AMBEO Binaural Music
Immersive Audio by Sennheiser
Listen as if you were there
The ubiquity of headphones is undeniable, they are peoples’ constant companion – always and everywhere like never before. Thanks to binaural technology you are transported to the front row of your favorite live concerts when streaming your content comfortably from your home, or you can even transform your whole music library into an immersive music experience.Five decades of binaural technology
What is binaural audio? Binaural audio is the practice of recording 2-channel audio (left and right channels) in a way that mimics human hearing, which has traditionally come down to sculpting a human head and embedding a microphone in a model of a human ear. It’s a fairly simple concept that dates back to the early 20th century and that has become a high fidelity recording approach by the Neumann KU100 dummy head. Thanks to this recording method, you can playback fully immersive sound with any headphones and re-live the moment as if you were there, from anywhere.Thanks to Neumann’s heritage, Sennheiser AMBEO has re-imagined this old yet effective technique by using new processing technologies that enable completely new binaural mixing workflows and offer the ability to enhance the audio with spatially processed spot microphones.
A living example is our collaboration with Moods concert club, where live jazz performances are being streamed on the platform in AMBEO binaural quality for remote listeners that don’t want to miss any nuance of the sound.
Our good-better-best solutions
Since no production is the same, we came up with a range of solutions suitable for all pockets and desired outcomes. Here below we introduce our good-better-best binaural recording techniques, examples and products for you to achieve them:
AMBEO Smart Headset
Your ears and brain work together to create a 3D audio landscape of your surroundings. The AMBEO Smart Headset captures this landscape with high quality microphones utilizing the actual outer structure of your ears to replicate the same 3D sound image that you hear naturally. Basically, a portable, iOS compatible, intuitive small brother to the dummy head concept, to be plugged directly into your ears. Capture and share your binaural audio for video in the simplest way.
AMBEO VR Mic
The AMBEO VR Mic can provide immersive binaural sound for a variety of applications thanks to the high degree of flexibility on the output its ambisonics format enables. It is a definite step up from the AMBEO Smart Headset towards professional productions, and its effect is comparable to the one of binaural dummy heads: it upgrades your music productions with a much smaller footprint, an easy setup and a more attractive price.
When wanting to include the ambient sound and acoustic footprint of a special venue and put the listener in the middle of the live performance, the AMBEO VR Mic is the ideal solution. An example is Egopusher’s binaural immersive live production of “Flake”. The Swiss/German instrumental Electronica duo made of Tobias Preisig and Alessandro Giannelli has been using the Sennheiser AMBEO VR Mic not to let the grandeur of the church they performed in get lost. Additional stationary mics have mixed in by using , Sennheiser’s free binaural panner plugin.
Neumann KU 100
The Neumann KU 100 is the industry reference dummy head microphone. A top class solution for producing pristine quality immersive binaural listening experiences. Its spatial depiction appears three dimensional and shockingly realistic. The KU 100 can be used to great effect in music and audio drama productions.
Get in touch
For plugin support please head over to our forum. For additional questions, special inquiries and collaboration proposals, email us at [email protected]