6 ms·

Directional audio is produced by sound interacting with your ear, so this would not produce spatial audio (unless you would wrap your head in the thin film spea

Directional audio is produced by sound interacting with your ear, so this would not produce spatial audio (unless you would wrap your head in the thin film speaker). What you want is 1 speaker per ear and a software modelling of the HRTF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-related_transfer_function

unlikelymordant 5y ago
I think op is talking about beamforming when he talks about directional audio, where a large array of speakers would allow you to e.g. send audio in one direction only. The more speakers, the tighter the control.
- 0cVlTeIATBs 5y ago
  I think OP means e.g. a video call where each person's voice is played back from where their mouth is displayed on screen.
  - Kaibeezy 5y ago
    I don’t think OP was saying that, but you are. A video layer could be built on the gridlines between the speaker domes. Might need to be quite a large screen for the spacing to work out right. Not for high def video, but good for large displays like talking billboards (ugh, actually).
    - tetris11 5y ago
      urgh actually, indeed
  - dtx1 5y ago
    Or as a Center Speaker in a cinema setup where the voice comes not from "the middle" but out the mouth of an actor
    - OJFord 5y ago
      That would be great, but doesn't really need new speaker technology, at the scale of cinema screens - not like you need pixel granularity - just the encoding to support it. When I had a Saturday job at a cinema a couple of the screens had the centre speakers behind them iirc, it just wasn't an individually addressable array. Having said that, I suppose Atmos already implicitly supports it, isn't the idea of it that you can put speakers wherever you want and it remixes appropriately? So if your recording was sufficiently granular that dialogue isn't just all vaguely 'at the front' it could already split between say five (corners & middle) 'centres'?
      - dtx1 5y ago
        > isn't the idea of it that you can put speakers wherever you want and it remixes appropriately? No, Atmos has some tolerance for speaker placement but the general positions are somewhat strict (i.e. 1 Front Center, 2 Stereo Fronts, ...). The idea of Atmos is that given a correct sound setup, a sound can be positioned as an Object in 3d Space within the sound bubble. And that only works to a certain degree. If you want a strong 3D sound effect, the Object pretty much needs to be moving (bullets swishing beside your ear). Static Objects are still somewhat restricted to the edges of the bubble or at least i can hear the 3d effect breakdown when static objects are placed in 3d space as opposed to moving objects
        OJFord 5y ago
        Oh, ok, I see, thanks for the correction.
  - causi 5y ago
    If you put headphones on you could do that with software without needing special speakers.
    - the__alchemist 5y ago
      You would also need an IMU in the headphones to modify the phase when the listener adjusts or her head. This is an important part of how we discern forward from behind.
      - panda88888 5y ago
        Apple already does this via spatial audio for AirPod pro.
        airstrike 5y ago
        And for some reason using that is a pretty weird experience. I've been so conditioned not to expect it that I actually turn it off to make it feel "natural"
        panda88888 4y ago
        It’s a weird experience, a bit uncanny valley like. I was using while watching video, and it’s somewhat eerie to turn my head and still have the audio from the earphones “pinned” to the screen.
jakemoshenko 5y ago
While that's certainly one way to synthesize directional audio, the far more common way is to actually have the audio come from the direction it's supposed to and let your ear do its normal thing to sort it out. Imagine you had an entire room wallpapered in individually addressable tiny speakers, you could actually project sound from any angle. The added benefit being that it would work for more than one person in the room. we've gone from 2.1 audio -> 5.1 -> 7.2 -> atmos 11.2. Why wouldn't we want to go to 50000.2 audio as the next extension?
- tragictrash 5y ago
  That would require a lot of wire and a lot of amplifiers. I bet we'll see an installation or two of the proposed design for proving it can be done. Still, I bet most spatial audio systems will use software and fewer drivers ( potentially these drivers) to create the intended effect. It just costs too much to wire all them up.
  - amlib 5y ago
    But at thousands of speakers you don't need as much amplification for each wire and considering how these flat speakers are produced, it's not too unlikely that we could eventually be able to embed chips/controllers into then just like we do with current display tech. With that setup you could encode hundreds of channels in a single wire and each embedded controller would be responsible do decode it's addressed channel(s) to send to it's respective "speaker(s)". If the signal produced isn't high enough, you may also add in some small amplification stage in the embedded chip.
    - tragictrash 5y ago
      Very interesting. While I disagree with the implementation details, you do bring up a great point I completely missed. Embedding electronics into these would be trivial, thus enabling some form of smart communication removing the need for discreet amps and removing most of the labor involved in installation. Man I love HN.
- 5y ago
spyder 5y ago
That's not what he means, he means using wavefield synthesis which is actually trying to reproduce the physical sound field with speaker arrays, in that case you don't need HRTF processing because your ears are receiving the waves from the actual positions. It can work for a bigger audience in an larger area without wearing headphones and without using head- and position-tracking but it needs lot of loudspeakers for accuracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis http://www.eliasmerino.com/structural-wfs.html http://www.eliasmerino.com/structural-wfs.html https://audioxpress.com/news/holoplot-launches-wavefield-synthesis-x1-matrix-array-solution https://audioxpress.com/news/holoplot-launches-wavefield-syn...
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  Yeah, instead of 5.1 or 7.1 surround you could have 500.1 or 1000.1 and have soundscapes that are virtually audibly indistinguishable from actually being in the location. Maybe overkill for movies but for VR immersion that could be fantastic, especially if the modules could be rigged to use Bluetooth 5.0 so that they would only need to be paired to your computer and mapped out in software the way multiple monitors are mapped out in windows.
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    For VR you could just use a pair of headphones with HRTF. This is what that can sound like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYdIidUIbAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYdIidUIbAs
    - BizarroLand 4y ago
      Those are great for spatial audio, true, but they are simply not capable of making sound seem like it is directly in front of me. Some sound comes in through the nose, not a lot obviously, but enough that headphones are dramatically bad at generating sound in front of you. Plus, given enough calculation and precision, you could create areas that are nearly sonically separated from each other using wave cancellation, and as people move through the space it would change the sonic characteristics of the space and create new vibes. There's a lot of untapped awesomeness in the audio world, we just need to tools to craft them

