This is the “world’s first” phone call made using spatial audio (www.theverge.com)
from ooli@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 14:44
https://lemmy.world/post/16382780

#technology

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autotldr@lemmings.world on 10 Jun 14:45 next collapse

This is the best summary I could come up with:


It placed the call over a cellular network using the 3GPP Immersive Video and Audio Services (IVAS) codec, allowing callers to hear “sound spatially in real-time.”

The IVAS codec is part of 5G Advanced, an upcoming upgrade to 5G networks that could offer faster speeds, improved energy efficiency, more accurate cellular-based positioning, and more.

Currently, all phone calls made over a cellular network are monophonic, meaning audio is compressed into a single channel.

Spatial audio, on the other hand, makes it seem like sounds are coming from different directions as they’re delivered through multiple channels.

The IVAS codec could enable spatial audio in a “vast majority” of smartphones with at least two microphones, Nokia tells Reuters.

But, as pointed out by Reuters, we likely won’t see the more immersive audio and video calls on our cellular networks for a few more years.


The original article contains 228 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 38%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

db2@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 14:46 next collapse

Useless.

CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 14:53 next collapse

Incorrect. This will better train LLMs since they can detect distinct speakers/sounds more easily and thus applying the proper metadata tags and profile information at a more accurate clip.

All so they can deliver more ads!

schnokobaer@feddit.de on 10 Jun 15:08 next collapse

I wish it was only useless:(

KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 05:07 collapse

<.< I’m assuming this is a joke, but feel the need to point out to the ones who don’t realize… LLMs aren’t trained on audio recordings.

snooggums@midwest.social on 10 Jun 15:08 collapse

Not everything that will be useful has an immediately obvious benefit.

db2@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 15:23 collapse

The only benefit this has is to those who will upcharge to use it. It’s pointless crap nobody asked for.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com on 10 Jun 14:51 next collapse

oh look, a feature literally no one asked for or needs.

Grimy@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 16:18 next collapse

90% of the features in your daily life started as something no one asked for or needed. I remember people saying this about touch screens.

CoggyMcFee@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 16:24 next collapse

In some applications, people still say that about touch screens and they are not wrong.

Spatial Audio can be cool. In this application? I’m unconvinced.

bionicjoey@lemmy.ca on 10 Jun 17:57 collapse

Fucking touchscreens on cars is definitely something nobody should have access to.

akilou@sh.itjust.works on 10 Jun 23:16 next collapse

90%?

[Citation needed]

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 11 Jun 04:35 next collapse

Was anyone asking for the telegraph before it was invented? Or the telephone? Or the Internet? Or smartphones? Or social media?

akilou@sh.itjust.works on 11 Jun 09:59 collapse

Those are not features, those are whole ass inventions

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 11 Jun 21:16 collapse

And inventions are features of your daily life. 🤦‍♂️

RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 04:58 collapse

I totally wouldn’t be surprised if there originally were people being like “So what’s this so-called ‘cupboard’ supposed to solve? Why isn’t a regular shelf good enough for you?”

technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 15:37 collapse

I don’t necessarily endorse the viewpoint of Noel Gallagher but it is pretty funny.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 22:46 collapse

I don’t care about Spatial Audio for phone calls, but for songs and podcasts it’s AMAZING. It’s a gimmick, sure, but it’s really fucking neat.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com on 11 Jun 22:54 collapse

about as necessary as 3-d televisions, which are also very neat.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 22:57 collapse

I agree with you fully, but Spatial Audio is waaaay cooler than 3D TVs, and yes I did watch Avatar on a 3D TV on acid

But I really really have fun with audio. Also it’s not horridly expensive. While I’m working, I’m constantly looking around and hearing how different things are. When I had my partner try, they were like “wait can you hear this?” because it sounds like such a realistic concert performance. Artists I’ve never listened to are fascinating to me.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com on 11 Jun 23:02 collapse

i went the other direction. quality means nothing, couldnt care less as long as i can hear the melody blah blah i suck. i have mp3 files that are 25 years old.. guess what quality they are

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 23:08 collapse

You don’t suck, no way. Your opinion is the exact opposite of mine but I respect that. All of my 128kbps songs I come across I redownload in FLAC, but you’d better believe I keep my old 128kbps CD rips for nostalgia.

It’s also funny cuz even with mediocre quality songs and podcasts, head-tracked spatial is tits, looking around and having everything be… in places… and stay there? I can’t describe it but it really blew me away.

