holophony?

[diggy_dude]

Hughes (the aircraft company) had some little box like that on the consumer hi-fi market in the 80s. I think it was called Sound Retrieval System (SRS).

In the early 90s, I read about convolution matrices that could place sounds in a 360 degree soundfield. This was touted as the audio component of virtual reality, which was then in vogue. The DSP hardware of the day could only convolve one sound source at a time.

 

[John Willett]

SRS still exists - Sennheiser use it in their wireless surround-sound headphones.

Holophony has pretty well not taken off.

HOWEVER.....

The Soundfield mic. is still in existence and is getting more popular and, with the new SPS200, more affordable. I recently bought an SPS200 myself (retails at £1,495 +VAT I think):-

There are a few small 5.0 mics around - like the DPA "bicycle saddle":-

As well as, of course, the original Holophone:-

and the new mini Holophone for on-camera use:-

 

[syntheticwave]

Holophony

...if I google Holophony, the first hit is www.holophony.net .

Thats the physically reconstruction of sonic field, utterly different the blumlein stereo.