[Yamada Shohei’s Re: config.sys]Originally 2channel-PC Watch

The playback environment of music content varies from person to person. Stereo / mono / multi-channel, high / low, headphones, earphones, speakers, etc. Depending on the physical playing environment, the experience obtained varies greatly. Spatial audio is getting attention as one of the options.

Artists are still skeptical of spatial audio

Around Amazon’s Spatial Audio Technologyit is lively. So far, the company has supported two types of spatial audio on Amazon Music. One is Dolby Atmos and the other is Sony’s 360 Reality Audio. If you watch songs that apply these stereo technologies with the Amazon Music app on your smartphone,Badges like Atmos and 360 for each songand you can enjoy the sound with that effect even when listening with generic earphones / headphones.

In addition, the company offers many recommended playlists that can be listened to with “spatial audio” and is actively promoting spatial audio, for example by recently starting to provide “spatial audio: J-POP”.

Whether it’s Dolby Atmos or 360 Reality Audio, the artist who creates the music arranges the sound objects in space and encodes them according to his will, configuring the field. He positions the sound object in the playing space by specifying relative coordinates, for example “this platter is top right in front of 2 o’clock”.

Of course, that’s a lot of work and extra costs. Depending on the artist’s side, it seems it’s not uncommon for them not to want to touch it. There is also a disadvantage that the sweet spot is narrow for side listening with speakers. On the other hand, there are some enthusiastic artists and there are signs that the content will gradually grow.

Old songs are also arranged in space

Additionally, Amazon has launched a challenge to enjoy immersive sound using spatial audio processing technology and digital processing to enhance sound depth and realism even during normal stereo music playback. The company’s Echo Studio smart speaker is the first product to support the technology. Various processing is performed locally on the device.

This time around, a new Glacier White color product will be released to support this technology. It has the same hardware specifications as the anthracite-colored one that has already been released, and it is said that existing products will be supported sequentially by updating the firmware. So far, it’s the only product that can play sound using Amazon’s spatial audio processing technology, which end users can turn on and off on their devices.

By enabling “Stereo Spatial Enhancement” in Echo Studio using the Alexa app, the traditional stereo source you play will be enhanced, resulting in “deeper bass for even better sound quality, depth and clarity”. music with an engaging sound that seems to reproduce the artist’s intention. In addition, the frequency band has been extended so that you can enjoy sharper mids and deeper lows. It has become possible to provide a higher quality music experience. “(Extract from Amazon’s media alert).

The era when mono sound sources suddenly switched to spatial audio

As I wrote at the beginning, modern music content reaches people with the support of technology. There are various listening environments and it is not always possible to listen to music as the artist intended. In other words, it may already be impossible to control how an artist listens.

In the past, there were many AV amplifiers that appealed to DSP playback which supported sound field programs. These constitute the sound field on the player’s side regardless of the artist’s intention. It is a technology that creates a sound field in a virtual space such as the style of a concert hall, an outdoor live performance style or a chapel style sound of a church.

In terms of mirroring the artist’s intentions, in the past there were pseudo-stereo, 4-channel stereo in the 1970s, Dolby Surround in the 1980s, and 3D TV in the 2010s, and these have led to today’s multi-channel playback. . . Multi-channel playback requires more than two speakers, but can now be played with a total of two headphones or earbuds worn on both ears, and like the Echo Studio this time around, it feels like one. Now you can create a space with 2-channel speakers. It seems that in the future it will be possible to configure some degree of spatial audio with just two speakers in front.

To do this, it is necessary to change the phase of the objectified sound so that it can be localized in space even with a small number of speakers, but it is no longer possible for the sound to become squeaky and soft as it once did.

So, in the future, regardless of whether the listener likes it or not, spatial audio playback could become commonplace on a daily basis. This is an image that 2-channel stereo playback has become commonplace for audio playback. However, I personally have some resistance to the fact that songs from the era that could only be recorded in mono are offered as spatial audio content, rather than pseudo-stereo. I know that’s why people say I’m an elderly person.

The future of stereo sound

Recently, soundbars seem to be popular for enjoying spatial audio, and recently, various products have entered that enrich the sound experience, such as the BOSE SMART SOUNDBAR 600, a compact soundbar that supports Dolby Atmos. Not everyone enjoys multi-channel audio with many speakers in a room. That’s why compact soundbars are getting attention. In many ways, I am concerned about how this trend of spatial audio in conventional equipment will develop in the future.

When I listen to a mono sound source with earphones, all the sounds are localized in the center of my head and in some cases I get a headache and I can’t listen to it for a long time. But that’s not the case with a single speaker instead of earphones. This is because there is a sound source in space. Even if the sound is generated by only one speaker, the sound emitted by it fills the space in which it is placed, creating a kind of spatial audio sound field. A quick story is like singing a song with the bathroom echo.

Mono content as commercial content has already almost disappeared and, as a result, all music content in the world has been multi-channel to 2 channels or more. I think medium wave AM broadcast is the only content in the world that is forced to be monophonic. That androotStreaming is in stereo. In other words, the production is stereo and the broadcast using radio waves is downgraded to mono.

The evolution of technology knows no bounds. I look forward to the future. Of course, some technologies will become obsolete. Under such circumstances, the music created by artists was influenced not only by the ability to create music, but also by many brains thinking about how to make people hear it. It can be considered that it has become an integrated art business that can no longer exist only with the talent to make music.

In other words, music has become technology-supported content. In most cases, a concert would not be possible without PA technology. How will music and technology be involved in the future? Will spatial audio take hold?