Bottom line: Surround sound without all the speakers. Not that crappy 3D effect that's been on digital music players and TVs for years, this one is new. Also works with existing stereo music. From BBC News: "An enhanced way of creating 3D sound using computer software is attracting interest from the TV industry and Hollywood. "Surround-sound can give you a sense of an explosion happening at a distance, but it's not accurate," says Professor Choueiri, sitting in his custom-built acoustics lab on campus. "With 3D audio, I can get a fly to go around your headÂ… or if you want to really scare somebody, you can put a sound inside their head." His breakthrough is a small one, he is careful to say. The brain-tricking effect can be created in other ways, and other pioneers have achieved it. But none of the solutions appear to be as simple - or it seems, commercially viable - as his software filter, based on mathematical algorithms. " Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9427000/9427892.stm From the Princeton University website: "Pure Stereo is a recent breakthrough in audio technology (licensed by Princeton University) that yields unprecedented spatial realism in loudspeakers-based audio playback allowing the listener to hear, through only two loudspeakers, a truly 3D reproduction of a recorded soundfield with uncanny accuracy and detail, and with a level of high tonal and spatial fidelity that is simply unapproachable by even the most expensive and advanced existing high-end audio systems." "One of the greatest advantages of Pure Stereo is that it is fully compatible with all existing stereo recordings and does not require any additional playback hardware aside from the single digital processor. Pure Setreo (like standard stereo) requires only a single pair of loudspeakers." Source: http://www.princeton.edu/3D3A/PureStereo/Pure_Stereose1.html I'm looking forward to seeing what effect this has on my music collection
Although interesting for certain purposes, this goes against the goal of an audiophile, which is getting the exact audio from the master to your ears.
I disagree, Wikipedia defines an audiophile as someone who "prefer to listen to music at a quality level that is as close to the original performance as possible". If this is the case, then surely anything other than 3D isn't close to the perfomance at all. It might represent the sound as captured by the recording equipment, but not the sound as played by the musicians.
But that's the problem: if you want the performance in surround, there has to be more mics used for the recording. Anything else is less pure than the original stereo.
Well I haven't actually heard the technology in use so I'll reserve judgement, but from the video on the Princeton site he says that although existing stereo audio will work, for best results music would need to be recorded with multiple mics. Just two in fact, one representing each ear.
