Brilliant! It reminded me of doing pretty much the same experiment with my dad in the early 90's. He recorded trains and after hearing a load of binaural demos he decided we had to make our own cheap binaural mic. Had the same conclusion of using a wig stand poly head and some off the shelf (Tandy) lapel (electret condenser) mics. We didn't have silicone moulded ears but did try to improve on what was on the head already. The biggest problem we had to overcome was the hollowness causing echoing so we stuffed the center with foam. And yes we had great results! The head went on many train recording adventures!

That's magic! It's not exactly the same as if you were in the park, but it's more natural than a standard microphone. A build worth trying, thanks a lot!

Feels good getting notifications from you again Leo!

They are so good that I heard a couple of Italian guy possibly from the north of italy complaining about the shopping beeing expansive at minute 5:23, and when the baby pass by screaming they are being a bit rude!( I'm not sure about what)

Interesting project!! Awesome job. I love how detailed your development was.

Great video Leo! I especially liked the part where you problem solve and assemble the microphones :)

Such a brilliant video man, thank you for the generosity.

This is an amazing video!! I love how you explained the problems!

Way to put a smile on my face! This is awesome Leo!

4:08 Wow! That pissed me off, like you were crumpling stuff right in my face! I guess that means it works.

very inspiring as always. well done

just awesome project !!! thank you for sharing !!

That is a great project. Many years ago I used to use binaural in-ear mics with a mini disk recorder. I may just have to try this. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, my friend; you're pretty handy! Bravo to you and thank you for sharing

"not the first one to make a video about this" but probably the best one. :) I came back to this video to check the noise reduction methods!

I WAS LOOKING AT ASMR MICS TO BUY AND GOT RECOMMENDED THIS. THANK YOU ALGORITHM GODS.

I sure am glad I stumbled upon your Channel. I was actually messing around with binaural sounds about 4 months ago. I love it. Keith Kuhn

What a great video. I work alot with audio recording in the field as a hobbyist and binaural gear is expensive, but this I can do. Thx.

Really cool, dreamed of having one of these when I first saw the Neumann one back in the late 80's they sound so much like a PZM mic in that somewhat un-miked sounding way this however has the stereo built in as if each sound had its own panning. I would love to see many of these working at once like as audience members scattered throughout a room or along side a race track, runway train line etc. certainly worth trying out. Thank you

I watched this the first time skipping the film, the second time i watched the film and tbh, totally worth it! The film is great, be a movie director! Or a writer at least!

Noicee! Congratz 👍👍

Impressive video. Really nice. Making one myself because of this video. I was wondering though when your part two of the eurorack series is coming, if at all...Have a magnificent day...

EXCELLENT video!!

Keep up the good work mate :)

Nice! I might build one as well as i have a few spare Condenser Microphone capsules laying around that i wanted to use originally to build a quadrophonic Mic. But Kunstkopf Stereophony really is pretty awesome too.

This video compelled me to reverse the channels to my stereo speaker amplifier. Apparently white doesn't always mean left with red meaning right for SOME 1/8 inch to stereo RCA adapters. (Chinese lack of quality control strikes again.) Now the sounds of this video make a lot more sense. :-)

I am so wanting to write and record rock music in surround or quad for surround systems.

This video has THE MOST EPIC build montage music I’ve ever heard. Leo, where have you been? I’ve been rewatching your work, hope you are well.

It is has good has the 700$ one for real. Good job man! Awesome setup.

This was a good watch. I've had some interference issues with bluetooth ear buds in dummy heads, tried the caps at the mic ends but still couldnt get rid of the RFI. I've not had many problems with interference with any of my other mics unless I'm using cheap lav mics which seem to pick up mains hum (DIY tube mic), I still havn't figguerd out why this happens though. I've just put a DIY dummy head kit on my website (just to see what happens), there's another DIY kit on there too but it's a tube type of mic.

Very neat project. I've got some mic capsules of various sorts sitting around (mostly lav mics with dead cables), so I might actually give this one a go. With the world the way it is, theatre's going to be in an odd state for a while, with all signs pointing to broadcast productions returning well before live-in-person ones. It would be good to have a few of these on hand. Thanks to the work of you and others, all I've got left to do is figure out proper component ratios for my capsules and get a proper balanced signal out (I know the theory, just not the application).