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com on 11 Jun 23:14 collapse

whats crazy to me is that spacial audio is the company of an app i used decades ago to run ip radio on corporate intranets (winamp+shoutcast+SAM+custom intranet site)

https://spacialaudio.com/sam-broadcaster-pro/

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 23:22 next collapse

That IS wild! “I’M BACK, BABY”

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 23:24 collapse

Also the fuck kind of instance are you on

I’m into it

originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com on 11 Jun 23:36 collapse

i call it 'comically unmarketable'. i stood up a public instance when reddit went fuckballs. a few of us neeeded something to doomscroll on, so there it is. open signup https://moist.catsweat.com

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 23:45 collapse

Absolutely love it.

catloaf@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 15:02 next collapse

Nokia implemented stereo sound? Wow, welcome to 1881.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of people making calls are still going to have only one speaker, so it’ll still get downmixed to mono. Even if your phone has two, and you’re not holding it next to one ear, they’re still going to be so close together as to effectively be one point source.

snooggums@midwest.social on 10 Jun 15:08 next collapse

This was true for TVs until it wasn’t.

Edit: apparently some young whippersnappers don’t know TVs used to be mono before they were stereo, and now some TVs even have spatial sound.

thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 15:56 next collapse

i mean, people have innovated in the areas they care already.

no one really cares that much about audio on phone calls. as long as they’re understandable.

people added video because it adds to the communication. spatial audio will not. it will only become common if one or two of these mega corps decide to shoehorn it into ever device. not because people actually want it or care.

might be a lucrative patent if we ever get holograms though

14th_cylon@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 16:23 next collapse

i mean, people have innovated in the areas they care already

so you are saying that all the innovation and research should be stopped, because if we care about any specific problem, it is already solved, and if it isn’t, it is proof we don’t care? 😆

that… is not how it works.

thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 15:25 collapse

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, I’m just predicting it’s going to flop.

14th_cylon@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 16:48 collapse

yeah, because in the world of audio/video content, who would care about quality of sound, right?

and even if people would actually not care, it still doesn’t mean that someone won’t be able to sell it to them.

KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 05:06 collapse

… You realize this has been innovated because someone cares, right?

Like this is such a silly argument. “Why would we make cars not use steam? If people cared about it we would have already innovated!”

thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 15:25 collapse

it’s not that it shouldn’t be done, I’m just predicting it’s going to flop.

MonkderDritte@feddit.de on 10 Jun 16:28 collapse

You think we haul 30" phones around in the foreseeable future?

catloaf@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 17:24 next collapse

No, clearly we walk around with full 5.1 surround sound speakers on poles.

Grimy@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 18:00 next collapse

You don’t need the tv for the surround sound, the speakers fit inside tiny devices you can put near each ear.

snooggums@midwest.social on 10 Jun 19:51 collapse

You can stream your video call to a TV right now, and spatial sound could help match the movement of the people on screen if the phone was stationary for a more immersive call.

No need to haul anything around, just some creative thinking.

MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io on 10 Jun 17:07 next collapse

If only they had developed some kind of companion technology that connected to the phone and directed separate audio channels to each of your ears. Eh, such a specialized device could never gain widespread adoption if stereo phone calls were the only practical use case.

lud@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 17:47 collapse

Meanwhile, the vast majority of people making calls are still going to have only one speaker, so it’ll still get downmixed to mono. Even if your phone has two, and you’re not holding it next to one ear, they’re still going to be so close together as to effectively be one point source.

No, lots of (probably most) phones and other devices has stereo speakers.

Either way headphones are most often used for this (you know like the thumbnail)

TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 15:07 next collapse

Can’t wait to experience the tech support call center scams in Dolby Atmos.

db2@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 15:24 next collapse

We’re ^calling^ about ~your~ cars ^extended^ ^warranty^

ours@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 17:41 collapse

In THX certified 7.2.1 surround straight out of Bangalore.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 22:46 collapse

Kitboga SURROUND SOUND? Sign me up

TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip on 10 Jun 15:09 next collapse

If it improves video calls and regular calls, why not? I can definitely see room for improvement in audio quality when calling and would be happy to have a better experience.

