Audyssey 60 Expands the Mobile Audio Experience

Audyssey, being a top player in the world of research-based audio technologies that correct acoustical problems to improve the sound quality of a device, has another audio breakthrough to share. Called Audyssey 60°, the new technology is said to upgrade the headphone listening experience by bringing a level of depth and spatial awareness previously unavailable in mobile audio.

Audyssey 60° will make its official debut at next week’s Mobile World Congress, during which Audyssey will meet with phone and tablet manufacturers that have expressed interest in delivering HD audio to their customers. Since Audyssey 60° is a software-based solution, it can be quickly and easily implemented into any mobile device, mobile app or computer.

This calls to mind a similar breakthrough the company introduced at the 2012 Mobile World Congress. Called Audyssey FullVoice, this technology focused on enhancing the voice quality of cellphones, enabling a more lifelike conversation than was typical of phones at the time.

"With headphones it's impossible to reproduce the soundstage experience of the original recording because headphones can't deliver sound to both ears," said Chris Kyriakakis, Audyssey's founder and CTO, in a statement. "As a result, significant portions of the required acoustical and psychoacoustical cues are missing. With Audyssey 60°, we restore this missing information to deliver a natural, more precise listening experience."

The problem Audyssey 60° aims to fix goes back to the mixing stage of music and movies. Typically, audio is mixes in acoustically calibrated listening spaces — in other words, rooms with two or more speakers arranged in a precise layout to deliver sound to both ears, creating a detailed sound stage. Unfortunately, in order for this soundstage to be rendered over headphones, this can’t be accurately represented. The usual way to adjust for this is to attempt to feed the signal from each side to the opposite ear.

Audyssey 60° instead takes a different approach that sends the proper blend of acoustical and psychoacoustical cues to both ears simultaneously. This creates a more immersive listening experience, with spatially expanded sound perception.