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I don't know if it has been covered before in this forum - but has anyone used one? they are meant to sound "like if you were there". Anyone around has used one? I'm very curious...

i believe you are talking about a SASS head, used for binaural recording, yes? i've never used one, though i'd like to.

You're confusing mics....

The SASS is a Crown mic with two PZMs on a baffle, and the dummy heads are made by at least Neumann. Schoeps makes a similar Sphere mic that's like a dummy head. They could all be binaural, but Crown and Schoeps don't specifically use that terminology. Neumann does.

The SASS-MkII is a nice mic, never used the Neumann or Schoeps though.

AKG also made a particularly horrid-sounding one called the D-99. It had dynamic mics in the ears and a sort of fur around the robotic-like head, earning it the nickname "Harry," which was actually printed on the AKG badge at the base of the neck.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

Try checking out some of Tchad Blakes recordings.
Particularly Randy Newmans Bad Love record, Ron Sexsmiths first few, and the Finn Brothers first record. He uses a Neumann Head just back from the rack toms to provide 90% of his drum sound. He does a few weird things to it sometimes but on some songs he leaves it pretty untouched and the realism is pretty astounding. I know that there is a song on the Finn brothers record where Tim and Neil were placed around the head and played a 2 acoustc guitar, 2 vocal live performance.

Oh, there's also Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden record where the drums were recorded with a Neumann Head plus a few contact mic's.

hollis wrote:Oh, there's also Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden record where the drums were recorded with a Neumann Head plus a few contact mic's.

kindof off topic, and perhaps a really stupid question, but, is there a place where you can find out this kind of information for other albums, or do you just have to talk to someone who was involved in the recording process?

The recording process of the last two Talk Talk records is quite well documented by interviews with Tim Friese-Green and Phill Brown. It just takes a google or 2. This is generally not the case, but you sometimes find things in Mix or Studio Sound

goosman wrote:You're confusing mics....

d'oh! you're right. i've mixed the SASS PAZ system with the "Fritz" head.

A bit of googling brought me over to binaural.com, where they have a fair bit of information about (duh) binaural recording, which is what recording with a dummy head gives you. There's even a picture of a Neumann Fritz head being fitted onto a crash test dummy so that industrial researchers can measure the volume of car noise! I've never (to my knowledge) heard a record made with this technique (I'm even unfamiliar with the records mentioned in this thread), but just in case you're curious, the site apparently has loads of them for sale. Apparently the sound is quite a bit different from normal stereo, and I get the impression that to really appreciate it, you need headphones. Mixing with this thing would seem to be problematic - if you adjusted the pan of the tracks, you would destroy the localization that seems to be the signature sound of the thing, and probably mess with the phase as well. It really seems like something you use on audiophile minimal-miking projects where you're going directly to two-track. Has anyone here ever worked with one?