LesserAbe@lemmy.world on 10 Jun 15:38 next collapse

Lol yeah everyone shitting on stereo is shooting in the wrong direction - companies suck, stereo or surround sound doesn’t. Not saying it’s a super high priority for me, but another channel of audio isn’t going to use much bandwidth, we already listen to streaming music in stereo all the time.

shortwavesurfer@monero.town on 10 Jun 16:13 collapse

At least in the United States, when you call somebody on the same carrier as you, you get that HD quality thing, and that improves the call quality a bunch versus the standard 8KB phone call. However, even still, when you call somebody on another carrier, you generally don’t get that high quality call. So it would be nice to get those high quality calls between carriers for everybody before moving on.

brb@sh.itjust.works on 11 Jun 01:13 collapse

Do you mean VoLTE? It should work between different carriers afaik

shortwavesurfer@monero.town on 11 Jun 04:22 collapse

Voice over LTE and high definition calling is actually not the same thing. You can have a voice over LTE call and not have the high quality audio calling. All Voice over LTE actually does is make your call into packets between you and your providers network instead of setting up a circuit like they used to.

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works on 10 Jun 16:06 next collapse

Okay?

rem26_art@fedia.io on 10 Jun 16:29 next collapse

So instead of playing bad music, I can get ASMR while I'm on hold with my bank?

magnetosphere@fedia.io on 10 Jun 17:05 next collapse

All I want is some kind of audio processing so people can’t tell I’m on the toilet.

Toribor@corndog.social on 11 Jun 02:57 collapse

It’s easier to redirect attention than to completely obscure something.

“I’M JUST STRUGGLING TO OPEN A JAR OF PEANUT BUTTER! PAY NO MIND TO MY SOUNDS OF DISTRESS!” (Horrible farting sounds ensue)

Foolproof.

AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca on 10 Jun 17:05 next collapse

For years we invested in better microphones and noise canceling to CLEARLY hear the closest / primary speaker and remove all other noise and distractions.

Now introducing, car noise. Get immerses with the kids fighting in the back seat in surround sound…

No important conference call is complete without you providing your weekly update while your dog licks his balls on the way to the vet for everyone to hear.

Daqu@lemm.ee on 10 Jun 17:39 next collapse

Finally, ASMR phone calls.

Ephera@lemmy.ml on 10 Jun 19:27 next collapse

I enjoy how “spatial audio” makes it sound all fancy, even though it’s just stupid stereo.

CrayonRosary@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 04:29 next collapse

It’s not, I assure you. It uses psychoacoustic properties of audio to simulate actual surround sound. I’ve been using it in gaming for years. You can literally hear when an enemy is behind you vs in front of you, and anywhere in the 360° around you. You can easily pinpoint their location in your head.

Pixel Buds Pro have this same kind of programming and you can enable it when watching surround sound content on your phone. You can even have it play regular audio but make it sound like it’s coming from the direction of the phone. When you turn your head, the audio follows the phone and it sounds like the audio is coming from the phone in 3D, not just panned L or R in stereo. (I haven’t played with this much, and I hope I’m not misremembering that last part which iPhone also has.)

Here’s a computer generated example using these techniques. Headphones are required! Listen to this with ordinary headphones with no additional spatial processing enabled.

To my ears, it sounds like the 3 channels of the source audio are little spheres rotating around the top of my head like a halo. The music sounds distinctly different when it’s behind me or in front of me. The distance away from my head is not far, though.

youtu.be/LpMsqFc7-Z4

A technique like this will never be perfect, and this is not the best example I’ve heard. The best would be using my Logitech gaming headset in a game. It’s not perfect because everyone’s ears are shaped differently, and your brain learns the microtonal differences which your specific ears cause as sound echo’s around your outer ear and ear canal. This might be why I hear these music examples as above my head while others might hear it revolve directly around their ears or perhaps a little lower than their ears.

I enjoy how ignorant people who don’t understand a technology dismiss is with snark and get upvoted by others. Wait, what’s the opposite of enjoy?

It’s like how religious fundies with little education make fun of our best scientific theories with arguments that boil down to “I’m ignorant, so I don’t believe this”. Congratulations on being on the same level.

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Ephera@lemmy.ml on 11 Jun 06:18 next collapse

Nah, I’m not ignorant, just cynical.

I make digital music myself. I’ve had that moment myself, where for a quick moment I thought, surely there could be some ‘proper’ way of rotating an audio source around your head.
And well, there is not, it is always just an effect thing.

As in, even in reality, our hearing is literally stereo, because we’ve got precisely two eardrums, two membranes that do the detection. Yes, the ear flaps shape the sound, but you can do the same shaping with just effects. Make it a bit more muffled when it comes from behind, for example, and hope you don’t need to also portray that something muffled comes from the front. And of course, always slap a heavy virtualizer effect on there.

