Stereo playback as we know it for more than half a century uses two loudspeakers placed in an equilateral triangle in front of the listening position. With the listener exacly sitting in the so called sweet spot, this setup can reproduce a frontal localization, e.g. of an ensemble on stage or the band in front of us. To a certain extent it is possible to perceive depth and distance in good recordings as long as we find ourselves in a pretty neutral playback environment regarding it's acoustics and stay exactly in the sweet spot area. Surround sound was the next...

So called binaural audio is a recently much discussed term, but what is actually behind it? Our human hearing is naturally spatial: with just two ears we can distinguish wether a sound source is in front, behind, above or wherever around us. The uniquely shaped pinnae of the human ear alters the frequency response of a sound depending on it's direction of arrival. Together with other physio- and psychoacoustic effects this allows our brain to get a complex impression of the sounding environment we find ourselves in. Today's audio processing technologies allow to create an illusion of such a natural...

As we attend a performance in a concert venue, sound is all around us. Reflections from floor, walls and ceiling form what we refer to as the unique sound of a specific location. The human hearing can perceive these acoustic cues in fine spatial resolution allowing us to immediately characterize and imagine the space we are in. Moreover, room acoustics strongly impact the timbre of musical instruments and influence our perception of structures in a composition. Clearly space is an essential component of a music experience. In conventional two-channel stereo recordings, wise decisions must be made by the recording and...

After 40 years in history, the Compact Disc still is the most important physical distribution media for recorded music today. Many people still love their physical record collection, it's easy handling and the convenience of grabbing a record from the shelf to listen at any time while turning the pages of a printed booklet with elaborate program notes, translated lyrics or information about the artist's background and intention. The next generation reference media for music recordings is the Pure Audio Blu-ray disc. It combines Blu-ray’s vast storage capacity and bandwidth necessary for high resolution immersive sound with the easy and...