25 TECHFEED Immersive Audio
MORE THAN JUST HEARSAY At present there are two primary ways of delivering immersive audio to mobile customers. Firstly – and most rapidly in terms of being able to realise a service – via an app with immersive capabilities. Secondly, with support built into the mobile device itself – a potentially much more arduous path, but one with positive implications for general optimisation, quality of processing, and the immersive audio experience as a whole. Both approaches, says France, “are perfectly valid [and will be] determined by the effort that people are prepared to put in and how quickly they want to reach the market.” Inbuilt support for Dolby Atmos enables immersive audio to be optimised for that particular device, and a world of devices in which there is no need for the immersive capability to be added through additional apps is likely to be welcomed by broadcasters and content creators. This inbuilt device support might not be too far into the future, with products like Samsung’s Galaxy 9, which includes Dolby Atmos sound, hitting the market this year. Developers of immersive audio technologies, says France, are generally “putting a great deal of time and resources into making it easier and quicker for them to be integrated into devices. So I think we will see a lot more developments in that direction in the near future.” It hardly hinders the adoption of immersive audio that many of its key technologies have been developed with a view to being repurposed for different outlets and forms of consumption. Having already found favour in TV and cinema markets, the Fraunhofer-backed MPEG-H is now making inroads into headphone-based VR devices, smartphones and tablets, and in conjunction with the Cingo VR audio system is being used by industry leaders such as Google (in its family of Nexus and Pixel devices), Samsung Gear VR, LG 360 VR, Alcatel VISION and in the Hulu VR app. Dolby is pursuing a comparably diverse vision, with France observing that Dolby Atmos has always been “working across different platforms with different processing, and [in each case] regrading the sound so that consumers can get the most out of the immersive audio experience.” Immersive audio has scope to reach far more consumers than 5.1, which was essentially geared towards one principal application – decidedly upscale home theatre – and was always bound to price a sizeable percentage of consumers out of contention.
AWESOME AUDIO Dirac’s immersive audio technology adjusts the apparent direction of sound in response to the viewer’s movements
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