In the end, it’s smokes and mirrors that our brain then interprets as something spatial. I don’t have a problem with smokes and mirrors. I do still find it humorous, though.

abruptly8951@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 06:49 collapse

I don’t really follow your logic, how else would you propose to shape the audio that is not “just an effect”.

Your analogy to real life does not take into account that the audio source itself is moving, so their is an extra variable outside of just stereo signal -which is what spatial audio is modelling

And your muffling example sounds a bit over simplified maybe? My understanding is that the spatial stuff is produced by phase shifting the LR signals slightly

Finally why not go further? “I don’t listen to speaker audio because it’s all just effects and mirages to sound like a real sound, what only 2^16 discrete positions the diaphragm can be in” :p

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 22:48 next collapse

I got some AirBuds Proz and was blown the fuck away listening to music with Spatial Audio. I would love to try using them for games, but I’m sure they work like garbage on my Windows machines. Still, VERY cool tech.

CrayonRosary@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 23:41 collapse

They will just be normal earbuds on Windows, just like my Pixel Buds Pro. Even worse because I have to “forget” then rconnect the Buds from scratch every time I boot my PC. They will always say “connected” with no actual way to switch to them.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 23:43 collapse

Booooo. I love my budzpro but I’ve tried my old AirBudz on my windows machines and they were beyond shit.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 22:55 collapse

I listened to you link after commenting and it is absolutely an accurate representation of basic Spatial Audio for normal headphones! Thank you for sharing. I went through with Spatial Audio off and it astounded me, then was surprised when Spatial Audio ON made it less impressive. It’s because on Apple devices, it has the sound come more from where the video is coming from. For regular music, it doesn’t do that.

CrayonRosary@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 23:37 collapse

You’re not supposed to listen to pre-procrssed audio like that with additional spatial audio processing. You’re supposed to listen with ordinary headphones.

Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 11 Jun 23:45 collapse

Oh yeah, that’s what I’m saying! It took away some of the magic. Neat though!

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 11 Jun 04:34 next collapse

Spatial audio is more like smart stereo. It’s all the 3+ speaker system methods of positional audio that are stupid.

riodoro1@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 07:24 collapse

Progress mate. We are firmly in diminishing returns territory.

aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works on 10 Jun 20:31 next collapse

Not the first, teamspeak has had a spatial audio api for a long time

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 11 Jun 04:31 collapse

Teamspeak isn’t using the phone. It’s TCP/IP.

TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 15:35 next collapse

You’re gonna need to unpack what you mean here because TCP/IP is the basis for pretty much everything, even modern phones

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 11 Jun 21:12 collapse

Phones, like landline phones or when you’re not using wifi calling, use a totally different method of communication than the internet. VoIP and WiFi calling do not use the phone part, they use the internet and are a completely different protocol/method.

TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 22:51 next collapse

Alrighty let’s learn some vocab

POTS lines, aka plain old telephone system, are what you’re referring to when you say landlines

When you’re calling off of Wi-Fi, most of the time you’re using a technology called VoLTE- Voice over LTE, which still functions on top of TCP/IP

The difference that matters here is the VoIP and VoLTE, as well as Wi-Fi calling are all digital protocols over TCP/IP networks.

If you really wanna get specific, most digital phone systems use protocols called Telephony, and SIP(session initiation protocol)

todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 23:30 collapse

I work in telecommunications. This is pretty much exactly correct.

Not really a rebuttal to anything you said, but to expand on the fact that WiFi calling uses VoLTE “most of the time”, which is true because in some conditions SIP is used, but if you are using an Android or iOS phone, you are always using a modem, the voice line is never analog, and all digital voice communications are sent over TCP/IP.

PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee on 12 Jun 01:34 collapse

Shame the article was talking about a mobile phone or that point would have mattered…

Kolanaki@yiffit.net on 12 Jun 02:28 collapse

Currently, all phone calls made over a cellular network are monophonic, meaning audio is compressed into a single channel

This bit from the article is what I am trying to convey. Teamspeak doesn’t use whatever phones use when you make a phone call, even if it’s a cell phone. Cell phones do not have to do this. They have the bandwidth for stereo phone calls and yet, so far, they still compress it into garbage unless you’re using a VOIP app or Wifi calling on both ends.

todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee on 11 Jun 23:25 collapse

Oh man, wait till you learn how today’s phones work…

irotsoma@lemmy.world on 11 Jun 23:51 collapse

“A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular”