We have several of the Neumann heads here. They are pretty darned good! The ears are indeed moulded using a medium-density rubbery material that feels like an ear... :shock: It's actually pretty "eerie" (pun intended!)
Anyhow, yes, on headphones the effect is utterly staggering. On speakers it frequently sounds like distant blurry nonsense. You have to consider that when you think about how the sound's going to be delivered to people. If they're listening on an iPod or somesuch device with headphones, the result may very well be simply stunning.
(from the cobweb-laden caves of my memory) I seem to recall some old dodgy British band doing a binaural head recording of a suicide jump... starting from something like a New York street scene. There must have been some RF link from the head to the recording device, but the whole long scene started at street level, walking through the city.
I remember being able to hear when you approached an intersection, the reflections on the right of the roadwork pneaumatic drill across the street on the left, coming off the storefront windows on the right dropped away and 'you' could hear the sound of idling motors as 'you' crossed the road. Then walking through a revolving door or something like that, into a lobby with echoing floors... (I could almost see the shine on the polished marble!) then into an elevator, then turning around... then after a while the doors opening again, walking down a corridor, trying door handles...
Then going into a room, opening the window, hearing the street sounds down below... same roadwork noise, but more distant, mingling with the sound of car horns many storeys below... the change in the 'air' from inside, dead numb Air Con, to open, noisy outdoors atmos.... then the head was dropped from the window... tumbling, noise, chaos...then...
They chopped the tape at the impact point.
Pretty nuts though... it stayed with me...
Keith