You can imagine lugging around a 5.1 system for monitoring purposes when you are working on a laptop seems a bit of an overkill, but that's exactly what you'll end up doing unless you get hold of Beyer Dynamic's new Headzone Pro XT.
Offering engineers the ability to "mix surround-sound projects in their ideal studio anyplace, anywhere”, it's quite an attractive prospect.
The headphone system utilises an ultrasonic-headtracking system which locates the orientation of the listener’s head with respect to the source material, then adjusts the audio accordingly to give the impression of listening in an actual physical space with a 5.1 system - clever stuff.
The system comes in a 19" rack unit with AES inputs and a tracker for the headphones.
Expect it to be in the $thousands
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AES08: Mix 5.1 On Headphones