The Fraunhofer Institute for Media Technology is in L.A. right now, with their lab coats and clipboards and everything, to demonstrate a new audio technology called Iosono that will bring realism to new heights.
The C|Net article features a description of the technology, as well as the mixing console used to encode the audio, which uses “a light pen to let a sound engineer specify exactly where he or she wants the sound to seem to be coming from…the software makes the calculations on the back end”. The decoding software is set up for the shape and speaker layout of the room its placed in.
The advantage of all the expensive processing hardware and numerous speakers required for an Iosono set up will be the elimination of sweet spots in the listening room— every person in the room will be able to enjoy the effect that the sound engineer has designed.
