![]() ![]() In the realisation of the play, the sound engineers pulled all registers, designed fascinating sound spaces – from deceptively realistic to unsettling claustrophobic. ![]() One of the important and for the radio adaption certainly crucial aspects centres around a special ‘jingle’, an earwig, that protagonist Ben Reich, keeps in his head in order to lock out any one, trying to peep into his mind, where he bears murderous ambitions…. The novel “…is a police procedural that takes place in a future world in which telepathy is relatively common” ( Wikipedia). It was adapted from the science fiction novel The demolished man of American author Alfred Bester (1913-1987), published in 1953. Demolition – the first dummy head radio playĭemolition 1973 (Foto: Carmen Müller – with kind permission of Bayerischer Rundfunk Munich Historisches Archiv)Īs a co-production of RIAS Berlin (today Deutschlandradio Kultur), Bayerischer Rundfunk and Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Demolition the first radio drama in dummy head stereo was produced.Ī perfect piece with an ideal plot to be transferred into the virtual sound scape of dummy head stereo. Although quadrophonic sound deployment on vinyl records had to pass the same bottle neck of only two channels by using an analogue matrix encoding, broadcasters were reluctant to invest in and expand technical infrastructure for moving on to quadrophonic production (yet, in the course of plans to do so, the BBC introduced Matrix H as an analogue encode-decode technology – a system very similar to the later widespread Dolby ProLogic). The new invention appeared to be a perfect answer to the quadrophonic ambitions of the record industry. The dummy head microphones received open ears, when presented to sound engineers of German broadcasters. The principles of recording binaural or more precisely in head related stereo were known long before, but until then only used for acoustic measurements. In 1968, Ralf Kürer, Georg Plenge and Henning Wilkens had started to develop a dummy head, first made out of plaster later plastics, were the membranes of two microphones were positioned exactly on spot were natural humans have their eardrum. Meanwhile a few engineers at Berlin’s Heinrich-Hertz-Institute and the Physical Institute in Göttingen thought the other way round: Let’s bring the ear of the listener to the performance. Bring the listener’s ears to the performance The idea being, to move the concert hall or performing area from the studio into the living room, with the listener amidst. ![]() Quadrophony had been introduced by recording companies to offer a spatial sound experience at home. Listen to Pink Floyd’s The dark side of the moon and you’ll certainly understand the Zeitgeist. Yet, the listeners of this post flower power, back to consciousness but no limits space age were open to experience new experimental sounds. Stereo had become widespread on records and broadcasting. Television had switched to colour – just in time to capture the motley fashion, dominated by joyful combinations of yellow, orange and brown. Wasn’t it a modernistic, sheer futuristic era? The interior design of offices and flats seemed to come straight from the set designers of Kubrick’s 2001. Picture yourself back or at least try to imagine the progressive spirit at the beginning of the 1970’s. And you don’t even need dummies to create virtual spatial sound… Now a comeback seems around the corner, freshly coined as HRTF, Binaural or Immersive Audio. But like quadrophony, it shares the fate as forgotten premature analogue technology. It was 40 years ago today…that dummy head stereo was first introduced in broadcast audio production. ![]()
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