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Article snippet: TROY, N.Y. — If you’ve spent any time at children’s birthday parties, you probably know what an inflated balloon sounds like when rubbed: harsh, squeaky, not particularly resonant. “Rubbed-balloon sound” might not seem like a sonic texture you’d place much stock in if you were creating a musical work. But how would that change if you were listening from inside the balloon? The composer Natasha Barrett decided to answer the question. She put a 3-D microphone in a balloon, pressed the record button and got down to some serious rubbing. On Monday morning, at a “spatial audio” lecture at Empac — the experimental media and performing arts center that is part of the acoustical marvel of a concert hall, outfitted with one of the world’s most advanced ambisonic systems. As Ms. Barrett’s 3-D audio file was piped into the loudspeakers — there are 64, positioned both around and over listeners — the sound of her balloon manipulations was enveloping. Smeared textures whipped around listeners’ heads along a wild variety of trajectories. Variations of pressure and phrase-length registered as legitimately musical. Discrete lines of vibration converged, with a triumphant air, before splitting apart again. But there wasn’t much time to linger over Ms. Barrett’s startling spatialized recording. Presenters and participants at Empac’s Spatial Audio Summer Workshop had a lot of ground to cover, and only five days to get hands-on experience with tools that are rarely available under on... Link to the full article to read more