Inside Airsound Spatial Technology

Airsound Spatial simplifies the hardware of a Spatial Audio product and extends its capabilities. Airsound Spatial uses our 20 years’ experience of psychoacoustics and sound steering with mid-side (dipole) technology to turn a single loudspeaker into a complete sound stage, capable of of convincingly reproducing Spatial Audio to a wide area.

All Airsound Spatial systems have these 2 core components:

Software: That analyses and selectively places source audio and umpires where necessary or desired.

Hardware: Side firing transducers arranged to produce the dipolar steering sound field, allowing the algorithm to work its magic.

Airsound Spatial is patent pending technology, property of Airsound Ltd.

Software (DSP)

The Airsound Spatial algorithm is multilayered to work optimally in any situation and with any source content.

Core Processing: The incoming rendered audio stream (e.g. 7.1.4 Atmos®) is processed and appropriate steering is applied to place the source channels where needed for the best immersive experience.

Mesh Layer: Multiple playback units (when available) are unified in the algorithm by joining their steering capabilities to amplify the steering effect.

Upmix Layer: When source content presents only stereo, the algorithm extracts the embedded stereo information and wraps this around the listeners for an immersive stereo experience that is consistent with Spatial Audio content.

Hardware

Airsound Spatial systems feature opposing side firing loudspeakers to reproduce the required dipolar sound field that is used by the software to place sound objects in conjunction with the front and height speakers. This approach allows payback of any number of audio channels from a single loudspeaker unit, complete with directional cues for listener immersion.

The Result

Airsound Spatial offers a reduced hardware and BOM overhead to effectively solve the challenge of delivering multichannel audio audio, simply and cost effectively.

Compared to discrete channels (traditional approaches), Airsound Spatial offers a much wider soundstage and total flexibility in source material.

Compared to WFS (beam forming) processes, Airsound Spatial requires far less hardware and does not require fine tuning or dependence on a listening sweet spot.

The recording community agree: Airsound Spatial is the practical and effective solution that Spatial Audio has been waiting for.