Point of audition
Point of audition (CHION 2009, 485-486) is an expression that parallels at the aural level the visual "point of view." We can observe that sounds around us can provide a sense of distance (far away if the sound is faint, close if it's loud), and orientation. Modern stereophony, and the use of Dolby stereo, have considerably developed the possibilities of playing with point of audition in film—in early sound cinema, sound was coming "from the screen". However, this point of audition can be often simply reinforced through visual means.
Alternating between different points of audition is a salient feature in Josef von Sternberg's Dishonored (1934, USA). In this sequence, the female protagonist is playing at the piano; the Russian officer who sneaks in the adjacent room can hear the piano, but at a lower level. in this case, we are hearing the piano the way he hears it—as if we were listening through his own ears. The alternation between these two points of audition enhances our sense of spatiality, as the action is taking place in two different locations (the two rooms) and at the same time, as the sense of temporality is reinforced by the continuity of the piano music: this is also typical of the X-27 effect.
At the very beginning of Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952) an acousmatic voice resonates outside a movie theater. The voice is bathed with reverberation, thus we infer that it must be loud enough to be audible for the people in the street. Then as the camera moves gradually closer to its source, the voice gets louder, until reaching its source: a woman speaking outside the movie theater into a microphone. It is at this moment that the voice loses its reverberated quality; now embodied (thus deacousmatized), the voice sounds close to us, but not as loud as the acousmatic voice of the opening shot.
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