Personalized Audio Experiences of the Future to Include Touch, Conference Told

“Personal soundpheres” will be part of the audio landscape in the next decade, said Flexound CEO Mervi Heinaro on a panel at Futuresource’s Audio Collaborative 2020 virtual event Wednesday. The Finland-based augmented audio company’s technology adds the sensation of touch to sound content.

“Sound is vibration,” said Heinaro on a panel on the future of consumer audio, positing that if human beings can also use the sense of touch to perceive sound, “Why should we only be using our hearing?” Touch is one of the most impactful emotion-creators, she said: “If you can feel the sound also with your skin and body, [that] increases emotions, increases the impact of the content.”

Integrating a sensory experience with listening makes sound clarity more pronounced because “the senses are compensating for each other,” Heinaro said. She positioned the company’s technology as a way to give the hearing-impaired “access to sound” and bring them “into the sound world.” Another benefit is safer listening, she said, because “if you listen also with your skin” along with the ears, “it becomes easier to listen, and safer to listen.”

Heinaro said nothing has to be done to an audio track to enable a tactile experience because sound is vibration. To make the most of the tactile element, a new approach to sound design will emerge for placing touch-specific effects in precise locations in music or a soundtrack, she said. A movie could have a separate track for tactile elements, although that wouldn’t be required. Existing content can already be felt, she said. Andres Ehret, Dolby director-technology marketing, said existing audio channels can be used as a “trigger path” for touch sensation; he could also see applications for a dedicated metadata special-effects channel.

On potential benefits of breaking out vibration channels separately, Heinaro noted people have different touch sensitivity in the same way hearing varies. Some may want a deeper sense of immersion in a movie, for instance, or more “beat” with music: “You can actually control that,” she said, saying it's possible to manipulate the signal to control the loudness and the “feelness” independently.

A vibration-canceling technology, the tactile version of active noise-canceling used in headphones, could be developed “because it is sound,” Heinaro said. “It’s not artificial; it’s inherent in the sound itself.” Futuresource analyst Simon Forrest suggested an automotive application using Flexound technology to create “a smoother ride.” On the flip side, Heinaro said, the technology could be added to an electric vehicle to deliver a more traditional road feel. “With electric vehicles, some people want to put the car back into the car because it doesn’t feel like driving," she said.

Adding touch to sound could be used to help reduce loneliness, said Heinaro: “A digitally created touch can create the same reactions in your body [as] a real touch,” she said. The technology could be used to “recreate touch for people who can’t be touched in real life.”

Ten years from now, Heinaro envisions a less “device-dependent” tech world made possible by more embedded technologies. She predicted more personalized audio with immersive experiences involving “all your senses.” Consumers will be able to create sound environments “as natural as possible” with less noise and more control. Flexound’s goal is to enable “sound bubbles” for consumers that follow them without the need for devices.

Dolby’s Ehret envisioned for 2030 an audio “cabin” that moves with consumers and “knows it’s you and you get your service with it": a moveable, high-quality audio experience that “moves with you wherever you are." Adam Levenson, Waves Audio senior director-business development, predicted augmented reality will be an entrenched part of life in 10 years and will include a “generative sound system” for virtual objects. “We will have to have a way to generate sounds that are naturally associated with objects -- and tactile experiences that are naturally associated with objects -- in order to believe in those virtual objects.”