Single Speaker Unit Delivers Surround Sound

Makarand writes "A one-speaker home theater system that is able to deliver surround sound has been unveiled by Nirotek America (Torrance, CA). The single speaker unit actually contains five individual speakers packed horizontally into a single case. The surround sound effect is achieved by playing some sophisticated psychoacoustic trickery on the human brain. Realistic surround sound from movies and stereo CDs can be obtained as long as listeners are at least six feet away from the speaker unit and the unit stands near the front edge of whatever surface it is placed on. The unit is priced at around $799 and USA Today has a review."

Comments

Re:Gimmick

[nicsterrr]

It's not a gimmick at all. It's actually a product based on years of signal processing research.

With regards to how many speakers are needed, the more speakers used, the more control one has in forming the acoustic wave field via signal processing techniques.

It all boils down to error minimisation techniques - given a desired sound field and a set of acoustique sources, minmise the difference between the desired field and the combined field output by the acoustique sources.

Re:Area of effect

[tiled_rainbows]

In my amateur playing about with software synthesis etc, particularly the very cool (and free) Buzz (www.buzz2.com), I've found that the coolest stereo effects come from panning using both delay and volume differences - that is, delaying the sound in one channel and making it slightly quieter.
Interesting effects, to varying levels of "realism", can also be acheived with stereo reverb - having, for example, the "dry" sound of an instrument dominate in the left channel, but the reverby sound dominate in the right.