Bedini base

[PMowdes]

Has anyone ever come across this before?

http://www.bedini.com/base.htm

http://www.google.com/patents/US4555795

Seems like a unit for creating 3d audio.  I wonder if something could be recreated as a pedal or rack with an expression pedal to change the depth / direction??

Having a little difficulty find any schematics.

[motterpaul]

The patent says "Monaural to binaural audio processor" Binaural is the system that uses a human head model with mics in the "ears" to simulate recording audio exactly the way it sounds to an actual human being with the shapes of the ears and width of the head, etc, all factored in.

Binaural is "3D' sound in the sense that humans have some depth perception in their hearing, which binaural does capture pretty well, because we have 2 ears. It is the same way we have visual depth perception because we have two eyes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_audio_effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording

[PMowdes]

From what I gather the system exploits this effect by duplicating the audio signal and outputing a stereo signal which is modified so that I sounds like it comes from another direction.

Apparently it was used before the invention of surround sound,  and very popular in the early days of the UK rave scene.
I thought it could be interesting in a live environment where you could make it sound like the music was coming from different directions.

[motterpaul]

I see now - here is the full patent:

http://patents.com/us-4555795.html

The idea is that it make regular stereo sound even bigger. Given that it is 33 years old, it reminds of the Aphex aural exciter which was considered a VERY big deal for a year or so, but now is just another trinket. When the Aphex was first introduced you could not even buy one, you could only rent it (usually for disk mastering) and it was completely black box technology.

[motterpaul]

When the Aphex came out in 1982 (best of recollection) - ironically 34 years ago, the audio community was abuzz (I was working in 24-trk studios). We eventually found out what it did.

It was a parallel processor, meaning at added EFX to an existing stereo mix. It was a monaural to stereo processor in the sense that (best of recollection) it summed the two tracks, analyzed the frequencies and then re-added its output to the original mix by auto-spreading different frequencies (via tiny delay times between left & right) generally with the higher frequencies getting most spread and lower ones staying the most monaural.

The effect was almost inaudible, and was "fairy dust" that did not destroy the original mix, but just made it sound more "stimulating; brighter, excited."

This box appears to me to be a similar processor, but made to used at home rather than in the studio.