User's Manual

H3-D Surround Sound Microphone User Guide
Rising Sun Productions Ltd. page 3
What is the Holophone?
The Holophone is a specially designed microphone system for
capturing sound in three dimensions, while keeping signals
discrete for surround sound playback.
Designed specifically to create sound tracks for surround sound
playback systems, the Holophone’s superb realism and ease of use
make it the preferred choice for a wide range of other applications.
The 1990s witnessed an explosion of surround sound playback
technology in the form of motion picture systems, home theater,
DVDs and MP3s. The recording of natural and instantaneous
surround sound was left behind, until the Holophone.
Three-dimensional sound is based on the brain’s amazing ability to
decode subtle differences in timing and volume of sounds coming
from different directions as the waves bend around our head.
Surround sound has traditionally been created by mixing sounds
recorded from multiple sources. The sound engineer controls the
mix to simulate what a person sitting in a particular space would
hear. The mixing approach is costly and time consuming, and the
results are inconsistent.
The Holophone solution is to place multiple discrete microphones
on the surface of a specially-designed head. These microphones
capture the sounds that come from various directions. An internal
microphone captures low frequency sounds.
The Holophone’s head is actually an ellipsoid. It looks more like a
pointy football than a real human head. Acoustically, however, it
performs remarkably like the real thing.
Holophone H3-D
Without the head, each microphone would have an omnidirectional
response field. The Holophone head provides a spherical boundary
layer of varying proportions between each microphone, which
effectively divides the incoming sound into sectors so that each
microphone picks up sound primarily from one direction. The
shape of the head also ensures that one microphone’s response
does not bleed directly into another, but will bleed enough to
ensure a smooth transition from channel to channel. These
channels relate directly to the channels in a standard surround-
equipped audio playback system. Small differences in the time it
takes for a sound to be picked up by the various microphones are
interpreted by the brain to determine where the sound is located.