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3D Sound by Creator of MP3

Posted by michael on from the jaws-theme dept.

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.'"

3 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. prior work by dekeji · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The IOSONO people didn't invent wave field synthesis. People got serious about it in the Netherlands and France in the 1980's (here).

    However, the reason why it took until the 1980's to do it isn't that people didn't think of it before, but simply that hardware and software had developed to the point that that became feasible. I suspect that if you do some digging, you can probably find the suggestion earlier. It's really a pretty straightforward idea.

    Of course, that won't keep people from trying to slice their patents out of it. It's MP3 all over again.

  2. they musta mist it by thehomeland · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I believe the audiobook of Steven King's "The Mist" did this a number of years ago, in at least 1995 or earlier? All it required was one set of headphones and you could hear a fly buzzing around your ear or could practically see someone walk past you if you closed your eyes.

    --
    thehomeland(.org)
  3. two important points by Onan+The+Librarian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. This is Fraunhofer we're talking about here, and they were quite aggressive in ridding the world of those damned pesky free MP3 encoders. This announcement may be news for nerds, but it ain't stuff that matters to the free & open-source community (technically speaking)..

    2. As another post points out, wave field synthesis is hardy a new thing. Marije Baalman demonstrated her recent work at the last Linux audio conference in April, you can check out her implementation of the system at http://gigant.kgw.tu-berlin.de/~baalman/program/in dex.html.
    Cool stuff...