Two omnidirectional microphones placed in the ears of a dummy head creating the stereo image.

The Binaural recording technique uses two omnidirectional microphones placed in the ears of a dummy head and torso. This two-channel system emulates the human perception of sound, and will provide the recording with important aural information about the distance and the direction of the sound-sources. When replayed on headphones, the listener will experience a spherical sound image, where all the sound-sources are reproduced with correct spherical direction.

Binaural recordings are often used as ambience sound or in virtual reality applications.