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

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.