"El Cheapo" dummy heads? (Peter Marvit )

Subject: "El Cheapo" dummy heads?
From:    Peter Marvit  <marvit(at)NEU.EDU>
Date:    Thu, 5 Jul 2001 10:03:25 -0400

One part of Henrik's very nice response to the speakerphone question got
me pondering; dummy heads can be quite useful for making binaural
recordings but are rather expensive.

For various reasons, I have a small collection of styrofoam "heads"
usually used to display hats or wigs in retail stores. Does anyone have
any experience using these as a basis for home-made dummy heads? I imagine
drilling holes and inserting microphones inside. Even more ambitious would
be to mold pinna and glue them on (or perhaps use some theatrical ears?
Hmmm, "Spock" ears?). These styrofoam heads are a tad smaller than adult
humans and the material is obviously of different density than humans
(with possible exceptions duly noted).

Would they mostly work at a much cheaper cost, nonetheless?

Cheers,
Peter


:                 Peter Marvit, PhD     <marvit(at)neu.edu>                    :
: Northeastern University, Dept. of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology :
:               133 Forsyth Building, Boston, MA 02115-5000                 :
:                 phone: 617/373-5198   fax: 617/373-5199                   :

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