3D60

There have been a few attempts to produce a three dimensional environmental effect from headphones over the years, but even though they sometimes hit the spot and in some cases even worked on speakers if you got your head in the right place, nothing made a big enough impression or worked reliably enough to become commonplace. But the drive to create true surround sound has never diminished. There was quadraphonic sound, which was heavily dependent on equipment, and there has always been a very cheap pseudo-3d effect brought about simply by having the stereo channels out of phase with each other, achieved by reversing the polarity of one set of speaker wires. There is five-channel and seven-channel Dolby sound, and more, but all of these techniques only work with speakers. Attempts to create a four, five or seven channel sound field in headphones haven't been hugely successful, and entirely new concepts, however much patented and closely-guarded the technology, haven't broken through to the iPod audience. The best I ever heard was Qsound, which is still with us though I haven't come across it in use, to my knowledge, for quite a while (http://www.qsound.com/). That company has advanced into many related fields since I last heard the 3d product, which as far as I recall was on the KLF album "Chill Out". Ahh, good times. Now, a new contender has risen in the form of 3d60, a headphones-only experience that claims to create a genuine all-around experience even from remixed stereo tracks. Amongst the first to put the technology to commercial use is long-time ambient dub duo, The Orb, whose co-founder, Alex Paterson, has been the The Orb along with various collaborators for more than twenty years. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the other co-founder of The Orb was Jimmy Cauty, who was also a member of the KLF and who achieved a certain fame for burning a million pounds, for reasons nobody can now recall. Currently The Orb is Alex and Killing Joke's Martin "Youth" Glover, and they've now got together with some old singer-guitarist called David Gilmour, whom you might possibly have heard of too, to create an album called Metallic Spheres, which is at least as good as expected if not more so, in my opinion anyway. But I'm not reviewing the album (did I mention it's really good?), I'm just bringing the subject up because along with the standard stereo CD, download, and vinyl LP (yes, you did read that correctly), there will also be a double-CD version in which one disc is recorded using 3d60. So, does it work? I have mixed responses. I do have a good set of headphones, but not all the demo tracks worked for me. The music seemed rather more like over-processed enhanced stereo, though there were some effects in there that I couldn't entirely locate in space and which I was probably intended to experience as being in front or behind me. It is an unique sound, but I am not convinced at all that it's an advance on a well-mixed stereo image. I'd recommend you go check out the demos on this site and see what you make of them, and post comment. I am probably going deaf anyway, so I may need a little help here.