Holophony is a 3D sound recording technique which uses a technique where an original recording is combined with a reference recording. The result is an extremely lifelike three dimensional audio recording which has been said to exceed the realism of stereo sound.
Put your headphones on and you can really get the feeling that sound is actually coming from around you for real. You can hear where the sound is coming from and how it is circling your head. Really cool and also creepy!
I wonder if Bose has anything somewhat similar, or even another company. I've seen for years where "3-D" sound has been stated and I've even seen some rather elaborate speaker designs that don't look anything conventional. I'm still however drooling over this Bose system.
Edit:
That Holophonic sound reminds me very much of Dolby Surround.
The original QSound had a different effect when played through Hi Fi speakers.
It was originally developed (as far as I'm aware), to enhance Classical Music recordings, but was never taken up by the major labels at that time.
It was tried out on a number of mainstream albums, three of which I own:- Madonna, "Immaculate Collection", Pink Floyd, "Pulse" and Roger Waters, "Amused to Death".
The last one I'm listening to at the moment.
Apparently, albums were recorded with some form of Phase Distortion, the result being that the soundstage seemed, or indeed was, much wider than the distance between your speakers.
And it worked. My speakers are about 9 feet apart, with another 3 feet or so to the side walls.
The various sound effects in "Amused to Death" extend right to the corners of the room. And you wouldn't get this effect by simply placing your speakers that far apart.
All you'd do is ruin the detail in your soundstage.
There's an interesting discussion HERE about QSound, and it appears that Floyds "The Final Cut" was recorded using "Holophonics" by Zuccarelli Labs. I wondered why that sounded so good without the QSound icon on the label.
Fascinating stuff, and a page full of info on all these methods of sound manipulation HERE:
I once had a high end Panasonic VCR with "Spatilizer" which some investigating turned up was either QSound or similar to it but that was mostly to enhance the sound on just plain stereo playback equipment or TVs. Recording the VHS tapes with it enabled sounded good back in the 90's however it sounds f'd up if listening to it with Dolby Surround/ProLogic I/II enabled. Also if 3-D sound effects are enabled on my 3-4 year old Sony TV I notice a weird offset that's heavy in the right channel when playing back those old tapes.