In a move ‘set to transform personal audio consumption’, Sonical has announced a fully-immersive, multichannel solution for movies, gaming and music audio via headphones.
‘While content creators invest heavily in high-quality audio experiences and more recently have been upgrading to multichannel formats for music content, Apple’s AirPods set consumer expectations for personal consumption,’ the company says. ‘Most other headphone manufacturers have been slow to adopt advanced audio technologies, creating a chasm between what is created in the studio and what is delivered to our ears.’
‘Our mission is to solve the fundamental problems with current audio experiences,’ continues Sonical Inc CEO, Gary Spittle. ‘We’ve taken our lossless audio streaming using ultra-wideband radios and are using its capabilities to deliver multichannel immersive audio by bringing soundbar-quality sound directly to your headphones, with imperceptible latency.’
The company has identified two primary user segments. First, entertainment enthusiasts who include owners of high-quality TVs and audio equipment and subscribe to premium content services. This includes user groups with mild to moderate hearing loss seeking improved personalised audio experiences.
Second, the gaming segment comprises dedicated gamers with specialised set-ups who are frustrated with existing Bluetooth connectivity and default spatial rendering without head tracking. Instead they are seeking competitive advantages through low delay, accurate sound placement and personalised audio configurations.
Sonical’s solution promises numerous benefits for headphone users, including the ability of individuals to enjoy personalised uncompressed multichannel sound without disturbing others, the ability to select from a variety of spatial rendering algorithms to deliver a ‘studio experience’, enabling enhanced dialogue clarity so that ‘conversations can be heard, not read’, and the freedom to customise audio preferences beyond the limitations of a source device.
Sonical believes that few original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are delivering truly immersive audio and when available, and that low-quality, high-latency audio degrades gameplay. The company’s alternative enables users to watch TV instead of reading captions and experience gaming audio with unprecedented precision.
‘Watch movies, play games with multi-channel audio rendering and imperceptible latency,’ Spittle says. ‘We’re not just improving audio – we’re putting the listener in the middle of it.’
More: www.sonical.ai