Surround Sound

The incredible guitar virtuosity from the likes of Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson and Stanley Jordan all rely on their string-picking proficiency being registered by the instrument's pickups. These vibrations are then transformed into electrical signals and sent off to an amplifier for our listening pleasure. Using such a setup, string movement can only be read on one axis, the horizontal. The 3Dxy pickup system reads each string twice, on both the horizontal and the vertical and is said to result in a rich, surround sound effect called natural stereo.  Read More

Hardened first person shooter (FPS) veterans know that your ears can be as important as your eyes when battling hordes of enemy combatants. Such veterans will also be aware that the staccato of gunfire and the sound of exploding body parts aren’t always appreciated by other members of the household – particularly in the early hours. In response to extensive research to show what different gamers want from their headsets, Sony has unveiled its DR-GA500 and DR-GA200 headsets designed to maximize spatial awareness without waking up the neighbors.  Read More

Call me old fashioned but when I see the comforting glow of a vacuum tube I know that I'm in for some sonic pleasure. And that's precisely the thinking behind the aim AS301DTS USB audio tube headphone amplifier. OK, so the vacuum tube doesn't actually work, it's designed that way to trigger the very mental connection I opened with. That done, the tiny device then promises to deliver bass-enhanced surround sound to just about any pair of headphones attached to it. Sweet.  Read More

At the beginning of May digiZoid introduced the Zo personal subwoofer, which claimed to enhance a listener's sonic experience by offering increasing degrees of bass contouring to any audio fed through it. Over the past week I've had the chance to take the Zo for a spin. Has it lived up to the claims of its manufacturer? Read on for a full review.  Read More

Most of us are now familiar with 5.1 surround sound systems that allow us to enjoy (almost) cinematic audio experiences in our living rooms when watching movies or playing games. The Psyko 5.1 gaming headset aims to offer a similar experience by using air tubes to direct sounds to the ears from five speakers fitted in the bridge and subwoofers within each ear cup.  Read More

The vast majority of multi-channel sound (stereo, 5.1, 6.1, etc) is produced post-production, making it difficult to squeeze professional-grade discrete 5.1 audio quality into modest production budgets … until now. The Holophone PortaMic 5.1 and PortaMic Pro surround microphones both sit atop your video camera and offer a cost-effective means of recording surround sound directly to a camera or indeed, any stereo recording device. At US$600 and US$1000 respectively, the microphones permanently offer professional discrete surround recording from a single point source for a once-only price off, with no additional mixing required. Bargain!  Read More

The world of home theater seems ever changing. New formats, new innovations and cheaper prices have made an altogether bigger audio-visual experience more accessible for everyone. Two channel systems have been common place in our lounge rooms for decades now, but you might need a few more tricks in your arsenal to get the best out of the latest multi-speaker systems. Tim LeFevre investigates.  Read More

The Fraunhofer stand at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin will achieve a world first by broadcasting a radio station in DAB Surround and MP3 Surround Internet radio. ROCK ANTENNE will be transmitted in the MPEG Surround standard, which compresses the six channels of a surround music track to the extent that they require no more memory than a compressed stereo signal.  Read More

Bringing a new spin to the term "functional furniture", Sony's BRAVIA™ Theatre TV stand (RHT-G500) integrates a 3.1-channel virtual surround sound system, three HDMI inputs, audio inputs for TV, DVD and Blu-ray Disc™, plus support for Bluetooth® and Wi-Fi... and it can all be controlled from a single remote. The sound system consists of center, left and right speakers plus a subwoofer and uses "S-Force PRO Front Surround", a technology that promises realistic surround sound without the need for rear speakers and therefore no wires to upset the system's clean lines.  Read More