Thanks to Apple Music, Amazon Music and other streaming services, spatial audio is growing in popularity: both in terms of the number of people hearing it, and the number of tracks and albums being converted to it.
One of the companies trying to help with the latter is Ircam Amplify, a subsidiary of French audio research institute Ircam. It is launching a beta program this week to help music companies get to grips with its spatial audio tech.
Distributor Believe and its TuneCore arm have already signed up for the beta, which gives companies access to Ircam’s spatial audio engine, and the tools to apply it to their music, and then output in a variety of formats.
Ircam Amplify’s CEO, Nathalie Birocheau, recently spoke at our Music Ally NEXT conference in London, explaining more about what her company is aiming to achieve.
“When you are listening to stereo or mono, your brain is getting tired because it’s not the way it has to work normally. The brain is made to listen to immersive sound!” she said.
“We have worked a lot with the community of artists, producers, sound engineers, and distributors, labels, digital music companies. All the chain. And we’ve seen that there is something happening [with spatial audio], there is momentum, but this is so complex.”
“This is so difficult for artists and producers to go into that type of processing the sound and the music. So we have built a 3D audio engine, an AI-powered engine, based on all the feedbacks we had in the last year, and we’ve trained that AI with thousands of music tracks to improve it, and to build the best way to feel the music.”
Birocheau said the aim is to open up spatial audio to artists who haven’t been able to afford to create it until now, while ensuring that the resulting spatial mixes are fitting.
“We really keep the intent of the artists,” she said. “They just need to create their music, and they don’t need to ask themselves about the format… it’s not their job.”
Companies will be able to sign up for Ircam Amplify’s beta from its website on 12 May.
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