Will 3D audio change the way we listen to music?

Jon Bentley wonders whether headphones users are ready for music to enter a whole new dimension

- Jon Bentley

Do we need to change the way we expect music to sound through stereo headphones? For over 60 years, ever since John C Koss invented them, they’ve basically been a pair of stereo speakers on your head. Though successful, they’re a rather unrealistic way of hearing the musical world.

Imagine you’re recording a vocal with a microphone a few inches away from the singer’s face. An audio mixer places this recording somewhere on a line between left and right to recreate a stereo image of the performance. Play it back on speakers and you achieve a reasonably similar perspective on the music.

But all that changes when you’re listening on headphones. That singer’s voice is now transplanted into the middle of your head. You’re truly involved in the performance but possibly not in a realistic way.