unlikelymordant 5y ago

I think op is talking about beamforming when he talks about directional audio, where a large array of speakers would allow you to e.g. send audio in one direction only. The more speakers, the tighter the control.

0cVlTeIATBs 5y ago
I think OP means e.g. a video call where each person's voice is played back from where their mouth is displayed on screen.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  I don’t think OP was saying that, but you are. A video layer could be built on the gridlines between the speaker domes. Might need to be quite a large screen for the spacing to work out right. Not for high def video, but good for large displays like talking billboards (ugh, actually).
  - tetris11 5y ago
    urgh actually, indeed
- dtx1 5y ago
  Or as a Center Speaker in a cinema setup where the voice comes not from "the middle" but out the mouth of an actor
  - OJFord 5y ago
    That would be great, but doesn't really need new speaker technology, at the scale of cinema screens - not like you need pixel granularity - just the encoding to support it. When I had a Saturday job at a cinema a couple of the screens had the centre speakers behind them iirc, it just wasn't an individually addressable array. Having said that, I suppose Atmos already implicitly supports it, isn't the idea of it that you can put speakers wherever you want and it remixes appropriately? So if your recording was sufficiently granular that dialogue isn't just all vaguely 'at the front' it could already split between say five (corners & middle) 'centres'?
    - dtx1 5y ago
      > isn't the idea of it that you can put speakers wherever you want and it remixes appropriately? No, Atmos has some tolerance for speaker placement but the general positions are somewhat strict (i.e. 1 Front Center, 2 Stereo Fronts, ...). The idea of Atmos is that given a correct sound setup, a sound can be positioned as an Object in 3d Space within the sound bubble. And that only works to a certain degree. If you want a strong 3D sound effect, the Object pretty much needs to be moving (bullets swishing beside your ear). Static Objects are still somewhat restricted to the edges of the bubble or at least i can hear the 3d effect breakdown when static objects are placed in 3d space as opposed to moving objects
      - OJFord 5y ago
        Oh, ok, I see, thanks for the correction.
- causi 5y ago
  If you put headphones on you could do that with software without needing special speakers.
  - the__alchemist 5y ago
    You would also need an IMU in the headphones to modify the phase when the listener adjusts or her head. This is an important part of how we discern forward from behind.
    - panda88888 5y ago
      Apple already does this via spatial audio for AirPod pro.
      - airstrike 5y ago
        And for some reason using that is a pretty weird experience. I've been so conditioned not to expect it that I actually turn it off to make it feel "natural"
        panda88888 4y ago
        It’s a weird experience, a bit uncanny valley like. I was using while watching video, and it’s somewhat eerie to turn my head and still have the audio from the earphones “pinned” to the screen.

