3D Audio Creation Comes To Masses With Sennheiser AMBEO Smart Surround Earphones

At CES 2016 Sennheiser showcased its amazing AMBEO 3D audio that allows the sound around you to move with you like your eyes do in virtual reality. This year at CES Sennheiser, one of the world's leaders in audio technology, has unveiled a pair of earphones that lets users capture, listen and create 3D audio.

The new AMBEO Smart Surround earphones let you record on your smartphone and will be the first time Sennheiser has released its AMBEO 3D technology to the public.

“Today’s consumers are accustomed to capturing incredibly realistic video, producing 4K and 360° videos. Yet as mainstream technology makes immersive visual experiences ever more accessible, the power and emotion of this footage is too often let down by the quality of sound that these devices can capture. AMBEO Smart Surround is an innovative solution that closes this gap,” Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, co-CEO of Sennheiser, said in a statement.

According to Sennheiser the AMBEO Smart Sound earphones are fitted with two microphones and that its "incredibly realistic, immersive effect is made possible by reproducing the subtle differences in timing, volume and timbre that occur as sounds from different directions reach each ear."

The in-ear headphones are designed to let you create binaural sound on-the-go and once created the files will works with any pair of headphones. If you're curious about what 3D audio is and how it works, assume for a second you have a VR headset on with someone in the middle of the room playing a piano. When you are looking directly at the person playing the sound will be balanced in both ears but should you turn to the left or right the sound would adjust as if you turned your head in the room. If "immersion" is the big buzzword for VR/AR/MR, 3D audio is a way to enhance that.

“If you think about the last four or five years at CES, it’s been about visual, 4K video, all that stuff. People are realizing your ears are so sensitive,” a spokesperson for Sennheiser, told IBT at CES 2016. “When people switched over to stereo and they wouldn’t look back, that’s going to be happening very soon with immersive audio.”

Sennheiser's AMBEO Smart Surround earphones will be available in the second half of 2017.