Tube Surround Sound Headphones
By Donald Melanson 
posted January 25th 2005 6:45AM
posted January 25th 2005 6:45AM
How can you get five speakers into a set of headphones without making something that looks ridiculous? Answer:
you can't. But that hasn't stopped people from trying. That stylish piece of gear at the right is a set of
Tube Surround Headphones, which do in fact cram a real 5.1 surround sound system into something that can sort of be
called "headphones". But they'd have to sound awfully good for us to cough up €150 for them.
[Thanks, Marc]
I was initially skeptical about this - specially since there appeared to be no "in action" product shots - I was envisioning this tube in front of the eyes... But I eventually found some pics of a model posing on the bottom of the "store" page of all places! (http://www.yulanderson.com/tube/store.php)
I think it has some potential and at least deserves a round of applause. Now if they could get some wireless ones to work...
I got to interview Yul Anderson at Apple Expo in Paris (audio link: http://www.yourmaclife.com/paris04/vids/tubesurround.m4a) and heard a demo of the tube surround. Yul played a piece of music right off his iPod out of the standard 1/8" connector. In hindsight, I wish I had asked to play some of my own music instead of the Jimi Hendrix tune Yul was playing for everyone just to get a personal perspective.
By the time our interview was over I wasn't sure if I was being hucked a piece of gear or witness to the birth of a new product. Proceed with caution.
Forgive my ignorance but if it was demo'd from an iPod, you were just hearing 2.0 upmixed to 5.1 right? Or was it a multichannel M4A? But even then, iPod only has 2.0 out... so I guess it would've been 2.0 discrete, in which case either the headphones have a multichanel decoder built in... yeah, I'm lost!
I sugest that anything that happens because of this be referred to as the halo effect