Sony Entertainment has pushed the boundaries of immersive music experiences with "360 Reality Audio," creating the world’s first real-time live distribution technology with full object-based spatial sound.
The "360 Reality Audio" technology allows users to experience music in an immersive three-dimensional sound field. It solves an ongoing problem that many live stream fans have: the sense of realism, especially while enjoying the content on the go.
Sony achieved the next level of immersion by further evolving its proprietary 360 Spatial Sound technology, making three-dimensional sound distribution a reality. Now, users can listen to their favorite live performances or concerts and truly experience them as if they were there in person.
The first live event with “360 Reality Audio” is coming on January 19, 2023, featuring the artist Hikaru Utada. The first 10,000 attendees that apply for the event will get in for free.
Sony Entertainment achieved next-level real-time performance and sound quality by improving the encoder. This move benefits sound engineers and artists by providing them with the infrastructure they need to create a three-dimensional musical extravaganza.
For sound engineers, it means first assigning position information to each sound source, such as vocals, guitars, and drums, and arranging them in a spherical space.
According to the company’s press release, "Sony has developed a new ‘360 Reality Audio’ production tool for real-time distribution to improve the production environment for sound engineers. With this tool, engineers can place sound sources freely and instantly, and create sound with a three-dimensional effect as intended."
Sony has also developed its own sound quality processing algorithm to achieve real-time performance and maintain quality while sending music to the server before delivering it to the users.
Since "360 Reality Audio" is an object-based spatial audio technology, “the amount of information (bit rate) given to each sound source (object) is automatically optimized, without reducing the auditory quality.”
This enables real-time distribution with video synchronization by compressing audio data for a short period of time.
Sony and Streamsoft Inc codeveloped the "360 Reality Audio Live" mobile app to enable the real-time distribution of Sony’s immersive auditory experience.
To top it all off, the app allows users to chat in real-time and enables communication between artist and viewers, creating a venue for discourse and a sense of community.
