Surround sound is one of the defining characteristics of turning a simple room where TV is watched into a home theater. However, setting up the home theater often requires complex wiring schemes, perfectly placed speakers and many different headaches. What if, instead, you could use a single speaker array that provided all the directional immersive sound of a full 5.1 surround sound setup without any of the wires? That's the main goal of virtual surround sound, and 2008 saw an explosion of virtual surround sound units hit the market. Read on as we break down what the technology does, how it works, and our real world experience with listening to various virtual surround sound systems.

Psychoacoustics is the study of the human perception of sound. Companies have started applying some of the Psycoacoustic scientific concepts to speaker manufacturing to mimic the perception of surround sound without the full complement of physical speakers involved. There are a couple of different methods that manufacturers use to accomplish the virtual surround sound effect. For an in-depth scientific explanation of exactly how sound hits your ear to reflect the position of the sound producer, we like this howstuffworks article.

The first implementation of virtual surround sound was found in one of the most obvious places: Headphones. It only seems natural to string up a few extra drivers in the ears, and project sound from different directions. In practice, headphone virtual surround sound technology is far from perfect. Even in its most advanced state, which we tried at an industry showcase recently, the experience can't match a nice home theater setup. Current surround sound headphone technology adds some additional bass and a feeling of some spacial sound, but these products are often oversold as providing a true surround sound experience, which they don't. Instead, it's simply a nicer version of a traditional headphone experience.

Even if the surround sound experience of headphones sounded perfect, it could never replace an external speaker system, simply because headphones are a solo experience. The second major implementation of virtual surround addresses the problem by aiming to fill a whole room with sound from only one speaker. These so-called "sound bars" project sound in very specific directions to try to bounce sound waves off of the wall and sneak the sound behind the listener.

Behind their horizontal speaker grills, these single speaker systems are really a group of separate speaker drivers pointing in slightly different directions. While the number of actual speaker cones vary wildly, the main purpose of each driver is to project sound at a slightly different angle, maximizing the spatiality of the sound.

These sound bars actually do a surprisingly good job of reproducing surround sound. When I've listened to sound bars in a fairly small room, the experience was surprisingly good. While watching a few separate action packed Blu-ray films, I was able to hear audio that sounded like it was coming from behind my head. The spatial feeling was nice, but when immediately switching over to a standard 5.1 surround sound system I was able to tell the difference. The standard 5.1 surround sound system definitely had a more full sound, but sound bars do an effective job at mimicking the surround sound experience without any of the clutter.

In order to achieve the full surround effect, sound bars require a specific room setup. Sound bars operate by bouncing audio off of walls, so a good room setup would be symmetrical and have smooth walls, to keep the sound as pure as possible. Sound bars will operate in in most room environments, but the less ideal the room, the less ideal the surround effect.

Buyers of virtual surround sound systems can't expect to have the best quality surround experience possible. A proper 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system will always give better results than any virtual surround system can reproduce. That being said, buyers who are looking for an augmented sound experience without stringing cables or otherwise cluttering up a room should give sound bars a shot.

The buying market for surround bars is in its literal infancy. Sound bars started to hit the market back in the middle part of the decade, but 2008 saw more units being produced from manufacturers like Yamaha, Sony, Philips and Samsung, among others. Prices range dramatically from about $600 for the Philips SoundBar HTS8100, which is a complete HTiB with subwoofer, to upwards of $1000 for the Yamaha YSP-4000 Digital Sound Projector, which many consider to be the market leader.

Like any mimic, virtual surround sound's results aren't exactly perfect, and the experience of a full 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound system is much more defined and engrossing than a virtual surround sound system. That's not to say virtual surround sound doesn't work, it's simply imperfect and flawed. Perfectionists can always opt for the traditional method of stringing cables and speakers, though we find the minimalist aesthetic of a flat panel TV mounted on a wall with one speaker beneath very attractive.

What do you think? Are you ready to take the plunge on a single speaker setup? Or would you rather opt for the traditional experience of a five speaker surround sound system? Sound off in the comments, and let us know which you prefer.

[Image: William Hook]