Hugo Zuccarelli

This week I had to do my presentation on Hugo Zuccarelli who invented holophonics. These are my notes from the presentation as well as the YouTube clip that we asked the class to listen to.

In 1983, Hugo Zuccarelli invented Holophonic Audio. Holophonics is a binaural recording system that tricks the brain into thinking it is hearing 3D sounds. It has the capacity to record sound exactly as it is, creating a feeling that the sound isn’t actually a recording but genuinely around you. This is made through ambience, emotion and sound localisation, which is how the ear determines how close or far away a sound is.

The way you are able to record Holophonics is with two microphones being placed 7 inches apart from each other usually using a ‘Dummy Head’– The mannequin head is fitted with two microphones in each ear and this is how the effect is recorded and created. 

This is a photograph to demonstrate the "Dummy Head"

In 1983, Zuccarelli released ‘Zuccarelli’s Holophonics’ in the UK which was produced by CBS. This was also known as “Matchbox Shaker”.
These were various short recordings of sound effects to demonstrate his Holophonics.
A few included: shaking a match box, the sounds of bees, balloons, plastic bags, birds, fireworks, thunder, racing cars, aeroplanes and a haircut.

When listening to Holophonics you must use headphones otherwise you will not hear the effect.
The clip is not Zuccarelli’s Holophonics; however it will show you the 3D sound. The clip consists of a woman talking and then different sounds such as a hair dryer, aeroplane, a bottle being opened and more.

Holophonics was and has been widely used in pop culture especially in the year Zuccarelli presented it. In the year of 1983, Pink Floyd and Roger Walters both used Holophonics in their singles. More recently – Lady Gaga used it in her album “ARTPOP”. We had a listen to a few and the binaural sounds stuck out the most in the song ‘Applause’.

We found this article which dates back to the year Zuccarelli started to use Holophonics. It suggests that Holophonics are impressive to someone that has never heard binaural recordings before and even engineers who were familiar with Binaural stereo believed that Zuccarelli’s recording sounded a lot better.

On the other hand, there are controversial opinions surrounding Zuccarelli’s 3D audio technology. The effects attained through Holophonics compare similarly to traditional binaural recordings and surround sound 3D stereo. There has been no further study or research conducted that indicates Holophonic sounds being superior. Furthermore Zuccarelli has not done any additional independent study on the results of Holophonics since the 1980s.

In the article just shown, there is a quote.
 “Demonstrations suggest that Zuccarelli’s system, like all previous “dummy head” systems will turn out to be a technically interesting dead end.”
This we believe to be true. Even though there have been advancements in sound, there hasn’t been much development on 3D sound and Holophonics. This may be due to a quote we found from Zuccarelli.

“I’m not in any rush – I’d prefer to destroy Holophonics rather than have it fall into the wrong hands”

Zuccarelli has had a major impact on sound technology and the advancements due to Holophonics being the leading technology in that time. Due to there not being any further developments , it is still used in the way Zuccarelli invented to be.  Since it has been created it has stayed at that level however in recent years, 3D sound technology has regained consideration in paraphernalia such as apps and Youtube. Lady Gaga also used the effect in her latest album and this shows it is still relevant to this decade.

Below are the questions we asked the class to discuss:

How did you find the 3D sound/did it have an effect on you?

Do you think Zuccarelli’s work has had an effect on the way we listen to music today?

Do you think 3D sound is relevant and have you heard any songs where you think Holophonics is used?

Radiophonics and Contact Sounds

In session 3 we were introduced to 'Radiophonics' and 'Contact sounds' and watched a BBC documentary on how they have been used.
Radiophonics used sound effects to produce and create new music for radio and most famously have been used in the Doctor Who theme song. It was the first electronic tunes for television and is one of the most recognised theme songs today.
Below I have attached the YouTube link for the original tune.

After watching the Documentary, we were given contact microphones which we used to create our own mixdown. We attached the microphone to different objects and then hit the object to see what sound the microphone produced.
I attached the microphone to such things as a bicycle wheel and basket, a fence, a fire extinguisher and more and then layered each sound on top of one another as well as adding effects to create the mixdown below:

Contact Sounds Mixdown

Accoustic Portrait - Final Idea

I started off with a few ideas for my acoustic portrait and have narrowed it down to one. 

The Theatre

I have chosen to do a theatre due to the different aspects of sounds and space I can portray to the listeners of my portrait.

I will capture the amount of echos and various announcements/rehearsals going on throughout doing soundwalks at different points in the day.

Some of the sounds I would like to portray are:

- Sounds of the audience in the foyer before a show
- Sound checks
- Echos of the auditorium

Reading: Understanding Radio

From our reading 'Understanding Radio' by Andrew Crisell - I have made some interesting notes. It was an interesting piece of reading as it helped me understand the basics to radio and sound.

"Radio is a blind medium. We cannot see its messages, they consist only of noise and silence." 

Although this is an obvious statement it is interesting how Crisell is able to put the description of it perfectly in just one small sentence. Compared to some of the other readings which are a lot more complex, this simple sentence draws the readers in as it is clear what he wants to say from the first sentence.

Crisell goes on to comparing Radio with other modes of communication. He states that Radio is mass communication which has some of its advantages - including being able to communicate with multiple people all at once. However, it is an impersonal way of getting a message out there as well as the fact the audience are not able to communicate back. There is also the risk of misunderstanding between the sender and receiver. Below the quote shows how the contact could be misunderstood.

"If feedback is an impossibility in mass communication, there is no genuine facility of metalingual or phatic communication: the sender cannot check that the code or contact is working."

A negative point to this reading, would be Crisell's lack of describing the history of radio. Although he mentions how audiences used to listen to radio as a group activity and the prices ranges during the 1930's compared to the 1970's, he fails to demonstrate the ways in which radio actually started.

One point I was most interested in when reading the introduction to this book was the advantages of radio. On page 7, Crisell talks about positive aspects.

“There are some real advantages which radio possesses over other media. The most famous of these is its appeal to the imagination. Because radio offers sound only instead of sound and vision, the listener is compelled to ‘supply’ the visual data themselves. The appeal to the imagination gives radio an apparent advantage over film and TV.”

I completely agree with this statement. Not being able to use the senses we do with all other medium, makes our minds work harder as we have to listen more intently as well as picture what the sender may be saying or the environment they may be in.

As previously stated, I found this reading easier to follow than others. The structure is clear and Crisell analyses each aspect of radio carefully so the book is insightful for it's readers.

Sounds around me

In the first session I was told to listen to the sounds around me. It is amazing how many sounds the human ear can pick up just through listening intently.

I was sitting in an area outside a lecture hall and wrote a list of the things I could hear:

Foot steps

A coffee machine from inside the cafe near by

Talking

Tapping of feet

Seagulls

Clicking of fingers

A lighter

Inhaling of a cigarette

Coughing

Quiet music of someone listening to their music through headphones

Book pages being turned

Soundwalk: North Laines

I have uploaded this recording (link below) of my sound walk through the North Laines in Brighton. There were different types of sound which were successful however there is about a 20/30 second bit where the only sounds are cars in the background which I believe is an unsuccessful element due to it being quite tedious. I have used a Senhisser K6 to record this track.


NORTH LAINES SOUNDWALK

Soundwalks

The photograph above shows two of my group, Holly and Kristina, checking the sound and making sure the presets were all correct.