There’s been a big focus on immersive audio in the last few years, but the trouble with it is that it’s not really felt particularly immersive.
There are headphones that can do immersive audio but in most cases this means a slightly wider and taller soundstage. There’s a whole part of the soundbar market just for single-bar immersive offerings and… you get a slightly wider and taller soundstage in most cases.
There seems to be the promise of immersive audio and then the actual reality, and not many have cracked the promise of it. Except, I’d say Audioscenic.
From the first time I heard their tech, I was wowed by it. I think the point of immersive audio is to push sound up and away from the screen or sound system, and position sounds around the listener in a way that convinces you that the sound is coming from that position. Audioscenic’s tech achieves this.
I heard the latest version of technology (and upcoming prototypes too), and I’m still perplexed that there isn’t more talk about what Audioscenic is doing. Watching videos on a Dell screen with the Audioscenic tech inside, and I genuinely sensed sounds that are to the left and right of my listening position, sounds that move around the screen convincingly, with a height to those sounds where they feel as if they’re coming from the specific position on the screen, despite the speakers being placed beneath the screen.
The prototype I saw I was even more excited by as it added a subwoofer to the sound system, which resulted in the low frequencies have more depth and the midrange sounds featuring more weight. And by having the subwoofer it frees up the rest of the speaker transducers to focus on the midrange and higher frequencies, so compared to the same demos on the Dell, on this prototype they sounded louder and clearer.
I also witnessed the tech in a laptop form factor, and although it was a stereo set-up, the woofers and high frequency tweeters combined well enough to produce a similar performance in terms of space, even if they lacked the weight, punch, and impact that I’d seen on the other devices.
This level of performance is down to Audioscenic’s new Amphi Hi-D technology that processes multi-channel sound, and I think it’s still the best example of immersive audio I’ve heard.
There are limitations to consider. There is still a sweet spot in terms of where you can sit to have the best experience, and only person can sit there to take advantage of the spatial sound. That’s the reason why I don’t think you’ll see this technology in soundbars and TVs just yet.
But I think this is still a pretty amazing example of what immersive audio can do, which makes the currently reality relatively disappointing. There are so many things that claim to be immersive but aren’t in the true sense. Audioscenic’s tech makes it tantalisingly possible, but also shows how far the audio industry still has to go.
