...with stereo headphones and be amazed.

http://webpages.charter.net/tknott/binaural.mp3

I found this while browsing pelit.fi/keskustelu which is a Finnish discussion forum. I'm sorry if it has been posted before.

I don't get it.

Then you probably didn't listen to it with stereo HEADPHONES. But if you did, well...I don't know what to say except you should get it. :p

Ach, currently listening to it... sounds bloody neat.

Okay, further into it... this is bloody scary. It almost sounds near the end as if it goes up and down, and that's something happening at my back, and suddenly in front of me. I'm using bloody stereo headphones here, that isn't possible.

Just what IS happening?

Will holding my speakers up to my ears count?

[edit] Yes it does :p . And HOLY CRAP!

Now for something with more content. I didn't really get anything in front of me, just kind of over my head...
Also, can we have more details on what was done here? This seems like it might be slightly revolutionary if you can do that in stereo...

Cool beans.

This has been around for a long time. You can hear an earlier example of it on Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's album "Brain Salad Surgery". It's on the last track and the sound jumps from speaker to speaker (or back and forth between headphones). It's pretty cool and it does give the feel that there's something behind you.

But think of the possibilites for gaming! 4.0-ish with just 2.0! Is that possible?

At first I thought it was a bit long-winded, but indeed near the end the effect gets more interesting. I really sounds like somebody would be right behind you. Spooky.

I'm listening to it now. It's making me look around the room, wondering what's shaking. MAKE IT STOP.

Yeah, play CS:S with headphones.

before I go and look like a moron putting my speakers to my head, what happens in the sounds?

It's really not anything revolutionary at all. There's a "secret track" on one of my albums where they had some kind of mic set up so that if you're listening to it on stereo headphones it sounds like you're sitting in the middle of the room while people talk all around you and you can definitely pick out where people are sitting, front, back, left, right you know. It has something to do with the way the sound is encoded or something like that.

3D Panning! Neat but not revolutionary. Unreal Tournament has a track where if you listen very carefully you can hear an instrument "spin" around your head constantly.

yeah this isn't a new thing... but it's always cool to listen to...

I was thinking the same thing.

America's Army does it too. I can tell where someone is anywhere in Pipeline by directional sounds.

How in the world does it move up and down on one side? Does the tone change that much with vertical direction?

This is what EAX and A3D are supposed to do, but they don't do it that well just yet. Not in real time.

Your brain perceives direction because of the fact that sound waves always hit one ear before they hit the other, and when they hit the other they'll be of slightly different clarity. For above/below and front/rear I think it's the change in clarity and sound that results from the sound wave ****ting your ears at different angles that from the sides.

Best typo I've seen in awhile.

Very cool!
Though I did feel the need to look upwards in front of me when the shaking matchbox went around.

That is kinda creepy, I couldn't keep from looking behind myself....

Are there more of these neat clips?

On my speakers it worked as well. It was trippy because I knew the sound was coming from in front of me, but it sounded like it was behind me. My "band" and I have experimented with this, but it's not very applicable in the type of music we make.

Heh, I finally got around to listening to it this afternoon. On my 5.1 speakers, it seriously didn't work well (I thought I'd try anyways...).

On my headphones, I got the effect, but I didn't find it nearly as freaky as many of you seemed to.

Oh wow, virtual surround sound. How revolutionary. *yawn*

Ha ha. Fun!

I know everything there is to know about everything. How cool am I? *yawn*

Oh no, here we go again. 'My wang is bigger then your wang.'

...

I imagine the effect is done by recording the sound with two microphones placed apart such that the width is the same between human ears. Then just play back each recording in each channel.

Get yourself a sound card with Aureal3D support and load up Jedi Knight.

This was discovered back in the 70s ish. It wasn't developed further because the guys who figured it out were making music. When you're using speakers for this effect, it only works if you stay still in the right position relative to the speakers. When you're listening to music, that's not how people do it. So it was left as an interesting curio for a while.

Then someone came along and found out about it, and realised that there was a time when you sat still relative to the speakers and could get them set up in the right position: gaming. So A3D was born.

If it's generated dynamically (as in, you have a sound that is coming from a source that you can define relative to you, like in a computer game) then you can apply the equations so that it works either from stereo speakers or stereo headphones. Works best with headphones as you can control exactly what each ear hears.

With a sound clip that has the effect built in to it, it won't work unless you're using the speaker setup they applied the effect for.

i have a card somewhere that supposedly has A3D suport... but don't want to mess with it

They have effects processors that do it actually. Technology has come a long ways, I'm sure it started out as some variation of that method though.
hmmm what practical use does this have in music? Ideas?

Hee hee. Stereo channel swapping like that makes my back tickle!

WARGH! At about 1 minute, that's horrible! Had me looking under my chair!

maybe make songs that really mess with your head

I've heard it used in IDM and ambient music...which is basically just noise to mess with your head.

Maybe I'll try experimenting more with this, it could be fun if done right

This really isn't all that new to me. Take Firearms (HL mod) for example. I used to spen hours tracking people by their footsteps using a stereo headset :D.