It may go down in history as the strangest byproduct yet of oil exploration.

Research into the use of sound waves to detect oil fields has yielded an entirely unexpected discovery: a breakthrough in realistically recreating sound in movie theaters.

The technology is called Iosono. And it draws the audience into the film through acoustic immersion. Iosono can place sound throughout the theater in such a way that listeners feel as if they’re part of the scene, hearing events unfold around them.

In a demonstration of Iosono’s precision, ghostly murmurs randomly zoom around a Studio City, Calif., theater until the voice comes to whisper creepy nothings into my left ear.

Up until that point, my most unsettling cinematic aural memory had been from “Psycho,” when the violins shrieked in unison with each knife jab in the infamous shower scene.

“This opens up a whole lot of possibilities to help filmmakers tell the story with sound,” said Stanley Johnston, a sound mixer whose lengthy film credits include “Gods and Generals,” “Gettysburg” and “The Opposite of Sex.”

The scientific research that spawned Iosono began 15 years ago at Delft University in the Netherlands. Scientists developed a technique for mapping oil fields by setting off small explosions and using an array of microphones to record the sound waves.

Their seismographic work came to the attention of Karlheinz Brandenburg, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology in Germany. Brandenburg, a man with an ear for sound and an aptitude for complex mathematical algorithms, is considered the father of the MP3 digital music format.

Brandenburg began pondering the notion of using the technology to portray an accurate picture not of an oil field but of a sound field.

He and his colleagues discovered they could replicate original sounds in a second space – a concert hall or a movie theater, for instance – by ringing the walls with speakers spaced at 6-inch intervals.

Then by precisely controlling the sound emitted from each speaker they could identically reproduce sound waves from the original source, ripple by ripple. Brandenburg calls the technique “wave field synthesis.”

“With mathematical equations, you can calculate the signals for each loudspeaker,” said Brandenburg. “In this way, the sound waves emerging from these loudspeakers are the same sound waves you would have had if you had been there when the sound was gathered.”

These calculations quantify things we take for granted, such as the way our ears and brain work to perceive the direction and distance of a sound and how the brain knows that sound changes as we turn our head. It’s taken two years to get the math right.

Certain challenges remain, Brandenburg said, such as how to simulate the acoustics of a cathedral or a concert hall when the sound will be reproduced in a smaller space.

Iosono nonetheless has left the research lab. It was installed 18 months ago in its first theater, the Lindenlichtspiele in Germany. Now, the Fraunhofer Institute will try to license the technology in the United States through a separate corporation, Iosono USA.

Most theaters are equipped for surround sound. A movie’s dialogue typically is broadcast from center, right and left speakers behind the big screen. Background noises emanate from the speakers lining the right and left walls.

But surround sound has certain limitations.

“When you put lots of different sounds, dialogue sounds and music, the speaker is many times overtaxed in trying to reproduce all the sound,” said Academy Award-winning sound designer Scott Gershin, who has experimented with Iosono. “It’s a vibrating piece of membrane. It’s got to vibrate all the pieces at once.”

With Iosono, the theater is ringed by speakers. The Todd-AO Studio on the CBS Studio lot in Studio City features 304 speakers linked to 11 personal computers. The PCs are controlled by a stylus and computer tablet, allowing sounds to be adjusted in real time. That allows sound designers to place a bird call or a grenade explosion anywhere in the theater with the pinpoint precision of X and Y coordinates meeting on a map.

“Out of 80 speakers on one wall, you can do audio focusing. Focus sound on one speaker. Or zoom out, utilizing all 80 speakers,” said Gershin, whose film credits include “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” “Gladiator” and “Braveheart.” “You can put different ambiences, different winds and birds, in different speakers and let the room meld it together like it happens in nature. It’s just a wonderful opportunity to have that isolation and that kind of control.”

In a showcase of Iosono’s precision, a high-pitched, nymphlike voice played an acoustic hide and seek, calling “catch me if you can” as her voice leaped from one point in the darkened theater to another. In another sound sequence, a helicopter appeared to fly diagonally across the theater and disappear into the distance.

Robert Wyatt, senior director of project development for BRC Imagination Arts in Burbank, Calif., said Iosono could eliminate a major problem for designers of theme park exhibits: the so-called sweet spot.

Traditional surround sound systems deliver the best sound quality to people positioned in the dead center of a room.

“With theme park design, we’re always looking for an experience that is equal for the guy in the front and the guy in the back,” said Wyatt, whose company developed the Mystery Lodge at Knott’s Berry Farm in Brea, Calif. “For us this was very exciting. You were able to do that.”

Wyatt said the technology’s ability to immerse the audience in an event could enhance 3-D exhibits.

“Imagine a museum historical experience where it was all black, with a tiny pin spotlight in the middle,” he said. “All you have is the audio of World War II soldiers going by you, and you’re in the heat of battle. All the sounds from that. You can imagine experiencing the level of frustration, pain, agony. Being afraid for your life. Just through audio. I can see that being an intense experience.”

But as dazzling as Iosono’s performance is, the technology is not likely to be featured at suburban megaplexes soon.

Cost is one hurdle. Movies would have to be remixed to take full advantage of Iosono’s immersive effect and theaters upgraded with hundreds of speakers.

“I think it’s at the very early stages of development,” said Julian Levin, 20th Century Fox’s executive vice president for digital exhibition. “I think it has a number of possible outlets that would make a great deal of sense. Theme parks. Showcase theaters.”

David Lewis Yewdall, a sound and effects editor on more than 50 films, said Hollywood is always skeptical of new sound technologies. Often, studio executives’ objections focus on money, he said.

Yewdall recalled doing battle with Paramount Pictures over whether the 1983 film “The Dead Zone” could be released in stereo.

He said the most successful technological initiatives are the ones that come with incentives for making upgrades, like what George Lucas did in pushing theaters to adopt the THX sound standard.

“He helped to bring theaters out of the dark ages,” Yewdall said.