When we began work on the project, one of the concepts for sound was "stereophonic sound". I recall that at first, we put quite a lot of hard work into figuring out how to have the player get the feeling of this.
We tried out a variety of commercial tools and third party middleware, and from amongst these we chose Arnis Sound Technologies. This was because we had taken into account the nature of the game, and the importance of making the sound on both sides seem like it was moving in 3D. You will understand this if you listen through headphones, but coupled with the quality of the sound effects from things like the cutscene where Miku is walking along the hallway, it should seem as if she really is walking right there. The director didn't seem to have any doubts as to the worldview of the game in terms of the sound effects, either.
We continued with our work, the director mostly leading the addition of sounds. Japanese style horror often ends up making heavy use of Japanese elements, but we worked hard to make the player feel afraid, with a subliminal, momentary Japanese feeling like that in recent horror movies. In any case, I don't think there's any other game like Fatal Frame with the same level of not knowing what will happen until you actually try it.
Please make sure to savour the "textured" feeling...
Shigekiyo Okuda (sound team)