Video: Learn to Create 3D Holographic Sound

Click here to watch Paul McGowan of PS Audio explain 3D holographic audio.

3D video is getting all the buzz, but few integrators know they can also create 3D holographic audio for their clients.

Wait ... 3D audio?

It may sound gimmicky, but Paul McGowan of PS Audio says it's real.

It’s done through “imaging,” which basically means you are able to configure a system so that the listener is unable to discern from “where” the sound is coming. In essence, it’s the creation of a lifelike, three-dimensional image that seems to extend beyond the walls of the room and behind the loudspeakers.

It’s a configuration with which McGowan, CEO and founder of the high-end power component manufacturer, is very familiar.

“I remember the first system I heard this on … many years ago. I was stunned at what I heard.

"When I closed my eyes I could not point to where the sound was coming from. Instead, there was this amazing lifelike three-dimensional image that seemed to extend beyond the rear wall of [the] room and out into the garden. It was really a revelation,” McGowan recalls.

How Does It Work?

McGowan says it might sound counter-intuitive to think about sound coming from “behind the loudspeakers,” since speakers are meant to emit sound from the front. “Counter intuitive, yes. Correct, no,” he says.

He explains:

“Why would the sound appear to come from behind the loudspeaker? It’s all an illusion, but one that makes sense if you picture a typical setup for a recording. Imagine how one would make a recording of a group of musicians on stage.

"You would set a pair of microphones on the front of the stage pointing towards the musicians that are playing and you would start recording. Your ears are doing the same thing: pointing towards the stage and listening. Everything you are hearing is happening in front of you, but behind the microphones.

“Now imagine replacing the microphones with loudspeakers. Forget the fact that the loudspeakers are pointing at you. If everything is working correctly (the room, the equipment, the recordings) then the loudspeakers should reproduce exactly what the microphones picked up and recreate the same space — behind the microphones.

“Everything in your stereo system that has to do with imaging is an audible illusion: including the ‘center channel,’ which we all know isn’t really there. In a system that has great imaging the sound rarely ever comes directly from the speakers themselves (unless the recording is close mic’ed).”

The end result is a system in which the loudspeakers “simply disappear.”

“Achieving this needs to be handled in a very systematic method: starting with proper room treatment, speaker placement, AC power done right and the correct cabling between equipment. Once these issues have been resolved, you can then start changing equipment, upgrading this or that and really have a means of appreciating what the differences are for your system,” he says.


Click here to watch Paul McGowan of PS Audio explain 3D holographic audio.