Personal sound system with virtually positioned lateral speakers

A head mounted surround sound virtual positioning system that includes a video recorder (200), which is operable to have disposed therein a tape (202), having a surround sound audio track associated therewith. The surround sound system is encoded on two channels, which are output to a Dolby TM decoder (204), which is operable to extract the five surround sound system channels therefrom. The left front, left rear, right front and right rear channels are input to a virtual positioning system (264), which is operable to virtually position each of the speakers relative to the head of the listener (26). These signals are then combined with a combining circuit (268) to provide the virtual positioning of only two speaker lines (58) and (60), disposed adjacent the right and left ears of the listener (26). The speakers (58) and (60) are disposed on the head mounted system such that they are fixed relative to the ear of the listener and slightly forward of the ears and adjacent the head. The center speaker signal output of the decoder (204 ) is output from a separate external speaker (310). To provide a panning effect, a listener (330) can be disposed relative to a center speaker (336) and allowed to focus thereon. Two external speakers, a left external speaker (332) and a right external speaker (334) are virtually positioned to drive the binaural speakers (58) and (60). The listener (330) then focuses onto the center speaker (336) and the sound source is effectively fixed relative to the listener (330), such that any sound effects provided by the intended position of the speakers (332) and (334) are retained in the aural program that is virtually positioned relative to the listener (330).