Welcome to Arkamys’ ‘listen with your own ears’ blog!
In the not-too-distant future Arkamys will be releasing technology that will allow for the ultimate headphone listening experience. The project involves generating a personalised three-dimensional sound, using any type of headphone, for portable media devices such as mobile phones or mp3 players. With this latest technology Arkamys will take listening comfort to new heights…
What is three-dimensional sound?
Three-dimensional sound is an effect, when listening to any audio content over headphones, that gives the listener the illusion of having sounds come from outside of their head like from behind, below or above. This effect creates a more realistic, exciting and dynamic listening experience.
On this blog you can expect:
- To be kept up to date with information on the project and the release of products/services
- To see press releases on the project itself from a variety of media
- Cutting edge demos for you to test
- To see more functionalities very soon…
You will also be able to comment on posts or ask questions relating to any aspect of the ‘listen to your own ears’ project, simply by typing in the ‘LEAVE A COMMENT’ section below.
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Look forward to seeing in the next generation of headphone listening with you all.
David
Tags: Introduction
From the short amount I have read I understand that the goal of the ‘Listen with your Own Ears’ project, is to improve the quality of Plug sized headphones to a 3-D quality. This is achieved by:
‘The service matches your ears to the closest model, and then sends back to your phone customized software that changes the music you listen to in such a way that it accurately recreates the artists intention.’
I am interested in how the customised software as mention above works?
Is the software compaitable with a large range of existing audio products such as i-Pods ect; or will the software only be available to certain products?
Are the audio changes that the software creates live; that is are they immediate or is there a slight delay as portable CD players operated with the anti skip mechanism?
Thanks I look forward to learning more.
Grace
Hi Grace,
Thank you so much for your interest in the project and your excellent questions.
To answer your first question:
The software in the first instance will work by selecting a ‘best profile’ to generate your personalised 3D audio. This profile will be selected from a database, and will be based on your responses to a 3D audio game that could run on your mobile phone or computer.
The next phase will then be to generate your profile for personalised 3D audio based on parameters extracted from a photo, such as the size of your head.
Both these methods will base themselves on established 3D audio techniques.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_audio for more information.
To answer your second question:
At the moment portable media devices are limited by the power of their DSP (the chip that drives the audio in the device). By the time Arkamys is ready to launch this technology this will all change and these devices will be equipped with everything they need to use our technology. Arkamys will then work with the manufacturers of these devices (for example iPod) in order to embed our technology in them. The most obvious place to begin with this technology is in mobile phones since they are all equipped with a camera that can be used to take a photo of your ears and head and then generate your own personalised 3D audio.
To answer your third question:
The 3D audio will be not be generated live or be streaming from a server. Algorithms are downloaded onto your portable audio player and then the 3D audio is generated on the device. For this reason there is no delay, and the 3D audio will be seamless and synchronised with all the video content you may have.
I hope I have answered your questions. Feel free to ask some more.
David