SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I Project will create immersive three-dimensional (3D) sound for users engaged in gaming, listening to music or watching cinema. Using their two ears, humans are able to localize a sound source in a complex scene and infer the ambience. Unfortunately, when sound is reproduced over speakers or headphones it is almost impossible for the listener to perceive the sound location with any clarity or precision. This is because the cues that the brain uses for inferring source location are lost. Over the past decade the proposers, when at the University of Maryland, have studied the problem of how it would be possible to recreate a 3D sound environment virtually. The research, funded by NSF resulted in a fundamental understanding, as well as demonstrations, efficient software and technology for the capture, reproduction, recreation and rendering of 3D sound. This includes efficient approximations for the room impulse response and the Head Related Transfer Function. In the proposed Phase I R&D, these technologies will be prepared for commercial introduction, addressing those issues raised in customer discovery ¨C maintaining audio quality through the signal processing chain, incorporation into existing tools used by developers, and creation of low-latency telepresence.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be significant. Because of the smartphone/tablet revolution, and the availability of movie, music, and gaming content on the cloud, there are over a billion consumers who enjoy music, games, movies and other media on their mobile devices. However, most users settle for lackluster sound produced over headphones. Current headphone sound is simply unable to produce the engaging sound experience that high©\end music systems, movie theaters, or live events deliver. Success of the proposed project will allow entertainment content creators to achieve unmatched realism in sound presentation over headphones. Combined with our sound capture hardware, immersive reproduction of live events such as concerts and sporting events can be achieved. Our technology will allow companies to make headphone listening more immersive and reach this growing consumer base. They will all be positively impacted by the technology. Because of the large market, the intellectual property, and the quality of our team, we anticipate that a large and successful business can be built around this technology with SBIR funding. This company will add to the nations¡¯ dominance in the fields of mobile technologies, gaming, entertainment, and immersive simulation

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project extends to wherever headphones are used to listen to sound. The first commercial markets targeted by the technology being developed are gaming, virtual reality and consumer entertainment. These are areas in which the US has strong market and technology leads. By the end of the project, the company intends to have developed software that can be licensed to major players in these areas, reaching tens of millions of users. Beyond these markets, there are many applications for spatial audio in human-computer interfaces to deliver spatial information along with the intended semantic message. Several niche markets also exist, such as data presentation/exploration via sonification and specifically designed auditory interfaces for vision-impaired users. Overall it is expected that the proposed R&D work will advance the state of the art in science and technology and will be of substantial value to society as a whole due to high usability, fidelity, naturalness, and portability of the developed spatial audio solutions.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to develop highly realistic and computationally efficient software for synthesis of personalized spatial audio, for applications that include virtual reality, gaming, and prostheses for the blind. Current algorithms are either perceptually unsatisfactory or have very high computational load. Approximate modeling of sound propagation, reverberation, and diffusion, along with tradeoffs between complexity and quality, will be explored using perceptual distortion metrics combined with the skills of professional listeners. The software will be optimized for use on mobile, console and embedded platforms. Additionally, a method to personalize the software to individual listeners, which was previously developed and tested in laboratory conditions, will be further refined and ruggedized for use in realistic environments. The expected outcomes will include a high-quality and efficient audio rendering library, a portable personalization apparatus, and several demonstrations that highlight the capabilities of the technology.