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Single Speaker Unit Delivers Surround Sound

Posted by simoniker on from the just-showing-off dept.

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."

1 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Binaural recordings anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm surprised no one ever seems to mention the binarual method of recording and playback when it comes to surround sound.

    The main techniques used by humans to locate the direction of sound are: the volume of the sound, the phase difference between the sound hitting each ear at slighlty different times and the effect that the head, ears, body have on altering the frequency makeup of the sound.

    The way to recreate this is to use a dummy head with miniature microphones placed in each ear of the dummy to record whatever sounds you want and then to play that recording back over headphones.

    The dummy head recreates all the subtle phase and frequency effects that a real human head would in the real environment and the headphones allow that recording to be delivered to each ear free of the distorting effects that loudspeakers are prone to have(room effects, cross channel problems, phase problems etc).

    Checkout http://www.binaural.com/ for MP3 samples of this technique.

    The realism of binaural is simply staggering when used with the right headphones. No multi-channel surround sound that I have ever heard comes anywhere near close. It is so realistic that it can have you looking around to locate the source of the sound to make sure it wasn't really something in your immediate environment. The problem is that most people don't want to wear headphones when watching movies I suppose.