Bolloxoid said:
No there isn't. HRTFs can be used very well with loudspeakers, in principle only crosstalk cancellation needs to be added compared to headphone listening. HRTF stands for head-related transfer functions and the bulk of the effects comes from the head, including the earlobes. The effect of one's body is minuscule compared to the effect of the head and I don't know if such an effect is really incorporated to HRTFs used in sound cards. If it is, then it can be easily disabled for speaker listening, just as crosstalk cancellation is added for speaker listening.
Hold on.
Yes crosstalk cancellation is the first step if you want to try to emulate a soundfield using speakers, but the scheme fails before it even reaches first base. You cannot achieve crosstalk cancellation with speakers in a room. Cannot. Don't take my word for it, prove it to yourself by feeding a mono white/pink noise signal to both loudspeakers, connected out of phase. If it were possible to achieve even step one, you should be able to find a spot which was silent. You will fail. You will find places where the noise is a bit lower. Fine. Now move your head. Notice how the noise not only gets a bit louder but will typically vary in timbre. And this is with perfect out of phase feeds that takes into account the frequency and phase response of the specific speaker you use.
Sobered up yet?
Electronic cancellation typically tries to cancel only the direct sound, which it can do a (crummy) approximation of in one spot only. Move or turn your head (and the distances are quite short), and you will get a cancellation or amplification of the sound depending on frequency and position. Yummy. And then we still haven't taken into account reflected sound - against walls, floor, roof and your body. These reflections just get added on top, but will be disproportionately strong if you were at all successful in cancelling the direct sound, creating an unnatural effect for the room you're in. (Canton once demonstrated a very expensive system that attempted to cancel the first order wall/roof/floor reflections. By and large a failure, for many reasons.)
On top of this mess, you will now try to superimpose frequency/phase information that may or may not correspond well to the particular listeners body, head and ears. Good luck. As I mentioned, I have done binaural recordings on an amateur basis (obligatory name dropping: I almost bought an Aachen head from Ken Kantor of NHT fame. Couldn't justify the outlay, unfortunately.) I've spent a fair amount of time trying to decently replicate the binaural experience electronically. I was largely unsuccessful. As are application specific DSPs from AKG and Sennheisser. I've plowed the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society from the 70s forward. I've talked to people, listened at trade shows and in the homes of DSP wizards. Recreating a 3D soundfield with headphones is difficult enough, but there you have some theoretical hope. Trying to reproduce a 3D-soundfield with a pair of loudspeakers in a room is so impossible I just can't find words. It cannot be done.
That is not to say you can't produce some phasey sound that your brain will interpret as spacious, and adding visuals will greatly aid you in judging directions. But in no way, shape or form is this "correct", and I'd say that in most cases you will do just as well if not better by simply reproducing stereo sound over your stereo speakers. Your brain and eyes will still help you with positioning, and the sound will be a better match for your equipment.
If someone who reads this is at all interested in 3D soundfields, I can't recommend anything higher than to buy a couple of stealth omnis ($80-250) that you can clip to your glasses close to our ears, and go out and record the world. Experiment. Compare. Think. Read. It's very, very interesting and educational. You will be using your own "dummy"
head, so there will be no mismatches, and the recording will take place outside the pinna, so the sound will only go through one set of outer ears, not two as in most binaural demonstration recordings (first that of the dummy head, and then yours).
I sound very authoritarian in this post, more than I'd like, but then I have really gone through all of the above myself, and please see it more as a sign of my still strong appreciation of binaural recording methods. With that background it's impossible for me not to regard 3D-sound via speakers as a very distant second best. Sorry about that.