the sweet spot
With conventional surround sound systems, individually recorded sounds such as those described above are mixed down onto separate tracks that will be played back through a number of loudspeakers set up around the audience. Each sound is then played back through the appropriate speaker channel, depending on where it is supposed to be positioned in the scene.
While it is possible to create a fairly realistic sense of acoustic space with conventional surround sound technology, there is one major drawback: the effect only works for a limited number of people in the audience. The mix-down of audio tracks created in the studio requires the listener to be sitting in a specific spot in the room, the so-called sweet spot. Outside of the sweet spot, any sound will be perceived to originate only from a very general direction, not from a particular location in the scene.
IOSONO® eliminates this problem and opens up entirely new creative possibilities for sound reproduction. With appropriately encoded material played back through an IOSONO sound system, the acoustic events of the rain forest scene described above can be recreated with stunning spatial realism – for every single member of the audience. Sounds like that of the toucan can be placed far behind the speakers, and thus behind the walls of the listening space. Or, as with the sound of the tiger, they can be placed right next to any member of the audience and even in-between members of the audience. What’s more, they can be made to move along any given path in the listening space.
wave field synthesis
So, how does it work? IOSONO technology combines the use of a large number of loudspeakers with the principle of wave field synthesis to recreate, or synthesize, the complex acoustic wave field of sound emanating from actual objects. Conventional audio systems, by contrast, merely amplify audio signals, which can be compared to displaying images on a TV screen fixed to the wall (or several screens in the case of multichannel audio). With IOSONO, you’re no longer looking at a picture on the wall, so to speak, but at an “acoustic hologram”.
Read more about IOSONO hardware and software, browse frequently asked questions, or go to the references section to find out where audiences are already experiencing the thrill of this new technology.
