Key Takeaways
- Great visuals are essential for home theaters, but immersive audio completes the movie-watching experience for spine-tingling moments.
- IAMF technology by Samsung and Google enhances 3D audio with customizable features and AI scene analysis for optimized sound.
- IAMF’s focus on vertical sound elevates the listening experience, making content more engaging, immersive, and realistic for viewers.
Undoubedtly, a screen is the centerpiece of every home theater setup. Whether you use a TV or maybe the projector, to get the best possible visuals to enjoy the content that you want to watch, good visuals are a must.
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However, visuals are not the only important part of the movie-watching experience. If you really want to get immersed, to feel the tingly sensations in your spine when the action’s happening, you need a great audio setup to accompany your excellent screen.
Immersive audio is vital to a great movie-watching experience; even the slightest noises and ambient sounds can add to the whole experience. That’s why commercially available, accessible 3D audio solutions are a game-changer when it comes to watching content at home.
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These 3D audio technologies allow you to — of course, with compatible speakers — make your audio listening completely spatial. If a leaf is supposed to rustle over your head to the right, you’ll hear it there. If a mouse scurries to your right, you’ll also hear the sound from there. They go way beyond the surround sound setups of old, and give you positional audio from every corner of your room.
That’s why Samsung and Google developed a new 3D audio technology called Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF for short). Samsung ensures that this next-gen 3D audio tech will revolutionize the home listening experience. So, what is it and what’s the difference between this implementation and the well-known competitors, such as Dolby Atmos? Read on for more.
What is Immersive Audio Model and Formats?
Samsung and Google’s new audio technology will finally bring 3D audio to a much more mainstream audience. So far, even though spatial audio itself is great, it hasn’t really made its way to many houses, as it’s usually quite difficult to translate 3D audio data to home audio devices.
Often, even though there is 3D audio information available for the content you’re watching, your home audio systems cannot properly decode and interpret it. This results in a sound that is not up to standard, making it quite limited and not as full and detailed.Immersive Audio Model and Formats is a hopeful remedy.
IAMF is supposed to allow device manufacturers to enable their devices to decode the 3D audio data and adjust it for the home audio setup present. Essentially, IAMF means that your home speakers, soundbars, or other setups can utilize 3D audio signals to their fullest potential.
Essentially, IAMF means that your home speakers, soundbars, or other setups can utilize 3D audio signals to their fullest potential.
Moreover, IAMF is an open-source standard, making it an ideal solution for manufacturers who do not want to pay another licensing fee. The Alliance for Open Media adopted it in October 2023, and it looks like one of the best solutions for commercial 3D audio.
How does Immersive Audio Model and Formats work?
The newly developed Immersive Model and Formats technology offers three important features that allow it to enhance the 3D audio experience and work well with various different systems. They mostly focus on personalization and the ability to fit the sound produced to the scene being displayed, both by dynamically enhancing the sound and customizing it to your liking.
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Customizable audio
Probably the most important thing that IAMF brings to the table is the ability to customize your 3D audio experience. The format can essentially separate the different layers of the audio track — for example, when you’re watching sports, the commentary track and the game soundtrack. Then, you can choose which track you’d like to focus on, making it much more pronounced.
Probably the most important thing that IAMF brings to the table is the ability to customize your 3D audio experience.
Of course, this can be done with multiple content types, so you could enhance the audio levels of your podcasts or make environmental sounds much more detailed when watching a nature documentary.
Samsung
AI-based scene analysis and audio effects
Samsung and Google also implemented a heavy emphasis on AI and deep learning in the IAMF technology. Both AI and deep learning are used to analyze certain scenes of content and dynamically adjust your audio to fit the scene, meaning IAMF can automatically enhance your audio when certain scenes appear — such as enhancing your bass when there is a sudden explosion in an action movie and providing a more balanced sound experience when the scenes change dynamically.
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Another perk is when it comes to dialogue emphasis — especially in movies or shows with a lot going on when their characters are talking.
Vertical sound
Finally, IAMF technology focuses greatly on the vertical aspects of the sound space. This differs from the previous open-source 3D audio codecs, which only support vertical sound expression, making the plain sound rather 2D.
This 3D codec is extremely important to create a more natural, engaging sound environment.
This 3D codec is extremely important to create a more natural, engaging sound environment. Sounds such as birds flying above or water flowing below will now be registered as coming to you from a 3D space, making the content you’re watching more enjoyable, extremely engrossing, and realistic.
The future of IAMF
Samsung and Google, with their joint effort to create an open-source standard of 3D spatial audio, hope to open up the audio possibilities and bring audio setups – -especially the home audio setups — into a new era.
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3D audio is not only great news for all movie watchers. This technology is also crucial for all the content that attempts to engross you, suck you in, and let you experience it to the fullest. This means that 3D audio is great news for sectors such as the metaverse, gaming, and VR. All these would really benefit from the immersion that IAMF promises.
VR could benefit greatly from such a 3D sound, making the experiences in virtual reality even better by making the localized audio as immersive as the 3D environments that the best VR headsets can provide. This is not only great news for VR gamers but also for the likes of live music shows in VR or other kinds of VR experiences.
Of course, both creator companies also want to build their sound ecosystems based on the new standard, meaning that we can expect new devices from Google and Samsung to support it and further enhance the sound experience in our homes.
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In the long run, the most important part of the IAMF standard is the fact that it’s open source. It means lower costs for the manufacturers to license the format, making it easier (and cheaper) to create new gear compatible with this 3D-audio solution. This, in turn, means cheaper devices for us, the consumers.
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