Shocking 3D sound in 2 channel

Accurately recording the ambient information of an actual venue and music event, takes careful mic placement and is the most fragile(easiest lost)of what is contained in your audio signal. Your entire playback chain, source to ear, is responsible for it's preservation. On the other hand; Amused to Death, and quite a few other albums, were mixed/recorded using a system called QSound, which(via an algorithm) enables even a simple and inexpensive system to throw images that can amaze and entertain: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-Sound)

BTW: I've heard crappy pressings of the Amused to Death CD(exact same Columbia UPC 074644712728) that miserably failed to reproduce 3D effects, when compared with a good disc, on a system that performed wonderfully. SO- If you do try the Roger Waters, and it doesn't perform as expected; it may not be your system.

Michael,
They are right, of course. It is a combination of speaker behaviour, room acoustics and T/T+phonostage attributes. Try Martin Logan electrostats at varying degrees of tilt, or even alter the arrangement of the soft furnishings along with your listening position and you will see/hear what I mean.

Personally, I'm not a room acoustics purist so I fully enjoy wraparound sound featuring tall images which can even appear standing right next to the listener's chair at full height.

A good example of this was a well known female artist who was singing front and centre while her other "selves" were harmonising/rapping in the L+R channels. With a particular turntable (an LP12), rather than residing at the loudspeakers, her other selves appeared standing on either side of my listening chair - 6 feet tall and so real I could touch them. (Try this trick with a CD and you'll be out of luck... ;)

Some turntables accentuate the vividness and reality of these "phase effects", effectively causing sounds to appear from the rear corners of the room. :)
Again it is very much recording dependent.
It is a fun hobby :)
Enjoy.
All the best,

Mr Moon- An easy case to make, in general(ambiance recovery/vinyl vs CD). I'm guessing your friend has quite a record collection? Would they be interested in adopting a new son?