Just thought I would share: I have purchased all the components I need to make your microphone, in fact I bought the exact head that you used at Hobby Lobby! Only difference is that I will be using the Roland CS-10EM Binaural Microphones! Can't wait to put it together!!!

I absolutely love this project! The only big question I don't think was addressed was whether spending a bit more on a different mic (and what that alternative would be) would have made this any easier or better sounding? It sounded great! I'm just thinking, if spending $100 would sound even better it's still a huge discount from $8k and would be worth it if you wanted to use this more long term! Thanks for the video, love your work! ✌️

Hah I live in Victoria Park, Perth, Western Australia -- I found my slightly greyer parallel reality :)

Great project man, only problem I can see with it is you are making ASMR available to the masses and I cant stand it! Lol jk, love your videos man

Love the sound coming out of it! And the assembly part was just so cool to watch... but drilling through styrofoam... just how much cleaning did you have to do after this project?! 😬

I like your Zoom recorder. I actually use the h4n I'm very happy with it. As you well know most people don't like to listen anyway. But you and I do. Keith Kuhn

bravo

Wow I want one. Probably most useful for film though. Or recording an orchestra in a concert hall

That sounds *amazing!* Thanks for sharing it. (Now build an inexpensive sound field array. :grin: )

were those outdoor scenes filmed recently? its crazy seeing so many people outside and so close to eachother!

damn, this is the first one worth trying.

great video! this is going to be my summer project thanks alot! one question how do you deal with the air booming the mic? deadcat earmuffs?

Eurorack! 👊

Can you share a link for the microphone capsules? I'd prefer to use the exact same ones. This is the FIRST DIY version that I've ever heard that actually sounded good. Well done sir.

Wow you really know your stuff. KK

Some of the RF-Noise comes from the phantom power of the zoom. You can get rid of the other noise by shielding your capsules with some copper tape. Here is a description how you connect a 5V capsule correct to phantom power without frying it: tombenedict.wordpress.com/2016/03/05/diy-microphone-em172-capsule-and-xlr-plug/ Try these EM172, or DOM3027 these are way better as these cheapo ones.

any info on the frequency range and response characteristics of the electrets used in this project?

Great instruction, thank you! Only I cannot make it, I bought the Roland binaural mic instead ;). Was 88 EUR ... acceptable! But I will use your dummy head work to make mine. By the way it is not DÜMMKÖPF, but DUMMKOPF (in German), there is no such word as DÜMMKÖPF.

Interesting video .. Funny the head filming n Vicky park....I am also playing with electret mic and I have recently watched a video from DIY Perks where he also uses a de-soldering wick braid as a wire shield although I was not able to open it as shown by Matt). I find copper or aluminium tape could also work for shielding the capsule and you can solder to it. Have you tried the Primo EM272 omnidirectional capsule from micbooster ? it sounds amazing and has low self noise.,super sensitive for field recording....quite cheap too. .I will try adding another bypass cap and some shielding to my diy lavalier mic made with the em272 . When I try to connect it to a 48v phantom power source via a vxlr+ adapter is picking too much noise. when I use it with my diy ne5532 unbalanced preamp it does not pick up that noise....

So what’s the difference between this finished product and the microphones operating together without the head? The reason the consumer mics are so expensive is because they are anatomically correct ear canal that uses silicone density that represents real flesh. Without that test all this is, is two microphones with a flashy way of mounting them.

