3D audio reproduction

[Irvrobinson]

The Jan 28, 2013 issue of The New Yorker has a, well, turgid article about a guy named Edgar Choueri, who claims he has figured out how to reproduce true 3D audio from two speakers, not just great imaging in the classical sense. One example used, a fly buzzing around your head. Apparently the secret of this has something to do with manipulation of crosstalk between the speakers. And miraculously his technique works without special recordings, the author claiming that the MP3 Rolling Stones recording of Beast of Burden directly from her iPhone was reproduced absolutely realistically. No special speakers are required either. My favorite sentence form the article:

"There doesn't, in truth, seem to be much dissatisfaction with what people have now; those tiny, tinny earbuds playing music from detail-diminished MP3s are satisfying because, as Sterne says, in all but a handful of aberrant cases nobody sits down to listen to music."

I love being aberrant, as least in this case.

I'm guessing that not many of you read The New Yorker, I'm not a fan myself, my wife is into it. But if this true it has some interesting implications.

Adam Gopnik: Edgar Choueiri and the Astonishing World of 3-D Sound : The New Yorker