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?