlin. Based on the development of artificial head microphones, binaural stereo provided facsimile sound recordings that enabled listeners, when listening with headphones, to experience the spatial acoustics of the original recording situation. During the fair, Berlin-based radio station Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) broadcast the first binaural radio play. Radio listeners and journalists praised it for its “super stereo” quality and highest fidelity, and expected that the future of radio would be threedimensional. Despite this remarkable echo, German broadcasting stations were somewhat reluctant to adopt binaural stereo, and many sound engineers rejected to deploy artificial head microphones. They referred to certain technical shortcomings of binaural stereo in general, and available microphone models in particular. Based on contemporary publications, sources from broadcasting archives, and oral history interviews, this paper argues that recordists’ outright rejection of binaural stereo — its failure to be adopted in radio broadcasting — was rather grounded in their listening and recording ideologies than in actual shortcomings of artificial head recording technology.

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