Holophony... A technology destroyed by greed

Journal xtracto's Journal: Holophony... A technology destroyed by greed 2

Journal by xtracto on Monday January 08, 2007 @09:20AM

Some of you might have heard about it, some don't. Holophony is, as stated in the Wikipedia:

an audio recording technique, designed by Argentine researcher Hugo Zuccarelli, which operates on a similar principle to Holography, except it applies these principles to sound and audio recording. It uses a multiple exposure technique where an original recording is combined with a reference recording, and the resulting interference patterns are recorded. The result has been reported to be realistic and life-like three dimensional sounding audio recordings which have been said to exceed the realism of stereo sound.

The results obtained from holophonic recording should be listened to be understood. One of the main breakthroughs is the ability to play audio which is real 3D in contrast with current market techniques like DTS, Dolby Surround, etc. Although These techniques claim to produce tridimensional sound, the audio signal listened lacks of the vertical component. An example would be, in a typical THX introduction video where the robot seems to go around fixing the logo, you can listen the sounds at your front, side and back; however, these sounds lay in the same plane, there is difference in the vertical (i.e. there is *no* way to listen sound at the top of your head).

For some time, I have been looking hard on any information available on Internet that would allow me to create this kind of sound. I am a hobbyst game programmer and I believe this kind of sound has a lot of potential in game development. Specially on these days when portable gaming has became mainstream (and that the consoles are powerful enough to create 3D worlds).

Unfortunately, there is very little information about the process of recording holophonic audio. Some people claim that it is just a type of binaural recording but, you can listen, from samples available at both Wikipedia pages that the binaural recording lacks the depth of dimensionality achieved with Holophony.

As stated on the Wikipedia page, Holophonic sound was invented by an Argentinian named Hugo Zucarelli near the 1980s. It was because of the date of the invention that I was really puzzled why nobody hasnt exploited the inventions; and moreover, why isn't there information on how to achieve this type of audio.

Sometime this year, I started looking *again* for information about Holophony, but now, one obvious thing that I have always missed hit me, this is, if the author is from Argentina then maybe, just maybe there is some information in Spanish (which luckily is my mother tongue).

Although I could not found *how* to record using holophony, to my surprise I found some forums where (it seems) the same Hugo Zucarelli posted what I think is very interesting information which explains why Holophonics is not as widespread as other more accepted sounds.

Unfortunately, the story of this inventor is sad and from what he wrote, it seems some companies from the not-very-liked record industry assossiation of america have once again tried to abuse from the inventor.

I took the task to translate the forum posts made *by* the person who claims to be Hugo zucarelli. On the first forum thread the person claiming to be Mr. Zucarelli uses the nickname Hugi. The translation of the text is as follows:

#132 06-ago-2005 1:21
I am the inventor of the Holophony, I have just arrived to Buenos Aires, you can contact me at [mail removed]@yahoo.com
Next Friday in "Obras" I will show for the first time the Holophonic Speakers, I hope you like them.

The concert is "the end", they play "The Final Cut" from Pink Floyd. I hope to see you there. We will have Holophonic disks to sell ($30) 3 x $60 . I will be there to autograph them. Hope to see you there!

#139 09-ago-2005 22:57

On Friday in "Obras" in the concert of "The End" we will sell CDs. Come! Huggo Zuccarelli.

#215 24-feb-2006 23:21
If you want to ask me something interesting for everyone I answer. zuccarelli@yahoo.com
Specially the people that want to meet to chat. I am in Buenos Aires.
A hug.

It is on the next post (#216 ) where the interesting bits start:

Holophony is not binaural, because you do not need two ears to appreciate the 3D effect.

As you do not need two eyes to see a hologram in stereoscopic.

The reason is that the ears are tridimensional by nature and do not need to interrelate to work.

If not, you could not percieve sounds being with one ear covered with a pillow.

Moreover, try covering an ear and ask a friend to make a sound with his fingers around, up, down and you will see that you can percieve it.

The binaural heads where made for people instructed far from their intelligence. I, on the other side could be a monkey but I am not retard.

Observe and you will see that you can not pan the reality, you realize that the sound does not COLLAPSE on your ear when you cover the other, according to the binaural theories you could not have no spaciality however the sound does not approach your head it stays there.

Thanks for your interest, I wish that the Yanki and the Britons had not impede me make popular the holophony, that way you too could listen it.

It is still not late, if you know someone who is interested in using it we can still have fun.

A Hug. Hugo

As you can read from the above post, Zuccarelli explains a bit of the theory behind Holophony and the gives some hint about the problems he had to stand against the "Yankis" (peyorative for Americans) and Britons.

This is the first part of the story. I will continue it as I have some time.

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