At a loudspeaker demonstration the design engineer played a sound that had simulated height projection. Pretty impressive. I wonder if there are any commercially available plugins that do the same.
I don't think it's possible Roger. I'm an engineer for JBL, and we have a similar technology for flat speakers, where the sound projection is greater in one direction than the other. This is dependant upon the physical characteristics of the speaker. We also have another patented technology known as a Petroff Filter, which uses 2 speakers to project the sound up, which we use in our automotive applications. Thus, you can have speakers located near your feet and we can project the sound up closer to your ears, so the sound doesn't sound like it's coming from your feet.
Actually the sound projection has little to do with it. Height in sound can be accomplished with a psychoacoustic trick that mimicks the effect the outer ear has on sounds emitting from above.
If you change the sound the same way the outer ear does with a sound from above, the effect is very convincing and can be played back in almost any normal speaker. Ought to be some plugins available I think, but maybe not.
I see now that some of the later EAX-versions supposedly can do this, I'll try that.