WHY SPATIAL AUDIO COULD BE THE NEXT BIG THING IN PERSONAL AUDIO

A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON IN SOUND

- KENNY YEO

The last major revolution in sound came in the early Thirties when Alan Blumlein pioneered stereophonic sound. The technology became mainstream in the late Fifties and has since become the default way in which music is recorded, produced, and played. Today, we don’t even think about it. Nearly all sound we hear around us is in stereo. While there’s no question that stereo sound is a major improvement over its predecessor mono sound, it’s still a compromise. That’s because we don’t perceive sound from just two sources. Sound, in the real world, comes from all around us. And for the past few decades, companies like Dolby, Sony, and DTS have been trying to fix that with surround sound technologies, and with varying degrees of success.

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