Stereo just isn’t enough anymore…
Let me confess right away that I am annoyed to death by all so-called immersive productions that talk about their immersive experiences and do NOT properly serve one of the most immersive senses: hearing.
I do know where this comes from; not being able to get enough budget from the client because the importance of immersive audio is not grasped and they settle for conventional stereo.
Although everyone knows the important role audio has in giving meaning to the world around us, immersive audio is still highly undervalued in media production. But why?
In real life when we listen to sounds around us in our environment those sounds come from all directions, not 1 (mono), not 2 (stereo) not just horizontally distributed from 5 or 7 points (surround), no it always comes from all sides, up, down, left, right and everything in between: Spatial. Always.
It's actually weird that we still use the stereo format all the time, since it's quite an unnatural way of listening. Once invented to enrich mono and adapt it to our ears. Since we have two ears, we would also need two speakers to experience sound the same as in real life.... was the idea.
Because we are now so used to the stereo format, that for music, it is now often enough for most people to shut off and get carried away with the composition, lyrics and melodies. But just as a live performance brings more experience to music consumption, so will a spatial audio composition too captivate more than the conventional stereo format. In doing so, it can bring so much more information, detail and vibrancy and inspire us so much more that it is almost a mortal sin to continue listening in stereo for very much longer....
I need to build a bigger house for all those speakers…
Allright, let's face it, using 2 speakers is obviously cheaper and easier than constantly surrounding ourselves with speakers from all angles....
But no matter how we manipulated with reverb to create depth, frequencies for height and panning for width, stereo continues to play out in a sweet spot between 2 speakers, like headphones. And this just doesn't have the rich spatial experience as we experience sound in real life.
Fortunately, recent technologies makes it possible to hear the rich productions of spatial audio even over inexpensive headphones. The more we start to create our digital worlds, the more we find out that stereo sound actually doesn't work very well at all. If we want to be part of the digital environment and be able to move ourselves into it, sound must conform to the environment and thus be spatial.
User experience should be the deciding factor in content creation, not money.
If you give in to the cheaper production budgets and incorporate stereo instead of spatial audio, then you miss the connection with future media expressions, and eventually the production will have to be redone. Senseless duplication of effort. But more importantly, you miss the opportunity to create an impactful first impression of your production.
So choose well right away, give audio a prominent place in the production process by having sufficient buget available and involving the specialists as early as possible, to make the most of their expertise. Create a natural and believable experience that has impact, is better remembered and fits into tomorrow's digital world.
What do you think? Will stereo be preserved only for that vinyl record experience on those Friday nights and Sunday mornings...?