7 Surround and Spatial Sound

We've been dealing with standard stereo presentation up to now, but there are other ways we can create the spatial perception of sound. As with all other aspects we've been looking at, spatial audio is an enormous area of practice and research, and it is the one area of sound that is significantly in flux at the moment. Although Audacity has a rudimentary surround sound option, it has no native spatial sound tools. The skills and knowledge are quite specialized, but an overview to help you understand the area is useful. To do any real work in spatial audio, though, you'll need to switch to one of the other DAW tools available. We also need to distinguish between surround sound, which is the presentation of sound on multiple speakers (the hardware), and spatial sound, which is the location of the sound in a 3D space, accomplished in the software.