This month Ambidio, a new entrant to the immersive audio market, launched globally two years after it was founded by Iris Wu and Pei-Lun Hsieh. Backed by will.i.am and Horizons Ventures, Ambidio software processes content in real time to create a continuous sound field that can deliver a sense of depth and dimension from stereo speakers.
Los Angeles based Ambidio has enlisted Lucasfilm's Skywalker Sound as a strategic advisor to assist with Ambidio's technology and creative development.
"Finding solutions to maintain sound fidelity across multiple platforms is something we care deeply about," said Josh Lowden, general manager of Skywalker Sound. "We are very excited for the opportunity to work with Iris and the talented team at Ambidio."
While attending New York University, Wu, founder of Ambidio, was trying to create a quality listening experience but was dissatisfied with the results in her small New York City apartment and began experimenting with sound engineering through code rather than hardware.
"The brain is a powerful mechanism that can interpret the directional origin of different sounds in everyday life," says Wu, "however, when consuming content on a device, such as a laptop, sound consistently comes from a fixed point – the front. Ambidio creates an immersive sound experience using only stereo speakers by inserting common cues into audio files that the brain then uses to identify and perceive where different sounds within the audio stream would have come from. Essentially, our brains process the sound the way it does in everyday life."
Ambidio works in one of two ways – it can be embedded directly into film and audio files or it can be used as a plug-in to process the audio output of any content played on a device in real time. Ambidio can be enabled through any device that has stereo speakers, including laptops, TVs and some Android mobile phones.