jakemoshenko 5y ago

While that's certainly one way to synthesize directional audio, the far more common way is to actually have the audio come from the direction it's supposed to and let your ear do its normal thing to sort it out. Imagine you had an entire room wallpapered in individually addressable tiny speakers, you could actually project sound from any angle. The added benefit being that it would work for more than one person in the room. we've gone from 2.1 audio -> 5.1 -> 7.2 -> atmos 11.2. Why wouldn't we want to go to 50000.2 audio as the next extension?

tragictrash 5y ago
That would require a lot of wire and a lot of amplifiers. I bet we'll see an installation or two of the proposed design for proving it can be done. Still, I bet most spatial audio systems will use software and fewer drivers ( potentially these drivers) to create the intended effect. It just costs too much to wire all them up.
- amlib 5y ago
  But at thousands of speakers you don't need as much amplification for each wire and considering how these flat speakers are produced, it's not too unlikely that we could eventually be able to embed chips/controllers into then just like we do with current display tech. With that setup you could encode hundreds of channels in a single wire and each embedded controller would be responsible do decode it's addressed channel(s) to send to it's respective "speaker(s)". If the signal produced isn't high enough, you may also add in some small amplification stage in the embedded chip.
  - tragictrash 5y ago
    Very interesting. While I disagree with the implementation details, you do bring up a great point I completely missed. Embedding electronics into these would be trivial, thus enabling some form of smart communication removing the need for discreet amps and removing most of the labor involved in installation. Man I love HN.
5y ago

spyder 5y ago

That's not what he means, he means using wavefield synthesis which is actually trying to reproduce the physical sound field with speaker arrays, in that case you don't need HRTF processing because your ears are receiving the waves from the actual positions. It can work for a bigger audience in an larger area without wearing headphones and without using head- and position-tracking but it needs lot of loudspeakers for accuracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_field_synthesis http://www.eliasmerino.com/structural-wfs.html http://www.eliasmerino.com/structural-wfs.html https://audioxpress.com/news/holoplot-launches-wavefield-synthesis-x1-matrix-array-solution https://audioxpress.com/news/holoplot-launches-wavefield-syn...

BizarroLand 5y ago
Yeah, instead of 5.1 or 7.1 surround you could have 500.1 or 1000.1 and have soundscapes that are virtually audibly indistinguishable from actually being in the location. Maybe overkill for movies but for VR immersion that could be fantastic, especially if the modules could be rigged to use Bluetooth 5.0 so that they would only need to be paired to your computer and mapped out in software the way multiple monitors are mapped out in windows.
- WithinReason 5y ago
  For VR you could just use a pair of headphones with HRTF. This is what that can sound like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYdIidUIbAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYdIidUIbAs
  - BizarroLand 4y ago
    Those are great for spatial audio, true, but they are simply not capable of making sound seem like it is directly in front of me. Some sound comes in through the nose, not a lot obviously, but enough that headphones are dramatically bad at generating sound in front of you. Plus, given enough calculation and precision, you could create areas that are nearly sonically separated from each other using wave cancellation, and as people move through the space it would change the sonic characteristics of the space and create new vibes. There's a lot of untapped awesomeness in the audio world, we just need to tools to craft them