3D Sound by Creator of MP3

im333mfg writes "News.com has an article detailing the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Technology's latest and greatest audio solution, Iosono, or as they're putting it 'true three dimensional audio, which can give the impression of, for example, a horse galloping through the center aisle of a movie theater, or pinpoint a noise so that it sounds exactly like a person shouting from outside theater walls. The best existing surround sound speakers can approximate this only for a small sweet spot, perhaps a few feet wide, while the Iosono system would create the same realistic illusion for everyone in the room.'"

Comments

Phased array sound

[nickovs]

The article says "To do this, they use an array of small speakers, sometimes as many as 300 or 400. A complicated algorithm works out exactly what the sound waves all through a room would be...". This sounds very like the phased array speaker technology that 1 Limited have been using from some years to deliver true surround sound from a flat panel speaker.

Re:Size of theater matter?

[LostCluster]

There is an exact distance required between each speaker, and also a lot of speakers involved as well. According to the article, we're talking 300 to 400 small speakers in a grid spread out over the space of the entire theater room.

Of course it's much easier to make a virtual point from which the sound is coming from when you have so many real points that the sound can start at to play with.

I don't speak German

[phantasma6]

you insensitive clod...

Wouldn't it be better if the main thing contained a link to the English part of the site rather than the German? http://www.iosono-sound.com/eng/index.html

I know this

[lachlan76]

This can already be done with headphones anyway, using cards like SB Live (I think) and Aureal Vortex cards. Not good for cinema though, but for computer audio, it would work fine.

re: "phased array"

[nusratt]

"This sounds very like the phased array speaker technology that 1 Limited [1limited.com] have been using from some years"

Phased array speakers were introduced approx 30 years ago by Dahlquist.

Re:300 speakers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Small speakers. This is the audio equivalent of holograms. If you want to read more about it, the proper search term is "wavefield synthesis".

More on Origins of Wave Field Synthesis ...

[foobsr]

While IRCAM says:

Huyghens' Principle
To illustrate Huyghens' principle, let us consider a simple example. A rock (or primary source) thrown in the middle of a pond generates a wave front that propagates along the surface. Huyghens' principle indicates that an identical wave front can be generated by simultaneously dropping an infinite number of rocks (secondary sources) along any position defined by the passage of the primary wave front. This synthesized wave front will be perfectly accurate outside of the zone delimited by the secondary source distribution. The secondary sources therefore act as a "relay", and can reproduce the original primary wave front in absence of a primary source!

Origins of Wave Field Synthesis
Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) is based on a series of simplifications of the previous principle. The first work to have been published on the subject dates back to 1988 and is attributed to Professor A.J. Berkhout of the acoustics and seismology team of the Technological University of Delft (T.U.D.) in Holland. This research was continued throughout the 90's by the T.U.D. as well as by the Research and Development department of France Telecom Lannion.

loc. cit.

CC.

Won't someone think of the phase!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this going to turn into a phasey mess? The beaming effects and reflections off walls from all those speakers is going to trash music.

Cheaper alternative

[polyp2000]

There is a much cheaper way to do this.
Simply purchase a polystyrene head (of the sort used for placing wigs and hairpeices)

Slice down the middle with a hot wire and hollow out the ear canals for two microphones and embed these in the head. Glue back together and jack the trailing leads from your head's "ears" into your favorite recording equipments. And .... Play ...

It works , its cheap and simple, and best of all no fraunhoffer licensing fee's

here are some examples (including mp3's) of the technique...

Binauraul Holophonic Sound

Nick ...