jdavis37, the engineer you're thinking of is James Bongiorno. He's currently working on making amplifiers (the Ampzilla 2000, supposed to be great) and a processor that he calls Trinaural. It's an all analog processor that converts stereo signals to 3-channel, all w/o digital processing.

He still maintains that sound in nature is mono, and that's some of the thinking behind his processor. Haven't heard it myself, but others whose opinion I respect have heard it and say it's great. His processor must be doing something right, because it won the "Best of High End Audio" award at last year's CES show.

http://www.ampzilla2000.com/Web_Processor.html