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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.'"
To do this, they use an array of small speakers, sometimes as many as 300 or 400.
Not very surprising that 300 speakers will give you a better surround experience.
Byt the way, anyone knows how is it related to this: Single Speaker Unit Delivers Surround Sound?
Quality headphones and a subwoofer, OTOH, can always do better, with no extra requirements beyond not having too much background noise.
Ah, but headphones can only easily position sound relative to your head's position and orientation -- whereas this room wafefront synthesis system positions sound relative to the *room*. A sound 50 feet behind the right wall will sound 50 feed behind the right wall to a listener no matter where they are sitting in the theater and no matter which way they're looking.
To emulate this with headphones, you'd need some sort of position/orientation tracking system on each pair of headphones. So now the question is, which is more complex: hundreds of fixed speakers playing phase-synchronized sounds in a coordinated fashion, or hundreds of individual headphone units with tracking devices each playing one version of the virtual "source" material customized for each listener?
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Ah, but headphones can only easily position sound relative to your head's position and orientation -- whereas this room wafefront synthesis system positions sound relative to the *room*.
Is this really what someone watching a film wants? This technology might be cool for theme events etc but when you are in the cinema you are sitting in one position and not moving around. I myself as a film goer would prefer to know that wherever i sat in the auditorium i'd be getting the same experience as everyone else. And from a movie producers point of view id want everyone who saw my film to have an equal experience.
when you are watching something on a movie screen you want the audio relative to the movie ; what you are watching. Not to the room in which you are watching.
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