PARIS, Jan 24 — Germany’s Brandenburg Labs has presented prototype headphones capable of delivering unprecedented immersive audio quality by adapting to your position and head movements.
In a few years’ time, this technology could be used in a new generation of virtual reality headsets for a whole new world of immersive experiences.
German engineer Karlheinz Brandenburg is known as one of the inventors of MP3, the famous audio data compression format that revolutionised the way people listened to and shared music.
Today, his laboratory is showcasing an immersive augmented reality headphone system.
Brandenburg Labs is billing its technology as “the first truly immersive audio experience.” This new augmented reality audio system recreates realistic acoustic environments via headphones for a new, ultra-realistic listening experience.
The idea is for the headphones to deliver exactly the same acoustic experience as if it were playing in the room, or anywhere else you happen to be, for a result claimed to be even more immersive than Apple’s spatial audio.
The notion of spatial audio, introduced by Apple, describes an immersive audio experience, in three dimensions, promising to plunge listeners into the heart of the action, whether that’s a concert, a movie or a game, etc.
The idea, for Brandenburg Labs, is to reproduce sound similar to that of real-life situations, without the user having the impression of wearing headphones, whatever their position in the room.
Ultimately, this technology could be used in virtual and/or augmented reality headsets to immerse players in a particular atmosphere.
For example, it could be used to recreate realistic acoustic environments, whether you’re playing a game in a parallel world, watching a virtual concert or visiting a museum. — ETX Studio
