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

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 ...