The cheapest binaural stereo microphone you can get is not among the ones you listed, it's MiniDSP EARS for $200. It's officially a measurement rig for headphones and environments, but you just take off that silly headphone support stand, screw it on a little tripod from the bottom, and you have a USB binaural microphone, that might even work with an old Android phone you have at the bottom of your drawer if you need to record something on the go. Another possibility are little binaural real-head microphones that you insert into your actual human ears. But go on. I have actually intended to build exactly something like this, but didn't get around to, because i'm not up to spend even $200. But I want it also as a headphone measurement rig, so I wonder how to recreate the ear canal, how deep it should go, etc. And I think what any build like this ultimately needs, is a compensation measurement - half the reason you get the EARS is because they come with a calibrated individual profile that you can apply as an EQ and then you have a faithful compensated result. What I mean is, when you listen to a "flat" measuring speaker, with your own ears, it doesn't sound shouty, but when you listen to a raw recording off a head measurement rig, it does, there are resonances introduced by... stuff, the external ear shape, the ear canal, etc, because your headphones ideally are already compensated to sound more or less right with speakers as a reference. So you have to take that kind of reference measurement and compensate it out, suppress the changes that are applied by your measurement head to all sound, and have just the pure head relative transfer function remain. Mind you the response distortion applied by a measurement head is ideally the same as the one applied by your own ears, or really similar, and when you listen to true sounds coming from your environment, you don't perceive them as distorted, because your brain already compensates, but you don't want this distortion to be applied twice to the sound, just once and just of your own ears, else it sounds wrong. I know, it gets pretty complicated... uh I guess I can refer you to scientific papers and seminars by Sean Olive et al from Harman Research who have been doing headphone measurement and compensation research. Also in some regards a DIY solution must almost necessarily better than an ISO standard measurement head, because those have unrealistic ear shape and not enough ear compliance, so headphones sit on them weird and don't even measure right a lot of the time. Because the ISO head is made for measuring over-ear hearing aids, which tends to make your ears stick out a tiny bit, as opposed to headphones which flatten your ears a bit, plus it's 70s technology and materials, a basic silicone ear from AliExpress is better than that today 50 years later. I didn't really start on the project because I want to use it with 48V phantom interface and have not come up with a good solution yet that isn't quite complicated and bulky... but this psedobalance trick is wonderful, i have not seen one like this before! The FET inside the capsule is generally supposed to be K596, with breakdown voltage of 20V and optimal operating point of 10V, but puh who knows what corners were cut :D

Some great tips on soldering/wiring/etc!!! To make this of any real use, I will need to create some kind of "headset/headhones", instead of going around with foam head... Any tips on actual capsules? Manufacturers, specs, etc?

Hi Leo, first of thanks for the Video it is a very good inspiration. My question is the following: how did you calculate a 6.8k resistor? Since the datasheet of the mic says it is running with 0,5mA (0,0005A), 1-10v (nominal circa 5v). Now if i go the classical way that i found using the formula 12V-7V=5V -> 7V/0,0005A=14.000. Would that not mean i have to use a 14k resistor? what am i doing wrong? Or did you just go down to roughly 9-10V? Sorry, i am just a beginner! Thanks for your help. Greetings.

It seems to me that in an ideal world, putting a resister PARALLEL to the microphone module would not change the voltage applied to it, but the world isn't ideal. When one takes into account the resistance of the microphone cable itself, there would be a resistance parallel that would get things down to a safe level but at the cost of making that resister take much more power than the microphone module itself. I would have been tempted to try using a voltage regulator, providing it doesn't add noise. They make some pretty tiny transistor sized ones. Maybe even a 7805 would cut it but it might blow up at 48V phantom power too. Maybe not or one could stack them, one with a dummy load. The way things are set up here, it seems that the microphone modules are going to be operating at different voltages depending on how good your connecting wires are. Get too much resistance in those signal wires and you would likely too low a voltage across the terminals of the microphone module. (not a biggie if you don't switch anything or switch out input devices with a different impedance. I'd really want to regulate that voltage. Maybe an appropriate resister in series and a zenor diode in parallel. Zenor diodes are NOT energy efficient voltage regulators but they can be quite useful in low power settings because they are so convenient. :-) ...oh, I almost forgot...GREAT VIDEO!!! :-)

Great video! I'm thinking of making one. The electret capsules you used are currently unavailable. There are others, but some are unidirectional while others are omni. Which would be the right type for this project? Thanks!

What are the links to buy the things to make it?

It sounds great, but I've never quite figured out what difference having the mics inside "ears" makes - surely when you listen to the recording the sound is always going through ears anyway? It seems like it would be more accurate to have the mics at about the same position as the speakers of a pair of headphones would be, but possibly I'm missing something.

