A Symphony Hall for Your Head: What Is Spatial Audio and Should You Care About It? Production and engineering faculty sound off on the benefits-and pitfalls-of audios immersive new frontier.
By
Bryan Parys
July 13, 2021
John Escobar, assistant professor in the Music Production and Engineering Department, teaches students how to use advanced spatial and immersive audio technology.
Image courtesy of John Escobar
This summer, Apple Music announced, with great fanfare, the addition of spatial audio to its streaming music platform. You might be asking yourself: Do I care?
Unless you're a particular kind of Reddit-level audiophile or experienced music producer, your answer was perhaps, Sounds cool, but not really. And it probably spawned the question: But wait, what is spatial audio?
If that's the general response, it makes you wonder if the release of this new tech is in fact the game changer Apple claims it is, or if it's marketing spin to help differentiate Apple Music from so many competing audio streaming services.
Spatial audio, for Apple's purposes, focuses mainly on giving listeners a surround-sound experience through headphones.
Spatial audio, sometimes referred to as immersive audio, is a squirrelly concept, which means it can lead to a number of misconceptions, as we'll get into below. For Apple's purposes, it focuses mainly on giving listeners a surround-sound experience through headphones.
I think it is difficult to define because we are still trying to fully develop the technology that will completely translate the concepts on the consumer side, said John Escobar, a professor in the Music Production and Engineering (MP&E) Department. Spatial audio gives content creators a way to get one step closer to delivering material that more closely emulates the way humans perceive directionality. This means that the storytelling capacity of audio content is hugely increased. For a listener, this means they will feel like they are at the movies (in surround), or at a concert/live event, etc.
James Donahue, a colleague of Escobar's in MP&E, defines that directionality as adding the idea of height to a listening experience. By adding height to things, it gives you this expansiveness; it gives you a ceiling. Before that, [the sound] was always sort of in front of us and behind us, and left and right, but it was all on a single plane.
Misconception 1: Spatial Audio Is a Brave New World Donahue, who's worked extensively in the classical music world and conducted considerable research on acoustics in the Byzantine era, isn't using ceiling metaphorically here. In fact, it's right there in the name-spatial audio, audio that is configured to build a sense of physical space. This, as Donahue explained, is nothing new.
Associate Professor James Donahue (center) conducting acoustical research in a Byzantine cathedral.
While Byzantine cathedrals are often regarded for their visual and physical grandeur, Donahue points out that the grandiosity goes beyond what we can see. The Byzantine people thought a lot about architecture, he said. They thought about it in ways to enhance the music to make things more intelligible, to make it sound more reverberate and spacious. They did this by building ceilings so that sound would bounce off the surfaces in a particular way. We now know that effect as slap echo, but the Byzantine people referred to it experientially: the sound of angel wings.
It was all about immersion as a spiritual event . So weve been thinking about [immersive audio] for a very long time. And weve been attempting to sort of capture all of this and make it available to the masses.
Misconception 2: The Technology Is the Most Important Part It's easy to hear words like spatial and immersive and think, Wow, now everything is going to sound mind-blowing. Another professor in the MP&E Department, John Whynot, points out that it's important not to get blinded by the flashy lights of new tech. Immersive' is a word that suggests hype, he said. There is hype, but lets face it: if its sound, its immersive, whether or not there are speakers behind you, or its from some kind of binaural trickery.
In Escobar's course Fundamentals of Immersive Audio for VR, students have a chance to work with these state-of-the-art tools, including a studio equipped with Dolby Atmos, the technology behind Apple's spatial-audio offerings. Escobar is quick to point out that while the technology is advanced, it's still just technology-a new canvas on which to create.
The true power of spatial audio is the storytelling potential. I have had several students create really impressive projects pushing the boundaries of getting the listener/viewer to feel immersed.'
- John Escobar
He's noticed that once students move past their initial sense of awe, breakthroughs start happening. The big revelation usually happens when they realize they can place a sound anywhere in a 360-degree sphere and it will play back in a variety of systems, Escobar said. Again, the true power of this is the storytelling potential. I have had several students create really impressive projects pushing the boundaries of getting the listener/viewer to feel immersed.' Two student examples that come to mind are a Boeing 747 takeoff flight simulator, and an audiobook-style adventure that takes the listener through some caves, escaping mythical creatures, and avoiding falling boulders.
Misconception 3: Making Audio Spatial Makes It Better In the wake of Apple's announcement, many producers and engineers have warned about the pitfalls of seeing spatial audio as a That Was Easy button for improving audio. It has to be applied intentionally and artfully. Donahue points out that Billie Eilish's music, which puts a lot of emphasis
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A Symphony Hall for Your Head: What Is Spatial Audio and Should You Care About It? Production and engineering faculty sound off on the benefits-and pitfalls-of audios immersive new frontier.
