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Vibrations conducted through a person's bones produce the uncanny sensation of low sounds emanating from within the body. The New York-based artist Sergei Tcherepnin draws on this effect in Stereo Classroom Chairs (2015), mounting a transducer to the underside of each wooden seat on which visitors are invited to sit. When not attached, a transducer plays sounds quietly, at a level that is almost inaudible. When its surface touches another object, however, the material characteristics of that object filter the sounds in various ways. Here, Tcherepnin's audio composition travels through the body of each sitter with a physical intensity. The chair amplifies the composition, while the sitter acts as the filter, amplifying low-frequency sounds and muffling higher frequencies.

" Measuring Device with Organs ranges from essay to soundscape, bildungsroman to musical composition. The work begins with a typical "expert listener"-a middle-aged, white audiophile with a passion for classic rock-undergoing a test meant to determine what sound should sound like. Measuring Device with Organs hinges on the recordings used in such tests, conducted by stereo manufacturers and agencies like the International Electrotechnical Commission, reliant on the ability of humans to act like listening machines. As the test proceeds, the expert struggles to train his ears on the frequency response of the audio files, to vanquish the memories evoked by Spanish guitar riffs and snippets of ABBA."

""But wait!" you might ask, "what do you mean by Spatial Audio? Are you talking about Immersive Audio, 3D Sound, Surround Sound, Binaural, Auro-3D, Dolby Atmos, 360-sound…?" Well, yes, sort of. In principle, we are talking about anything related to 'sound beyond stereo', which is not an entirely new thing on its own."

"Ugnayan consists of twenty separate 51-minute tracks, each to be played back on a different radio station. The idea was then to have everyone in Manila tune in to a different radio station so that all of the tracks would play back simultaneously, each from a different source. This is a stereo mix of the original tracks, recorded by Maceda and a small group in 1973, using mostly traditional Philippine instruments. Masses of layered percussion and wind sounds build up in short passages and are supplanted by new ones. There's an abundance of bamboo sound, either struck or blown, and a lot of harmonic information happening. This piece (and Maceda's work in general) is important because it attempts to bring together elements of traditional folk music and "avant-garde" composition, and they do it in the public arena. These are not just dusty academic endeavors, they were and are lively examples of other ways that music and sound can be integrated into everyday life. -Jeph Jerman, squidsear"

"With just a bit of attention, one can enjoy radically spatialized music, with voice and sounds experienced in ways far different to stereo listening."

"The following entries describe and illustrate some of Deutsch's illusions of music and speech. Many of them show that people can differ strikingly in the way they hear very simple musical patterns. These disagreements do not reflect variations in musical ability or training. Even the finest musicians, on listening to the stereo illusions described here, may disagree completely as to whether a high tone is being played to their right ear or to their left. And the most expert musicians, on listening to the tritone paradox, can engage in long arguments as to whether a pattern of two tones is moving up or down in pitch. "

Sound mapping + spatial audio experts working with you Delight your audience with immersive experiences: use our free platform to create stereo, binaural, 3D audio and ambisonic soundwalks or get a bespoke solution"

"Learn why listening to three-dimensional sound in the real world and listening on headphones are two different experiences - and how you can bridge the gap."

"After years of escaping into music, writer Mark Richardson finds out what it feels like to hear no sound at all."