Hi, I just started my journey in sound recording and found this video. this is exactly what I was aiming for. B.T.W, if I connect two mics to opposite sides of the Zoom H6 will It produce the same result? I saw binaural mic (3DIO) without the dummy head so maybe it is unnecessary? thank you so much

It sounded great to me when I had my headphones on. Keith

Hey Leo. I am a electrical engineering student and as far as I can tell the first resistor that you connected actually shouldn't help at all to reduce the voltage over the microphone because it is in parallel and not in series to it, which means only the current is split over the two paths but not the voltage (Kirchhoff's loop and node laws).

Decided to give this a go but am struggling to find a pair of ears, eBay seems to have a left only or a different set? Do you recall where you got yours? Thanks

Doesn't it work just as well using an X y stereo pair of mics

...so what wires could you use if you didnt have the fancy equipment to plug into???

I am a new creator who has an ASMR channel, I have been wanting to make one of these for a while now and I am currently using a Fifine USB mic for my recording that I plug directly into my laptop along with my USB webcam. is there a USB Binaural mic that I can plug into my computer that will give me that 3D surround sound fee? That also does not require a recording box? So far all the DIY videos I have watched as amazing as they are non have helped me with what I am looking for they all show these Binaural earbuds plugged into either cell phones, cameras. I have yet found a DIY for people that record from a USB computer webcam.

How does it work after a month? I want to do a simpler version of this with a 3.5mm cable at the end. Is that possible?

Hi Leo, Love your tutorial I will try to build the mic as well, do you rent your dammy head?

I tried making an wearable earbud version of this using two cheap lav mics. Sadly, they didn't work. It might be that the wires broke.

16:23 Oh god, OH GOD! Cringed so hard at this. :D

Did you have to make it look like Andy Ramm?

What is the purpose of the Styrofoam head? Could you do the same thing with a cube or ball?

Hi I know this vid is 3 years old and sorry for being so late, (I have subscribed though :). I have an issue that I hope you can help with. I have built a binaural mic, using a polystyrene head and 2 lekato lav mics, my idea was to do headphone reviews and record the audio from the headphones using the head, now, both mics work perfectly if plugged into the phone, but even using a splitter I can't get stereo, wich is the whole point. But, what i need to do is use either my audio interface (presonus studio 24c) or my mixing Desk/interface (zoom livetrack L20) and give each mic its own channel and pan left and right. The mics are trrs and came with cables to adapt them to trs, but I can not get any sound from them using either option of interface, please please save my sanity and help me out. Thanks in advance Gray

Hey! are you making these?

This is awesome BUT it’s not 3D LOL But it’s called Binaural because Bi=2 also known as a stereo mic. The difference is the delay and phasing that is involved in how sound arrives at one differently than another. This sounds drastically different than a typical stereo microphone because it is more consistent with how our brain is used to processing sound.

My ears or brain just don't get binaural sound must just be me

Give the head some hair , will be even more realistic. Thumb's up

you should convert to asmr channel then!

4:22 I think our head isn't made of styrofoam, it maybe hasn't the damping like human head. BTW all asmr or binaural or 3D sound videps on youtube doesn't makes me the full experience. Ihear only left, right and behind me effects but not real front of me effect and no effects from floor or above my head,

Can I please pay you to do a small soldering job for me. I will explain more if you are interested. Keith

Leo! Are you and Dummkopf still hanging out in Victoria Park? I'm an artist currently making a project around Regents Canal. While I was filming beside Vic park this morning it occurred to me that a binaural soundtrack would be awesome for the project. Knowing F all about how to do that I came home and You Tubed and amazingly the first hit was you locals! I'm wondering if you'd consider hiring out your services to help me with this super interesting project. It's not one that can be explained in a few words but it's about Neurodivergent people's relationships and I'm making abstracted studies of the patterns and rhythms that float in/ reflect off/ dive deep and die in Regents Canal. It's funded by UCL and will result in a beautiful installation at Mile End Lock. If I can email you more info for a conversation please let me know where. I'm not a You Tuber but check brionycampbell.com . Email best for me. Thanks!

you could save yourself £1.69 on this project and just drape the MICs over you ears and hit record... :0

I'm a film maker. KK Motion Pictures On KZfaq Type in KK Motion Pictures promo

the head part is interesting, the result is not: You did so much work, to then install such poor microphones ...