JJ Legelis – Looking Outwards 04: Sound Art

Destin Sandlin, well known for his Smarter Everyday youtube series, is also the creator of a video series titled The Sound Traveler. This series combines point of view (POV) video, with binaurally recorded audio to create an immersive experience. The videos produced in this manner stand out from other typical POV videos in one key way, the sound. In most videos the listener can hear the audio coming from the center or to some degree of left/right. But the special way the audio is recorded in Destin’s videos allows the listener to hear sounds as coming from all axis, front, behind, and even above and below. This slight change causes the entire range of hearing ability to be utilized, causing a feeling of sincere immersion.

The videos are recorded using an odd microphone setup that causes the sound to interact with an artificial ear before it hits the microphone, allowing the small nuances of the (fake) human ear and ear canal to augment the sound in the same way a real ear would.

Video from The Sound Traveler Exemplifying Binaural Recording