Sony Noise Cancelling Headphones as Binaural Microphones

By Jonathan Hassall on

My Sony smart­phone has an unusu­al TRRRS (Tip-Ring-Ring-Ring-Seal) con­nec­tor, allow­ing it to use very rea­son­ably priced noise can­celling head­phones (Sony MDR-NC31EM) that have an extra micro­phone in each earphone.

I found that the Sony app Sound Recorder allows select­ing record­ing direct­ly from these two micro­phones, and are great for bin­au­r­al record­ing, and I gave it a go walk­ing along a few busy streets. You can lis­ten on YouTube and Soundcloud: