Audience expectations of the cinema experience have evolved significantly in recent years. Today, viewers expect image quality that aligns with contemporary production and post-production standards – with accurate color reproduction, high contrast and visual consistency that preserves creative intent. At the same time, cinema operators are challenged to future-proof their technical infrastructure while integrating formats such as HDR in a meaningful and sustainable way. This is where Samsung Onyx comes in.

One response to these requirements is LED-based cinema display technology such as the Samsung Onyx Cinema LED display (ICD series). Designed specifically for cinema environments, the system introduces new possibilities for image reproduction, presentation quality and operational consistency.

LED technology as an alternative to traditional projection

Unlike conventional projection systems, Samsung Onyx relies on self-emissive LED technology. The display supports resolutions up to 4K with a refresh rate of 120 Hz[1] and achieves peak brightness levels of up to 300 nits[2]. This enables bright image areas to remain clearly visible without color washout or loss of detail.

Deep blacks, an almost infinite contrast ratio, and high color accuracy enable nuanced image reproduction across the full brightness range. Especially in high-contrast scenes, this results in more precise detail reproduction – an aspect that is increasingly relevant for both filmmakers and audiences.

HDR in cinema: consistent implementation of modern workflows

As HDR content becomes more widespread, its reliable presentation in cinemas is gaining importance. Modern cinema displays must not only support extended brightness and color spaces technically but also reproduce them consistently in real-world screening environments. Systems such as Samsung Onyx are increasingly designed to support HDR workflows from mastering through to on-screen playback.

This approach helps ensure that creative decisions made during production and post-production remain visible in the cinema environment, strengthening the connection between artistic intent and the final audience experience.

Flexibility for different auditorium layouts

In addition to image quality, flexibility is a key consideration for cinema operators. Samsung Onyx is available in four standard screen sizes – 5, 10, 14 and 20 meters – and can be scaled beyond these formats to accommodate a wide range of auditorium dimensions.[3] This adaptability allows cinemas to optimize screen size without compromising visual performance.

The system is also compatible with established cinema audio solutions such as Dolby Atmos, Meyer Sound, QSC and JBL, enabling integration into existing sound infrastructures.

Digital experiences beyond the auditorium

Modern display technologies are not limited to the screening room itself. Digital signage solutions enable cinemas to enhance visual communication in lobby and service areas. Energy-efficient color e-paper displays[4] can be used to present programmed information or advertising content and are centrally managed via the Samsung VXT device and content management platform.

Additional Smart Signage displays can be deployed for menu boards, trailers or brand communication, creating a consistent visual experience throughout the entire cinema journey – from arrival to the start of the film.

Display technology is increasingly shaping the way audiences experience cinematic stories. As production standards continue to evolve, solutions like Samsung Onyx illustrate how image reproduction, brightness and color accuracy can be aligned more closely with creative intent. For cinemas, this opens new ways to present content in a technically consistent and visually compelling manner – supporting the medium of cinema as it adapts to changing audience expectations.[5]

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[1] Based on the internal data bandwidth of the screen. Actual frame rates may vary depending on the connected IMB.

[2] Peak brightness is supported when using DCI-HDR-supported IMB.

[3] All measurements in metres refer to the screen width, while all measurements in inches refer to the diagonal. The 10-metre Onyx screen is available now, with the remaining models being introduced gradually.

[4] Thanks to advanced technology, color e-paper consumes significantly less energy than many other digital signage devices, especially when displaying static images. This can result in direct cost savings. The 4,600 mAH battery also offers high energy efficiency.

[5] The quality of film screenings may vary depending on the region and cinema.

The post Samsung Onyx: How modern display technology is redefining the cinema experience first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Advertorial.

What is HDR, Really?

DP: Hi Michael! The box on my monitor has stickers for HDR10, HDR+ and Dolby Vision. Isn’t that actually all the same thing?
Michael Hackl: You’re addressing a topic that is often very confusing for users and consumers in the HDR ecosystems. Even if it seems like a manufacturer is trying to fill the box with marketing buzzwords, these various acronyms describe HDR formats that are indeed different, each with its own technical specifications and workflows in content creation. Let’s take a quick look:

HDR10 is a basic HDR format. It uses the ST.2084 (Perceptual Quantizer) EOTF (Electro-Optical Transfer Function) and predominantly a maximum brightness of 1000 nits. It offers a color depth of 10 bits and offers two static metadata values to adapt the image to the capabilities of the respective display. It’s an open standard and each manufacturer tends to apply their own adaptation.

HDR10+ is effectively an extension of HDR10 that uses dynamic metadata (created at encoding). This is used to enable automatic adjustments from scene to scene or frame to frame to adapt the content to the screen. It also uses 10-bit color depth and supports peak brightness of up to 4000 nits.

Dolby Vision is the most advanced of these formats. Well, everyone will expect me to say this, but Dolby Vision is so much more than “just” another HDR format. The fact that we offer creatives a true “unified-master” workflow and give them real control over how their content will look on devices is the crucial point to me.  It uses dynamic metadata that gets created by the colorist in the post-production process, supports a color depth of up to 12 bits and can handle brightness levels of up to 10,000 nits (although current professional displays usually reach their limits between 1000 to 4000 nits). Dolby Vision’s dynamic metadata allows for precise control over how content is displayed on a plethora of devices, providing a more accurate representation of the creator’s intent. There’s also a side benefit of getting a better SDR version too.

Dolby Vision in Practice

DP: Okay, so what exactly is Dolby Vision?
Michael Hackl: Dolby Vision is designed to meet the needs of content creators, studios and content owners while providing an exceptional viewing experience, whether at home, at the cinema or on the go. It is crucial for filmmakers that their movie is reproduced as faithfully as possible on different devices and in different environments. This is completely understandable given the immense time and effort that went into its creative design. Dolby Vision integrates seamlessly into the post-production workflow and therefore requires only minimal adjustments to the workflow.

In practice, the Dolby Vision process for “Movies and TV” today starts with color grading in HDR, which is usually completed in a color grading suite on a professional reference display with peak luminance levels of 1,000 nits (or even up to 4,000 nits for some productions). Once the HDR grading is finished and approved, the colorist then runs an automatic Dolby Vision analysis that generates dynamic shot- or frame-based metadata, analyzing minimum, maximum, and average luminance levels along with the color space used to describe the color volume of each shot. In essence, this metadata captures the exact “light and color recipe” of the content.

With this core metadata in hand, the colorist can then map the HDR grade to various lower luminance HDR targets, as well as all the way down to 100 nits. This 100 nits target serves as our HDR anchor for mapping and will also allow users to derive their SDR version. All these mappings can be previewed and fine-tuned using the Dolby Vision trim controls. This single color grading process allows for accurate translation to a wide range of output formats, from TV and mobile devices to theatrical releases in DCI and Dolby Cinema.

Dolby Vision offers enhanced creative control and the ability to ensure content is displayed as intended on a wide range of devices. This is critical because today there are so many different types of displays (with differing technologies and capabilities OLED, QD-OLED, LED/LCD, etc.). It is a comprehensive solution that extends from content creation to delivery to playback and is designed to provide a viewing experience that is as close as possible to the creator’s intentions. Dolby Vision enables the creation of a unified master that describes all necessary versions via metadata.

Why it’s Complicated

DP: You would think that these are solved problems in 2025 ….
Michael Hackl: When we were all watching movies on our old cathode ray tube TV in the darkened living room in the evening, we had less variance in this respect. Such a television set came relatively close to the picture characteristics of the CRT TV used for color grading back then. And a darkened living room comes closer to the ambient conditions in color grading than when we watch content outdoors on our smartphone today.

Virtually every display of every device today has different image characteristics in terms of contrast and color, and viewers use these devices in completely different environments. And these environments got much brighter. Therefore, content really has to be adapted to the respective environment and capability of the display.

In the context of post-production, this means providing tools and workflows that enable precise control over the image, efficient creation of multiple deliverables, and confidence that the final product will render accurately across a wide range of display devices and environments. Dolby Vision seamlessly bridges the gap between the creative process and the viewing experience, ensuring that every nuance of the image is preserved and presented as intended, regardless of the playback device or viewing environment.

DP: And you have to build that into each screen individually?
Michael Hackl: Dolby works with manufacturers and implements Dolby Vision through a combination of components in compatible devices – Displays require specific hardware capabilities including a panel that meets defined characteristics and a processing unit capable of decoding Dolby Vision content, and the integration of licensed software into the device’s firmware or operating system. We also work to characterize their display and tune the results – that’s key to understand. These devices must pass Dolby’s approval process to ensure they meet the required specifications for Dolby Vision playback, a manufacturer can’t just say “Yeah, that’ll do!”

DP: What do you do to ‘certify’ Vision in terms of image quality – in other words, what do you test screens and end devices for, what measurements / minimum requirements do they have to fulfil?
Michael Hackl: While we don’t review or approve each piece of content, as the choice of metadata is a creative decision, the approval process begins during the creation and analysis of the metadata by working closely with our partners. We work closely with them to ensure that the Dolby Vision metadata can be created according to our recommendations and delivers consistent results on all approved systems. This exact specification and verification is of fundamental importance in order to be able to think about a consistent playback at all.

To ensure this, we work with consumer device manufacturers to implement Dolby Vision in their devices. Here, too, we ensure that the metadata created in the creation process is processed correctly and thus leads to a correct visual result. This is a key differentiating factor for Dolby Vision. We ensure that both metadata creation and the respective application in the devices are implemented correctly and consistently for tone mapping. With other formats, there are significant deviations in the calculation of metadata using different tools, and implementation in the devices also varies across manufacturers.

DP: Oh, that’s why it’s considered expensive – it’s not even built into office screens ?
Michael Hackl: The fact that Dolby Vision is perceived as expensive may reflect the high-quality expectations associated with our brand. However, Dolby Vision is not a feature priced for the end customer. Our OEM customers license Dolby Vision for their systems and offer them at the prices they set. A quick look at popular online marketplaces shows that a TV with Dolby Vision does not have to be more expensive than a TV without Dolby Vision. The price of today’s TV sets, smartphones, etc. is determined by other components, not by Dolby Vision.

Dolby Vision is already included in post-production systems such as Resolve Studio and Baselight. Metadata creation, tone mapping, and rendering are therefore possible at no additional cost. If users wish to customize the metadata, i.e., use the Dolby Vision trim controls, they can obtain a license with no time limit and independent of the system via our online store.

Tools for Colorists and Post Facilities

DP: So in finishing and mastering I can already set up exactly everything for that?
Michael Hackl: : Dolby Vision functionality, in particular the creation of dynamic metadata and its adjustment (trimming), is available in common color grading systems, such as Resolve and Baselight, as well as in mastering applications such as Transkoder or Clipster. For others, there are simpler tools that create the metadata automatically like in CapCut, Luma Fusion, Final Cut Pro and others.

For the creative process, it is of course incredibly important that the industry provides a proper end-to-end HDR production pipeline. Many well-known manufacturers have recognized the importance of flexible HDR/SDR editing and have already implemented it. Let’s hope that others will follow.

DP: From an editorial or mastering standpoint: what new control enhancements can colorists, editors, or mastering engineers make use of in Dolby Vision 2 compared to earlier versions?
Michael Hackl: Over the last 10 years we’ve listened carefully to the feedback from creatives, colorists, and color scientists at the leading post facilities around the world on the tools and workflows they’d like to see added or changed in the existing Dolby Vision mastering process. As a result, we’ve continued to innovate with new improvements like moving from Content Mapping 2.9 (CM 2.9) which was launched in 2015 and featured a subset of the metadata we use today, to CM 4.0 in 2019. 

CM4.0 features enhanced trim controls and was further enhanced in 2023 with new Analysis tuning options that make the starting point even better, meaning the colorist can get to the trim metadata that delivers their vision even quicker than before. The goal for the next generation Dolby Vision content creation process is to build further on that progress, offering even easier, more flexible and compelling tools and workflow options that answer creatives’ need to best deliver their artistic intent in both HDR and SDR.

Studios will get the Dolby Vision unified master deliverable they desire – while not adding time over the current Dolby Vision workflow. While we can’t share specific details at this time our plan, working with our partners, is to deliver a comprehensive package of improvements.

DP: And, from a pipeline view, this should be predestined for using an IMF master..
Michael Hackl: IMF is certainly a perfect format for today’s multi-format deliveries. The Dolby Vision metadata can be transferred in an IMF package as part of the image track in the MXF container. In this case, the metadata is interleaved with the image content. Transfer as a separate ISXD track is also possible.

For the creation of theatrical deliveries, mastering systems can use the Dolby Vision metadata created and optionally modified in the color grading process to create corresponding DCPs, either for DCI (SDR) or Dolby Cinema (HDR) playback.

Multiple Screens, One Master

DP: But then in regards to color grading, it does get stuck – creating different versions for the screens – mobile, TV, PC, VR goggles, and what else is there?
Michael Hackl: Nowadays, we consume content on a wide variety of devices in different viewing environments. This circumstance may initially seem uncontrollable, since a corresponding grade would have to be created for each of these different use cases. However, this would not be efficient in many respects. Therefore, we use different technologies, both in creation and in playback control, which adapt the content created by the colorist to the end devices, taking into account the colorist’s decisions. Studios and content owners receive a singular master with Dolby Vision metadata, which then manages playback on different displays.

Dolby Vision is already implemented in literally all device categories today. These range from TVs, PCs, HMDs (head-mounted displays), such as Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest, to tablets and mobile devices. And when it comes to theatrical distribution, we can use Dolby Vision metadata to create separate stand-alone DCPs for DCI (SDR) or Dolby Cinema (HDR). Colorists appreciate the consistency and efficiency they get mapping the HDR home grade with our tools to create theatrical deliverables.

DP: And what are these differnet technologies?
Michael Hackl: The basis for this is provided by our Dolby Vision display mapping, which can be found in TVs, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Simply put, this technology knows the image reproduction capabilities of each display device. As soon as a Dolby Vision bitstream is played on these devices, they switch to Dolby Vision mode and perceptually adapt the content to the respective display. For cinema deliveries, we can use metadata created in post-production to directly create discrete DCPs, either for DCI or Dolby Cinema.

VFX and Editing

DP: But at least in VFX / pure CGI it makes no difference?
Michael Hackl: We must distinguish here between HDR and Dolby Vision as an HDR format. In VFX, as in HDR color grading, we work completely without metadata at HDR reference level, because we work in reference environments across standardized displays.

At least in color grading, it is not necessary to adapt to different playback devices as the colorist or even multiple colorists work on reference displays that are identical in spec. In the field of VFX, artists today might already work with HDR-capable displays or at least conduct their VFX reviews on HDR reference displays. When processing, it is important not to lose any details so that the colorist, who integrates the final VFX shots into the color grading, has full control over contrasts, brightness and colors. There is still room for improvement in VFX when it comes to a user-friendly end-to-end preview workflow for HDR and SDR.

DP: And it’s not relevant in editing either?
Michael Hackl: Editing is certainly a crucial process in film production, and some manufacturers already offer basic support for editing in HDR. However, that is not everything. Many editors prefer to edit using the UI viewer rather than primarily using an external (HDR) display. To do this, the viewer must run in HDR while the other UI elements are displayed in SDR. It is also desirable to be able to switch the actual video output flexibly between HDR and SDR. This again requires dailies in HDR and SDR. But here, too, what we have already discussed for mastering applies. It is simply not efficient to create dailies in HDR and SDR and then manage the two formats in parallel during editing.

For the creative process, it is of course incredibly important that the industry provides a proper end-to-end HDR production pipeline. Many well-known manufacturers have recognized the importance of flexible HDR/SDR dailies and editing and have already implemented it. Let’s hope that others will follow.

DP: But if you’ve edited something and want to output it to a Dolby Vision screen, how does that work?
Michael Hackl: In the area of post-produced content, conforming, a so-called online edit, takes place after editing in a color grading system like Resolve, whereby the editing information is applied to the original camera data. Depending on the size of the project, the original camera footage may also have been edited directly so that the timeline and data can be used directly for color grading, which varies in scope depending on the project.

In the area of post-produced content, conforming, a so-called online, takes place after editing, whereby the editing information is applied to the original camera data. This conformed material is then transferred to colour grading.

DP: And what happens in the background?
Michael Hackl: The content is then colorgraded in HDR and then the Dolby Vision process described above takes place. As soon as this is complete, the image and metadata information is exported from the color correction system and handed over to the mastering team. The image data is exported in ST.2084 (PQ) in P3D65 or Rec.2020, e.g. as QuickTime ProRes or 16-bit Tiff.

The metadata information is exported in the form of an XML file. In the mastering process, further elements such as start and end panels are added, along with the audio, and all elements are combined into the respective contribution format or mezzanine format, such as a Dolby Vision IMF package.

DP: And if we look at what Dolby Vision could be in 2040: What will be on the to-do list there – in your personal opinion?
Michael Hackl: Ideally, neither the creator nor the viewer needs to worry about where and on which device the content will be displayed. Dolby Vision ensures that the content is displayed accurately and that the display meets the expectations of the creator and viewer. Users get the best visual experience everywhere.

Want to know what others are saying about Dolby? Here is a Playlist of directors and filmmakers about working with it, including some of our favourites, like Denis Villeneuve (Part One and Part Two), Tim Burton, James Cameron, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, Pete Docter and many More!

Two very recent ones are “Das Kanu des Manitu”, the wildly popular satire and long awaited sequel to “Schuh des Manitu” by Bully Herbig.

And “Welcome Home Baby“, the Austrian Horror / Mystery Movie

Learn More

DP: That seems reasonably straightforward – but what if I have additional questions?
Michael Hackl:: If you want to learn more about Dolby Vision or learn the workflow from scratch, you can sign up for our free Dolby Vision training courses at learning.dolby.com. These will guide you step by step through the workflow. You can find a lot of additional background information about Dolby Vision on professionalsupport.dolby.com and you can chat with other users and the Dolby team on the Dolby Vision User Forum.

We also offer regular Dolby Vision Technical Webinars, which interested users can register for via the following link.

The post Dolby Vision, Dolby Vision 2, and Beyond! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

So far, we’ve only scratched the surface of the question: “Yes, but what am I listening to anyway?” So now it’s all about content. It’s not so easy to say in general terms where 3D audio actually enables good content. Depending on the context, there can be a completely different technology behind it in the form of formats or game engines.

That’s why I’ve come up with a structure that I’ll simply call the “3D audio matrix” – or pyramid? Be that as it may, the whole thing is intended to provide a reference for applications and their prime examples, the advantages and disadvantages of 3D sound, and of course an overview of formats and tools with their respective peculiarities. You have to take a few steps to understand this: 3D audio is not just 3D audio. So let’s first go back several dimensions to the origin, i.e. from 3D audio to 2D, 1D, 0D..

The 3D audio matrix overview

How, 0D? Admittedly, that’s a bit abstract. How can you visualise it? I’m taking a mathematical approach here. Don’t worry, it won’t be any more difficult than in your first geometry lesson. Let’s imagine a coordinate system in which our head is at the origin.

Now let’s combine this with the question: what kind of geometric object do I have?
0D: A point in the coordinate system without spatial information, the origin (0|0|0)
1D: A line, here I can move from left to right (x|0|0)
2D: A plane, now I can also move forwards and backwards (x|y|0)
3D: A cube/sphere that adds height information (x|y|z)

Audio formats that you already know

So far so good. Now imagine you want to place an audio object in a room. There are already audio formats that we know from our everyday lives.

0D: Mono. No room information can be added.
1D: Stereo. You can at least move your sound to the left and right
2D: Surround. With 5.1, for example, you can also place sound at the back
3D Audio: Here you can also move sound up or down.

But wait, there’s more: degrees of freedom

All overviews in this direction that I know of stop at Dolby Atmos, but beyond that it’s just getting started with 3 or 6 degrees of freedom. OK – what are degrees of freedom? Also known as DoF (Degrees of Freedom), the degree describes the following.

• 0DoF: It is not defined where you actually look while consuming the content, except that you look forwards, like in films, you are not supposed to turn around.
• 3DoF: Here you can also rotate your gaze, as we know it from 360° videos. Also known as head tracking (rotation).
• 6DoF: This concept is already familiar from 3D games, where the player also moves through a 3D space (translation).

Headphones simplify understanding

It’s as simple as that – or not. Because it’s always a question of which direction I’m looking at my concept from. Here I am referring exclusively to headphone playback. Do some of you remember the localisation and externalisation in the head from the last article? This is a good example of how mono and stereo are always perceived in the head. Even if I add reverb to create a depth gradation, I can still only move an object to the left and right and only create a difference in volume and time (ILD, ITD). But the third factor (HRTF) is missing, with which I can really differentiate between front and back. For me, stereo is therefore one-dimensional (lins right), which is often confused with the two channels.
With surround sound via headphones, a binaural attempt is made to generate an impression of the front and rear – with 3D audio, this also includes height information. This is where the aforementioned HRTF comes into play in order to really “let the sound travel out of our head” during the calculation. So we go from an in-head localisation to an externalisation. Although at the end of the day, a two-channel stereo signal is played back. But watch out! It’s not “normal” stereo, but binaural, with HRTF-filtered extension.

The walls of the concept are shaking for loudspeakers

It’s not so easy for loudspeakers, because even if I only have one loudspeaker in the room, it’s still “somehow three-dimensional”. Besides, the term stereophony actually says: more than mono, so it would even include 3D audio, but I think that in everyday production everyone thinks of stereo as a “two-channel audio file”. With stereo
Playback, you place two speakers with yourself as the third point in an equilateral triangle. And as we know, triangles are actually two-dimensional. Nevertheless, I can only move my sound between the two loudspeakers, not beyond them. Even if I add reverb, you get the feeling of depth
Feeling of depth, but you don’t know whether the room is actually in front or behind you. Nevertheless, two-channel stereo is still a stable reproduction method and, in my opinion, not broken, regardless of what the various hectic marketing newsletters claim.

0-2D aka “normal media”

OK, of course I could go on and on about where to find mono, stereo and surround content. But that’s everyday life. We use mono every day for voice messages, we stream music in stereo and if you have the right TV, you can watch films in surround. The more I think about it, the more I realise that surround is not that far removed from 3D audio in this respect. You still have height information – applause. So the quantum leap from stereo to surround actually seems greater than that from surround to 3D. I would also subscribe to this for film, for example, because when streaming, the great 3D sound from the cinema has to be compressed and is then usually a 5.1 that tries to retain a few treble elements.

Audio should be immersive

But we remember that immersive audio should ideally be so natural that we don’t even think much about the technology. And 3D audio brings us a lot closer to this impression than surround sound alone.
However, there is another factor why 3D audio can bring even more benefits under the bonnet than height information. The surround formats meant here are either quadrophones 4.0, 5.1 or 7.1. The numbers are channel information, e.g. for 5.1, channels 1 to 6 are: Front Left, Front Right, Centre, LFE (low frequency effect), Left Surround, Right Surround.
So if you want height information, you need even more channels, such as 5.1.4. You then have four more speakers on the ceiling. But as you can guess, that’s kind of impractical. And what if I have a 7.1.2 system, how are the channels converted? That’s why audio technology is moving away from channel-based formats and towards so-called NGA, next-generation audio formats.

Object-based audio

To understand why 3D audio can be even better than surround sound, let’s take a brief look at object-based audio. A major advantage of object-based audio is the independence of the channels, as the rendering only takes place at the end user. Systems that want to use Next Generation Audio must therefore have a corresponding decoder integrated. This ensures optimised audio playback at all times.
Another exciting possibility in addition to the movement of audio content in 3D space is the personalisation of these audio objects. My favourite example is watching a football match, where I can simply mute the “Commentator:in” audio object. Podcasts would be an equally exciting application. Let’s say we want to listen to a news podcast that is an hour long, but we only have 10 minutes. We tell our smartphone this and the podcast is automatically shortened to the most important 10 minutes using metadata.
MPEG-H is able to do this and is already standard in broadcasting in Korea and Brazil. The biggest competitor is AC-4 aka Dolby Atoms, which only allows such personalisation and interaction according to its own specifications.

Spatial Audio 0DOF with/without picture?

Let’s take a look at what 3D audio content is really available now. Most of them should be familiar, because thanks to Dolby Atmos, consumer favourites such as films and music streaming services are currently being supplied. Podcasts too, but in the vast majority of cases they make more sense in stereo – or even mono.

3D audio is better than 3D video?

When I tell people that I do “something with 3D audio”, they immediately ask if I work with “Dolby Atmos”. In fact, Dolby is not that relevant in my immersive audio bubble because it doesn’t enable many things that I need in my daily work. But more on that when it comes to degrees of freedom.
Nevertheless, Dolby Atmos (AC-4 is actually the audio format behind the marketing term) is particularly relevant in the film industry. Thousands of Hollywood blockbusters have already been mixed in this format and people are happy to spend a few euros more to enjoy a surround system in the cinema. Sure, the sound experience is more fun when a helicopter suddenly sounds like it’s flying over your head. But at the end of the day, I would argue that all films also work with stereo sound – or mono. You don’t look in all directions, you only look forwards.
Even though I like to shoot in the direction of Dolby Atmos, they do a good job of bringing this surround sound into the living room. Many soundbar models now support playback via the TV using streaming apps. And playback via Apple headphones is also really fun, even on an iPad. Although the “Airpods Pro” are in-ear headphones, you have the feeling of being enveloped by the sound and can almost save yourself an expensive home cinema. Now let’s take a look at pure audio enjoyment without visual content: Music streaming has long been part of our everyday lives and is becoming increasingly popular. 3D music streaming is the latest innovation in the industry, adding a third dimension to the listening experience.

3D music

But now Dolby came up with the idea of converting their 3D audio format for music production. Admittedly, I’m a little sceptical here too, because I felt that most songs sounded better in stereo than with the 3D audio formats. In addition to Dolby Atmos Music, Sony is trying to add 360 Reality Audio to the list of 3D formats.
However, one advantage is definitely that you have to make fewer compromises when mixing music and have more options for placing the individual audio tracks. This gives some tracks more depth and you can hear the individual instruments better. You have the feeling that the musicians are sitting around you in the studio.
We are currently in a major learning phase here, similar to the move from stereo to mono. The first Beatles songs sound interesting by today’s standards. Today we know better how to mix in stereo. The same applies to these 3D music productions. So just see for yourself which streaming platform is already there and listen to it. I think the quality is getting better and better and since Apple Music got involved, there’s been a bit of a gold-rush atmosphere in the audio community.
And what is 8D Audio now? Admittedly: maximum confusion to categorise this again, but 8D doesn’t even stand for dimensions, but directions. Let’s just accept the phenomenon and define it for what it is: music circles around our heads in mono and works quite well through headphones. But in the long run it is a bit tiring and monotonous, so 3D music tries better. Here you work with individual tracks of the various instruments and place or move them through the room where it suits the composition. It rarely sounds as clearly 3D as 8D audio. So just listen to the examples that sound better or worse on my blog and form your own opinion.

Dolby Atmos Podcast

The last remaining audio-only format is podcasts, which are now also being tackled by Dolby Atmos. Here, however, my toenails roll up a little, for reasons that go beyond the scope of this article. The short version is that Audible has now jumped on the bandwagon, but AC-4 as a 3D format does not allow certain sound sources to be made non-3D. With audio dramas in particular, this means that the narrator’s voice is suddenly in the 3D scene with the protagonists, which means that the listener can no longer really distinguish who is actually part of the action.
But I’m already in dialogue with Dolby about this too, because what’s the point of always complaining :-) But there are already other courageous productions that have mixed with or without Dolby in order to get answers to the questions of how well radio plays work as 3D audio productions. Just listen to it yourself and form your own opinion. Head tracking comes later.
Most productions have “the problem” of producing too classically. In other words, recording speakers in the studio, then letting them move around virtually with 3D spatialisers and adding an atmo. But that doesn’t really sound convincing or immersive. Can you cite your own productions as a positive example? Then I’ll throw my radio play for BKW Engineering into the ring. A more classically produced one is the “Erdsee-Hörspiel” from WDR. I’m curious about the opinions.

Advantages and disadvantages of 3D sound

Said productions with 3D audio can be fun if they fit the content well. It is also often used as a marketing gimmick to simply offer the listener something new, to have a unique selling point. This is also a disadvantage, as 3D audio is not a seal of quality. However, you can usually rely on your ears to determine whether the production works for you or not, apart from your own taste.
That’s why productions are often made in 3D that would probably have worked just as well in stereo. Especially in the music sector, there are genres that have spatialisation but, in contrast to the stereo version, have less pressure. In addition, the conversion to headphones is not yet perfect. The soundtrack often sounds somehow duller than you are used to with stereo directly to the ears.
Here, too, we are in a transitional phase. Users first have to get used to this spatial sound again. It usually works better via loudspeaker systems and I have to admit that I had a lot of fun with Dolby Atmos Music in a demo car.
However, as you can imagine, with 3D audio mixes there are even more parameters that I can set for a sound. That’s why such mixes are usually more complex, more time-consuming and more expensive than a stereo mix. And, as I said, you usually need a selection of special devices to really get the full benefit.

Formats and object-based audio

As mentioned, all formats are somehow based on the assumption that the
the listener is looking towards the front, where there is usually a centre speaker or screen. You don’t actually want people to look across the room because there is usually a TV picture in front of them while they are listening to 3D audio content.
As I said, Dolby Atmos has established itself in the form of AC-4 with a large marketing budget and is spreading from films to music, podcasts and gaming. The alternative is MPEG-H made in Germany, which is particularly suitable for live streaming in the broadcast sector. The competition from Dolby Atmos Music is an adaptation of MPEG-H, called Sony 360 Reality Audio, which should provide a boost for the Sony Music label in particular. Both formats can even be found on Amazon Music, although Dolby already has around four times as many tracks, so the battle seems to have been decided.
One format that has not established itself for over 30 years, but is currently experiencing a renaissance, is Ambisonics. This sound field-based format has audio channels, but instead of loudspeakers it maps spatial axes. It all sounds a little unusual and only has a very small sweet spot when played back via loudspeakers. However, this disadvantage does not exist with headphones because you have the perfect playback position directly on your ears. The format can also be easily rotated around the X, Y and Z axis. This is why it has established itself more for the use of 360° videos and thus into the world of three degrees of freedom.

New audio freedoms in three degrees

With advances in technology, new 3D audio techniques are opening up unprecedented possibilities for media production. 3D audio with three degrees of freedom (3DOF) is one such concept that enables unprecedented immersion and dynamic sound experiences that benefit from the fact that you’re not just staring straight ahead.
Below we look at the pros and cons for specialised headphones, applications where it can be used effectively and different formats available when implementing this feature into a production workflow.

360° videos from a sound perspective

Probably the best-known representative of this genre are 360° videos. These spherical moving images triggered a real hype half a decade ago. Suddenly you could watch such videos
on the largest video platforms Video YouTube and Facebook. Strictly speaking, there are many types of user experience:

• On desktop devices, using the mouse to turn your gaze while looking further forward at the screen.

• On smartphones, where you hold your device in front of your nose, not turning your head, but rotating your body on its own axis.

• Head-mounted displays (HMDs) are in the top class because the image really does adapt to the movement of your head in real time. Such 360° videos are also available as stereoscopic videos, as 3D videos, if you like, where each eye gets to see its own 360° panorama, creating a more vivid image in the brain. But of course there are also 360° videos with 3D sound. In this context, I also like to call it 360° sound, because you immediately understand that the sound is also spherical like the image.

Audio head tracking

If you now remove the image component, but still want the sound to react to head movements, then we find ourselves in the world of audio head tracking. Apple is already building this technology into ALL Airpods, from the entry-level Airpods to the Airpods Pros and, of course, Airpods Max. However, the use cases are currently limited.
Technically, it is now possible to listen to Dolby Atmos Music tracks via Apple Music, but, as I said, these tracks were never mixed with the intention of “listening around” in the music. In addition, Dolby metadata is even bypassed so that this feature can be activated at all. As a result, Dolby Atmos Music tracks sound different on Amazon than on Apple Music – not exactly what you want to hear as an audio engineer. But Apple needs content to be able to use its technology as a selling point.

3D sound is more than entertainment

But there are applications that actually solve problems with 3D audio and head tracking and are not just a fun factor. The medium is also becoming increasingly relevant for communication. MS Teams has added the “spatial audio” feature to its video calls. The good thing is that you don’t need any additional hardware. Simple headphones are all you need and the microphone signal is automatically spatialised in the cloud for the other users – even without head tracking.
In a video conference with several people, things can quickly become chaotic as the current mono system has problems keeping the different voices apart. Our brain has difficulty differentiating between the voices as they all come from the same direction. 3D sound makes the conversation situation natural and actually makes it measurably easier to listen, because it takes the strain off our brain – similar to the cocktail party effect. The 3D audio spatialisation of voices makes it much easier to differentiate between them and noise is less noticeable.

Head localisation is being fought – wrongly

Films can also be watched with head tracking, but there is a fundamental problem here: the approach is to make the entire sound 3D. However, this means that even elements such as narrative voices or background music are part of the scene where they shouldn’t be. Here is a very brief explanation on the subject of diegesis. 360° videos are the most vivid. Everything you can see should also be three-dimensional in terms of sound, as you are in the scene (diegetically). But it shouldn’t be a narrative voice that can’t be seen (non-diegetic). Otherwise you will hear a ghost coming from somewhere and wonder who is talking to you. But if the voice is played in mono, it doesn’t change and you immediately understand that a person is talking to you who isn’t even part of the scene.
In other words, in the world of 3 degrees of freedom, not everything is just 3D audio so that you have the feeling that it is coming “from outside”. Rather, the ability to combine the soundtrack with mono or stereo signals via headphones is important so that listeners understand which sound is coming from which narrative level. This is not possible with loudspeakers because they are always perceived from the outside, whereas with headphones you can – and should – make use of the localisation in the head.

Confused? Then let’s go round in circles again

Apple does a good job of being able to understand whether I’m listening to stereo or multi-channel content. This is all the more interesting when you realise that Bose burnt its fingers on this very subject years ago. In Cupertino, however, they believe in the technology and have already built it into every pair of in-house Airpod headphones. This also helps with the market launch of the Apple Vision Pro, but more on that later. When it comes to audio playback alone, a distinction is made not only between the two options, but a total of five.

Input: Stereo.

You can hear the sound as normal stereo, nothing special at first. However, if you don’t like this upside-down localisation, you can activate “Spatialize Stereo/Stereo to 3D Audio”, which adds a reverb algorithm to the signal to make it sound more “natural”.
In addition to this spatialisation, you can also activate head tracking, which makes the signal sound through headphones as if you were listening to it through two speakers in the room (3DoF).

Input: Multi-channel

Mostly Dolby Atmos via film platforms such as Disney or music streaming such as Apple Music. The sound is automatically converted from multi-channel audio to binaural stereo so that the sound sounds as if it is happening around you. This setting makes the most sense if you move around and don’t want the sound to change all the time as you move your head.
You can also activate head tracking, which is particularly useful for films if you have a visual reference point or if you want to distinguish objects from the front from those from behind (which is always difficult with binaural sound). I would call this level 3DoF.

Freedom comes with pitfalls – advantages of head tracking

A big advantage of this technology for 360-degree videos is the fact that you can now hear better when something is happening behind you, for example. Something you wouldn’t be able to see because we only have a limited field of view, but our hearing is always mapped in 360°. I have often seen VR experiences that slap their beautifully designed visual scene with arrows so that people look in the right direction at the right moment. Cleverly placed 3D sound can solve this problem intuitively.
It also solves one of the biggest obstacles of binaural audio. You often have the feeling of spatiality and that the sound is happening around you. However, you can rarely distinguish the front from the back. But if you are able to turn your head even slightly, you can immediately understand which sound is where. Head tracking does not mean that you have to move 360° – but you can. This solves the aforementioned problem of narrative levels. With films, you don’t have to ask yourself whether an element is dynamic or not. When we listen to epic music in the cinema, we don’t ask ourselves “where is Hans Zimmer now”. But because you now have this clear separation, you have to question how you actually use voice-overs and music. In most cases, a scene with well-designed sound effects is better than desperately trying to keep people entertained with music and speech. The brain is usually already well supplied with 360° images anyway, so three levels of sound (speech, sound effects, music) are more likely to cause confusion.

Disadvantages of head tracking

As already mentioned, the whole thing is not so easy to implement via loudspeakers. Theoretically, it is also possible to display 360° videos as a projection in planetariums, for example. For surround sound, you are surrounded by loudspeakers. But the speaker’s voice still somehow comes from one direction. What still works well in the cinema suddenly becomes a problem with spherical videos and a series of workarounds and compromises are necessary.
Unfortunately, you rarely know when listening whether the mix should be heard with head tracking or not. There are mixes that really fall apart when you have the opportunity to turn your head. While other productions don’t even make sense if you’ve deactivated head tracking.
Admittedly, I always talk so cleverly about what you should and shouldn’t do. But the reality is simply that there is usually neither the time, money nor knowledge to make your immersive media production really good. If anything, an Ambisonics microphone is put up and labelled as immersive audio. Only to be mixed in stereo in the end for budget reasons “because nobody can hear it anyway”. It may be that listeners who come into contact with immersive media for the first time don’t necessarily scrutinise the sound. But the more points of contact you have, the greater the desire for sound. All the top podcasts are now produced in a studio, even if they started out as a hobby – there must be some kind of quality reason for this ;-)

