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Audio By Carbonatix
Okay, so, here I am on a casual Friday afternoon, looking for something to write about as I head towards the weekend (which, as we all know, doesn’t really matter anymore considering days have been rendered meaningless) when my roommate walks in and asks me if I’ve heard of 8D Music yet.
You know that pseudo deja vu-esque phenomenon when you learn a word for the first time then you hear it used in the world just days later, despite the fact that you’d previously never heard it before? That’s what happened to me — literally, earlier today, I saw a tweet from my friend Pete about 8D Music. So, when my roommate is suddenly standing next to me asking me about it, I knew that this is something that’s likely making the rounds in the group chats this weekend, so here we are.
What is 8D Music? Technically, I have no idea, but in layman’s terms, it’s best described as surround sound, Sonos-like music in your head.
***LISTEN USING HEADPHONES***
According to Mel Magazine, “at its core, the 8D effect tries to mimic the sensation of hearing a binaural recording, which places sounds in space relative to a human’s head (rather than normal stereo recordings, which can only direct sound to the left and right speaker channels).”
“Binaural audio is created by recording through two mics that are placed in the same orientation as our ears — the delay (or “phase”) in how a single sound reaches those two mics creates the illusion of directional audio when you play it back.”
Is this the future of music as we know it? Frankly, I don’t know enough about the house scene (the EDM scene? I legitimately do not know the proper nomenclature for the genre) to even pretend to prognosticate on the topic. But what I do know is that as I listened to this for the first time — mildly baked, mind you — I was legitimately mind blown. Not even in the simple matter of speech, my mind was literally blown: I did a double-take for a moment as I thought the music was actually playing out of my Amazon Echo.
Give it a try: maybe it’s the future of music, maybe it’s something to distract you for a couple of minutes, either way, Happy Friday lads.
If you find yourself into 8D Music, there’s an entire YouTube channel dedicated to it.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com