Sound Tech

Every once in a while you come across some really cool tech demo, that makes you wonder if technology is going in that direction. May I present to you Holophonic Sound. You will need headphones (not speakers) to hear the effect of this so be sure to put them on, otherwise this sound byte is much less impressive.

(please listen to the demo before reading below)

So do I see a futre in this? Well actually not at least in the close future and here's why. Shows that we are used to watching like movies don't have alot going on that's not in front of the camera, so the rear sound effect although cool is impractical to film. I'll admit adding the vertical components of sound to current filming practices would be really cool, and having to setup only 2 speakers systems is a huge bonus. But the most convincing sounds in the demo are when the match box slips behind your head or at least you hear this. Such auditory cues leads most listeners to actually visualize this box and see it there even though it doesn't really exist.

I really do hope there'll be a push to put this technology into modern filming practices for source material, I mean it's not like they have a huge overhead of additional equiptment. The result to the end user is also less cost because they won't need a 5.1 sound system to hear directional audio.