Clubhouse has inaugurated the Spatial Audio function for sound spatialization: a sign of growing awareness about listening quality, passing through videoconferencing and “Zoom fatigue”.
Video conferencing, remote meetings with many people connected, and streaming conferences have brought audio spatialization to the attention of the general public. Or rather, the fatigue that we feel following spoken events where the sound is “flat”, therefore lacking the natural interactions with the environment that our auditory apparatus is able to perceive, has brought us back to deal with this concept. But it seems that this is a real “trend” that is involving the audio world at all levels, from B2B (you can read the article on Connessioni 54 on page 74) to the consumer one.
You may have noticed that last June the Spatial Audio format was added to the music content of Apple Music (it was already present in Apple’s operating system since September 2020, but only for movies and TV series). This is a technology that makes audio three-dimensional, applying a mathematical function that simulates the way frequencies are perceived by our auditory system, based on interaction with space. Not only an improvement in listening, but a real creative tool for artists, who use spatialization already in the writing phase.
However, Spatial Audio has recently left the music circuit to enter the world of spoken communication: Clubhouse, the Social Media of speech and storytelling, has added this feature to make the presence and voices of guests in rooms more real and immersive. We will therefore be able to hear the various participants move, change the tone of voice, and the animators of the rooms with a musical character will be able to give life to “live” performances or jam sessions. In the “space” the various voices (or sound sources) are distributed digitally and the listener will have the feeling that what he is hearing really comes from a specific position within the room.
According to Clubhouse, all you have to do is equip yourself with headphones and wait, for non iOS users, for the availability on Android (soon). Goodbye also “Zoom Fatigue”?!
