Homemade Binaural Dummy Head Microphones

Digging through my closet, I found this binaural dummy head that I made several years ago, and I thought I’d take it for a spin. Perhaps it’s time for me to transition this channel into ASMR content?

I’ve talked before about binaural recordings, but I forgot that I had made this cheap binaural head probably close to 10 years ago. While it’s certainly not of the same quality as professional binaural microphones, give it a listen and let me know what you think about it as a $20 solution!

Ingredients:

  • Syrofoam Mannequin Head (e.g. this)
  • 2x Electret Microphone (e.g. these)
  • Rocker Switch (e.g. this)
  • Battery Holder, 3xAA (e.g. this)

More spatial and immersive audio videos here:


More “creative electronics” videos here:


Lo-Fi Telephone Microphone

Watch me dissect and old phone and repurpose its carbon microphone.

Constructing a lo-fi microphone from an old telephone’s carbon microphone, and seeing what other parts we can make some sounds with.

I got this old phone at Goodwill for a couple bucks, interested in seeing if it had a carbon microphone that I could salvage. It turns out getting that microphone out was a breeze. Then I started seeing what other parts might be interesting–the keypad, the chip that makes DTMF tones. Finally, I put together the circuit for the carbon microphone, and got it back in the handset, adding a new specialty carbon microphone to my mic locker (such as it is).