Formats for audio head tracking

I have already mentioned the most famous representatives with Dolby Atmos, 360 Reality Audio (based on MPEG-H) and Ambisonics. However, these are all 3D formats that were not primarily developed for audio head tracking.
That’s why I don’t want to go into the technical details here, but rather briefly explain why Apple is once again showing a very good approach here. Even if Dolby likes to describe its format as future-proof, at some point it will reach its limits.
As mentioned, in the world of degrees of freedom, it’s not just 3D sounds that are relevant. But also precisely those non-diegetic sounds that are not part of the scene, but make sense for music and voice-overs in 0D. But of course there is more than just black and white thinking, i.e. 0D and 3D. Because there has to be something in between. This is often referred to as a bed. Apple refers to the three factors as:

• 3D Audio Objects
• Ambience Bed
• Head-locked audio

The 3 layers for immersive soundtracks

we have already looked at 3D Audio Objects, which are the objects that I can place in the room. You usually have the option of setting distance parameters or the size of an object so that it doesn’t stand out from the scene. Let’s take a cheering 3D audio fan in a stadium as an example. Then I would like to have a reverb that gives you the feeling of being in the same place. But if I simply add a reverb to the object, the reverb will only come from this corner. However, sound spreads in all directions, so it would also be heard all around us. Theoretically, I could send the reverb to our head-locked audio track. But then the reverb would not be 3D.
This is where the aforementioned bed comes into play. All signals that should be spatial but can be diffuse can be sent here. So if you have not just one fan, but hundreds, you would otherwise have to fill 100 audio tracks with objects. This way, you can simply send the group to the bed and only need a fraction of the audio tracks.

What do the other formats do differently?

Dolby Atmos, for example, works with a channel-based 7.1.2 bed and you can add up to 128 mono objects. However, it doesn’t actually have a head-locked stereo track because the format is based on loudspeakers. So for me it is not suitable for podcasts. In principle, the Dolby Atmos renderer offers the option of marking an audio
Object as “disable binauralisation”. This means that it is not played spatially. However, if you activate head tracking, the Apple renderer bypasses this meta data and only reads out where the object is located in the scene. This means that all Dolby Atmos mixes were never mixed with the intention of head tracking and therefore rarely utilise the advantages of the technology.
Ambisonics, on the other hand, has 4, 9, 16 or more channels, depending on the order. So it has a bed, I can even work with head-locked audio, but again it has no objects. Which is why the sound is always a bit diffuse, or I would have to spend a lot of audio channels to get close to the resolution of object-based formats. It therefore supports head-locked audio in mono, but not stereo. However, this optional stereo track is standard with Facebook360 and YouTubeVR, for example. An Ambisonics file is supplied, which rotates depending on the viewing direction. If required, an additional stereo file that is always played in the same way, no matter where you look in the 360° video. This gives you the best of both worlds and a good compromise between resolution and quality.

6DoF – anything but dumb

Let’s move on to the premier class of 6 degrees of freedom. Here you not only have three possible rotations around the X, Y or Z axis – but also three translations to these axes. In less unnecessarily clever terms, this means that you can also move towards or away from the sound, making it louder or quieter, for example.
All the applications discussed so far have been based on the fact that the listener is at the centre of the action, in the so-called sweet spot. This is where the optimum listening position is. But now we can move away from this point all at once and you can already guess that this makes sound design even more complex. So that there are no acoustic holes in the 3D scene or you are distracted by too many sound sources.

Games (more than a gimmick)

Here you will inevitably find yourself in game engines. This is why games are the best-known representative of this category. But not every game uses 3D audio. Once again, the genre question is a legitimate one.
A 2D game needs sounds from behind/above/below just as little as a strategy game in which I look down on my people from above like a god. Left/right is perfectly adequate here. 3D audio could be used here at most in the ambience, similar to films, so that you have more of a feeling of being part of the scene. Enveloped by sound is the keyword here again.
All games that take place in 3D worlds, especially first-person games, benefit from spatial sound. Fans of shooters have long known that being able to hear the enemies behind you before you get them in front of your virtual “weapon” can make all the difference in the game. That’s why gaming headsets are popular in this respect, so that your ears can tell your eyes where to look as well as possible.
However, such surround headsets are usually not even necessary to be able to hear spatially. We remember that our brain can do this with just two cleverly rendered audio channels. In most cases, the game automatically recognises whether you are using speakers or headphones and renders the sound accordingly. Nevertheless, it may well be that such surround headsets are even more customised to the software and, above all, enable communication. The Playstation 5, for example, advertises with the Pulse 3D Audio Engine and its own headset, which are very well matched to each other. Recently also in combination with Dolby Atmos in order to be able to control multi-channel soundbars.

AR (augmented reality audio)

Pokemon AR is often used as best practice for augmented reality applications. Even though I like to say that the game didn’t go viral because it was AR, but because it was Pokemon and had a great multiplayer character. The built-in cameras of smartphones are usually used here. The Lidar scanner, which enables even more precise tracking, is also increasingly being used.
AR glasses have not really become socially acceptable yet. Magic Leap or Hololens cost several thousand euros and are even slowly establishing themselves in the industry. Google Glass was way ahead of its time, but the features you would want from such a device are correspondingly limited. That’s why augmented reality is currently even more exciting from an auditory perspective. The technology here is already very advanced and, as already mentioned, headphones usually have at least head tracking built in. Combined with the smartphone, experiences with six degrees of freedom are also possible. Applications could include audio guides in museums, where the paintings or statues are brought to life by sound and tell their life stories, for example.

VR (sound for virtual reality)

When it comes to VR applications, most people also think of gaming. This is supported by the fact that such projects are almost exclusively developed with game engines such as Unity or Unreal. However, the VR bubble is much more diverse than you might think. Training and simulations in particular are currently in the B2B industry without consumers realising it. The possibilities are virtually unlimited and, in addition to the aforementioned rollercoaster games for which the medium is mostly known, real use cases are establishing themselves that offer added value – such as saving time and money when training employees. Nevertheless, it is not easy to transfer games, apps and the like from 2D screens to VR. The user experience with HMDs and controllers is simply fundamentally different. In most cases, VR attempts to replicate reality and is just a poor digital copy. However, the immersive medium really comes into its own when you do things that you can’t do in real life.

A prime example is “Notes on Blindness” (is.gd/notes_on_blindness). A VR experience in which you slip into the character of someone who is slowly going blind. Automatically, even non-sound people pay much more attention to the subtle nuances in the sound. But in the vast majority of cases, sound is usually neglected by developers due to a lack of knowledge and time. That’s why most apps sold as immersive experiences sound quite sterile. We are a long way from AAA budgets and need to give this young medium some time.

