What am I hearing

Spaz,

Debbie Gibson's "Only in My Dreams" in 12" vinyl is a great record for that effect where the music goes around behind you and way out to the sides. Near the end, the percussive sounds circum-navigate the room (counter-clockwise if I recall correctly.

I also own a Vinx CD, "Rooms in my Fatha's House," that has some of this effect on certain tracks. It's uniquely good music in my opinion. The artist Vinx is one of a kind.

If you like Madonna, her "Immaculate Collection" CD has great quasi-surround effects on a few of the songs. "Vogue" is probably the best engineered of those tracks, though there is another cool track near the end that has a thunder storm going on behind you.

Check it out, and thanks for listing your quasi-surround (SuperImage) recordings. It's intriguing how these effects can emerge from just two stereo speakers!

With the Roger Waters cd it's a process called Q sound. "The Soul Cages" by Sting was also recorded with this process. The first time I listened to "The Soul Cages" my speakers were next to a set of French doors and I could've sworn music was coming through the doorway from the adjacent room.
Another cd I recently discovered with holographic sound is "Life On A String" by Laurie Anderson. If you system produces deep bass, watch out for track 6 on this one; my walls shake.

I remember that Roger Waters CD sounding excellent, but on the whole QSound is a bit gimmicky for my tastes and occasionally sounds flat-out wrong to my ears (see Madonna's "Immaculate Collection").

On earlier (pre-90's) Roger Waters tracks you're probably hearing holophonic imaging, which is a variation on binaural recording.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holophonics

It is very easy in todays world of digital plug ins to make this happen. if you take a signal X, all in the R ch only and then put the reverse phase of X all in the L ch it makes the image go way far right outside the speakers. It is a psychoacoustic affect that tricks the brain. I love it too. The best recordings I have heard that do this are:

Nina Hagen "African Reggae" on a few of her albums-get the full version, not the edit on the US version
Adrian Sherwood "Boogaloo" from Never Trust a Hippy
Massive Attack "Karmacoma-Mad Professor remix" from No Protection or the singles box

ET

Hall and Oates mfsl gold disc "Your Kiss Is On My List"
Amazing