Princeton professor invents a sound system that plays music in 3D

Music lovers are always looking for ways to enhance their listening experience, and Lam Wai-shan is no exception. The 40-year-old technology entrepreneur heard about a Princeton University professor who had developed a 3D sound system, and two years ago had the chance to experience it for himself.

Lam and his wife were visiting Princeton, in the US, where they met Professor Edgar Choueiri, director of the engineering physics programme and chief scientist of the university's laboratory for advanced spacecraft propulsion. Choueiri may be a rocket scientist, but he's also a diehard audiophile, who has worked on the system for 12 years.

Lam was curious to try a demonstration of the cutting-edge sound system, called BACCH - band-assembled crosstalk cancellation hierarchy - and the scheduled two-hour visit stretched into eight hours, including lunch and a home visit with the Lebanese academic.

"After that I couldn't sleep - it was either jet lag or adrenaline, but in that whole week afterwards I only got a few hours of sleep," he recalls. So Lam ordered his own BACCH system and flew Choueiri to town to calibrate and customise his computer. A year later, Lam received his BACCH-SP - SP stands for "stereo purifier" - and can now enjoy music that literally surrounds him.

"BACCH can change an audiophile's life," says Lam, who made the innovative system available in Hong Kong in September. "It busts many myths. The experience is so dramatic and obvious that it's the correct way to listen to stereo. I had to have it at home."