Spatial computing meets spatial audio

Let’s not get confused by Apple’s new term. For me, spatial computing is the same as XR (eXtended Reality). You are in virtual reality, extending your reality or somehow in between. The boundaries are no longer so easy to separate when even VR glasses have cameras that look into reality. So if I see reality through an HMD, is that VR or AR?
Apple doesn’t make the confusion any easier because they didn’t want to use terms that are already used by other companies. Virtual reality or the metaverse from Meta. Or mixed reality from Microsoft. In the long term, the result will be that we don’t have a VR device and an AR device, but a device that can depict all realities. I won’t comment on how AI and other buzzwords such as blockchain will play into this ;-)
For me as a sound engineer, however, it is important to separate which sound is part of which reality. In VR, I want to isolate myself, so I use a surround sound that matches what the display tells me. Whereas in AR, I want the sound to sound as if something is happening in my living room, where I am right now. Apple is also closer to a solution here than other companies because Apple Vision Pro, for example, also introduced ray tracing, which recognises the geometry of our surroundings and renders the sound accordingly.
In addition, Apple has already built a good infrastructure for 3D audio with the Airpods. If you want to further optimise the sound, you take pictures of your ears, which generates a personalised HRTF. Our hearing as a 3D model, so to speak. This allows the iPhone, for example, to tune the sound for us even more precisely and the distinction as to whether the sound is with us in VR or AR becomes even clearer.

Game audio – playful or gambled away?

Gamers know how important it is not only to see your opponents in time, but to hear them beforehand. For this reason, many people like to spend good money on expensive headsets that supposedly give them an advantage in the game. However, the sound design in AAA games is also very well budgeted and therefore correspondingly complex. A short beep sound is enough for the player to know immediately what is happening in the scene.

Communication and collaboration in 3D audio and with 6 degrees of freedom are crucial aspects for the feeling of presence in social VR. I recently had the opportunity to be in Social VR myself and was surprised at how long I was in there at a stretch. Even though the room was virtual, afterwards I had the feeling that the other person was actually in the same room as me. The cognitive load on our brain is lower because the sound is not coming from just one direction, as is the case with video calls, but a natural conversation situation is depicted.

But augmented audio can also make our everyday lives easier when we are on the move. Everyone is probably familiar with the problem of travelling on the underground using a map service for smartphones. You arrive somewhere on the
somewhere on the surface, but have no idea where to go because the sat nav is confused as to which direction we are travelling in. GPS is simply too imprecise. But if you have a second reference system – in the form of surround headphones that know the direction you are facing – you could simply hear a voice from the direction you need to move in.

Game over with these problems?

We humans have been used to hearing in three dimensions since birth. Now we can finally approximate this impression naturally. It all sounds very simple, but to get back from stereo to the original, an extremely large number of parameters are required. Unfortunately, it is not enough to load an audio object into a game engine and tick the “3D Audio” box. Here is a brief overview of what is required for 3D audio:
Before you insert an audio clip into a game engine, you should ask yourself a few questions. Where did you get the sound from and does it fit in with the other sounds in your library or recordings that you may have processed with EQ? What is the purpose of the sound? Will it run in the background or will it serve as a trigger for special actions in the game? The secrets of game audio have evolved in recent years. Usually the result is to have loud sounds in a 3D world, but they never really work together.
Since you not only give the sounds parameters as to where they are in the environment, but you also move through the world as a character, there are a variety of parameters that you can give your audio object. As already mentioned, a distinction is made between mono and 3D sound and the size of the sound. Another important parameter is the attenuation curve, which regulates how quickly and how much the volume of the sound decreases in the room. By setting the focus parameters and the air absorption and occlusion factors, you can further determine how the sound spreads in the room.
So far so good, but so far the sound still subjectively sticks very close to your face. It has a certain distance, but our brain does not yet know what kind of room we are in. At the moment it is an abstract sound source in an empty room. So it’s time for reverb. An important consideration when creating realistic sound effects using 3D reverb is the size of the room and the material of the walls. Here, too, the calculation is usually only approximate. You would actually need real-time ray tracing to be able to realistically simulate initial reflections and reverberation. However, with the right combination of the parameters mentioned above, you can get quite close and don’t need a render farm.

If the software wasn’t so hardware..

Hard… you know? Anyway, in this context you usually come across the term “game audio”, which deals with the design of interactive audio content. The three new degrees of freedom create two new problems: You don’t know exactly when this player is actually where.
That’s why audio production doesn’t end up with one long audio file with several channels. Instead, many small assets are delivered. These can be loops such as a forest atmosphere, for example, which is repeated in the background until we are no longer in the forest. The second category is trigger sounds, for example if I want to hit a tree with an axe, a “tin” should also come at the right moment.
The only audio format that is still under development and that could depict everything is Fraunhofer’s MPEG-I. But that will take a few more years. However, this will take a few more years, which is why it is mostly found in game engines such as Unity or Unreal Engine. The former is only equipped with very rudimentary 3D audio features. With Epic Games, you can go further. Nevertheless, both platforms quickly reach their limits, which is why it is common to implement middleware for your project. Audiokinetic Wwise and FMOD are popular programmes for this and usually provide everything you need. And if not, you can always write your own scripts. Easier said than done, because here the sound designer has to become more of a developer. With endless possibilities but also complexity.

Conclusion on the large 3D Audio Matrix

To summarise, 6DoF makes it possible to move freely in space and changes the way we experience sound, initially in a playful way. Even if games have somehow been using this for decades, there is a much greater added value than entertainment. That’s why it doesn’t make sense for me to call 3D audio the stereo killer now, as Dolby likes to propagate. I’m starting with what wouldn’t have worked with stereo, true to the motto “Sound First”. In the sound community VDT (Association of German Sound Engineers) and AES (Audio Engineering Society) there is a lot of talk about “immersive audio”, but it’s mostly just about 3D music. And it feels like nerdy details that users don’t understand anyway.
Audio professionals have to ensure that the scene is set to music in such a way that it doesn’t sound empty but also not overloaded. Developers suddenly have to deal with very complex audio parameters that they have to operate on their own more often than I would like. However, the bigger the project, the more budget there is for the respective specialists and games can certainly be taken as a prime example in terms of creativity and technical realisation. It’s an exciting time for the audio world because 3D audio is really celebrating one breakthrough after another in a wide variety of areas. So if you have a project that you need help with, or would like to learn more about this area with my video course, just get in touch!

The post 3D Audio – Into the acoustic matrix first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Martin Rieger.