This is a very good example of a binaural recording. Listen to it with headphones!
[mp3]http://3gpvids.com/virtualhaircut.mp3[/mp3]

I love these things. Thanks for sharing!

Really cool.

wow. that's insanely awesome.

where can I find more?

Google "binaural recordings." There's one demo with the sound of a matchbox shaking, and a few others. Unfortunately most of them suck.

the bag over the head part gave me chills... soooo awesome

Yeah the bag as awesome.

Game company's should use this type of recording for games.
Scary games.

this always comes up and someone always points out there's a HUGE difference between binaural recordings and doing it in real time

Simulating binaural recordings in real time is quite difficult. There was one excellent technology that did it, among other things. It was called A3D. Creative killed it.

They could do it for a game like Myst.

That would be insanely awesome.

haha.. I used the breathing from the matchbox one for sounds in Laboratory volume 2.. unfortunatly I never got too far on it

That was simply spectacular. When he whispers "septerra" (or whatever it's called), it's uncannily real, almost disturbingly so.

won't play for me, it just says buffering. been waiting for a couple minutes now, I know my connection isn't that bad.

Just download it directly.

The thing is, intensity and time delays only make up a small component of the audio cues that make up binaural sound. If the position of the ears were the only factors, then it would be impossible to tell the difference between noise in front of you, above you, or behind you. Turns out the shape of your ear helps to imprint the necessary cues on incoming sound, and that's what makes binaural sound so hard to synthesize.

And whatever Product they are selling certainly is remarkable, but notice how the Foreword/Backwards/Above distinction was pretty weak (IMHO), so they are still having difficulty emulating the shape of the ear.

The voice acting makes me want to kill myself.

Wow this pretty cool. I remember a SBL demo that let you position sounds and stuff in 3d and it was almost as cool as this.

Well to be fair we aren't very good at that anyways. The matches recording did a pretty good job though.

yeah, that scared the crap out of me, honestly. I jumped.

I've heard this before, but it doesn't get old. It's very cool.

The bag on the head is the best part.

Oh my god! I was cringing when he brought the scissors close! I've never heard of this type of recording, but it's amazing!

Cool stuff.

I guess if sound cards had as fierce development and competition going on as video cards, it wouldn't be entirely impossible to get real time simulations in a reasonably close future.