Three-dimensional technology is about to revolutionise the audio experience,
- Published: 30/06/2010 at 12:00 AM
- Newspaper section: Database
It's not often that music lovers get the chance to attend sophisticated concert halls and experience their favourite renditions in world class surroundings.
Microphones set around a professional musician capture the sounds in 3D audio.
But in this ever-advancing technological world, three-dimensional music can now be enjoyed elsewhere, replicating the sound of a live concert hall.
Thailand's first three-dimensional music system is now being showcased at the Supreme Artist Hall in Pathum Thani's Khlong Luang district and playing royal songs which demonstrate a blend of excellent music with top research technology.
His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej's four compositions, When, Love at Sundown, Candlelight Blues and Love are playing in the hall, marking the first time the royal songs have been presented in three dimensions.
The 11-weeks project is a collaboration between the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (Nectec), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) of Japan, and Thailand's Office of the National Culture Commission, according to Dr Virach Sornlertlamvanich, Assistant Executive Director of Nectec.
The research technology is from the NICT's Universal Media Research Center, which helps to set the three-dimensional audio recording system, enabling Nectec to digitise the kingdom's valuable music and make its own realistic music communication devices.
Three-dimensional music or audio is one of the Ultra Realistic Communication research fields. In NICT's view, ultra-realistic communications are a future means of communicating that will provide users with a highly realistic presence.
The technologies to achieve these communications are varied and include ultra-high definition/three-dimensional images, reproduction of highly realistic surround sound, and multi-sensory communication which includes touch and smell.
"Three-dimensional music allows people to listen to the music to a highly realistic surround sound standard, much like sitting in the best concert hall," said Virach.
"With high-end stereo surround systems, the sound comes from an outside provider, but three-dimensional sound technology provides listeners with a sound environment that resembles having the musician right there. This is providing 360-degree sound, much like [the visual experience] in 3D TV."
The music recording system in this project uses 26 miniature microphones connected to receivers which have 26 control points set in the recording room.
The 26 miniature microphones are set around a saxophone played by a nationally renowned artist in order to collect sound from original instruments.
The sound is relayed by specially designed speakers, which are designed in a circular shape that comprise of 26 small loudspeaker units and 26 channel power amplifiers.
Thailand can learn from the Japan research experts and further collaboration in joint research for this field will be discussed.
"There is an ambition to develop simpler, more user-friendly microphones and speakers to commercialise these products. In the future, if the technology is embedded in commercial markets and attains mass adoption, it's possible that the whole family will be able to enjoy live concert sound in their living rooms," Virach noted.
He continued that the research field can apply to provide 3D music in the cloud as a service using high-speed bandwidth and cloud technology.
For example, museums in different countries could set three-dimensional music concerts as special events without flying in real musicians or bands, helping to share resources and save costs.
However, at this point, this remains a long-term vision.
Nectec plans to build its own cloud in order to provide its own research and development work as a service model.
Currently, Nectec is in discussions with data centre service providers and hardware technology partners and the centre will provide its applications and content to the cloud.
The new as-a-service model will be flexible and easily adopted because users can pay per transaction and the scope of usage in each research work can be more simplified than in existing licensing models, which are more complex in terms of legal concerns, especially with government agencies.
If Nectec offers R&D Intellectual Property in the cloud, its help to distribute its work more easily and its usability will become more widespread, helping to accelerate a variety of new applications by using mash-up applications and open interface.
For example, developers can write programs that take pictures as image files and then call an optical character recognition program in the cloud to convert the file into a document. This could then be followed by calling a text-to-speech service in the cloud to use with the document.
However, in offering R&D work in the service model, there are some challenges, especially in quality and reliability of services, including data transfer rate.
Moreover, if there needs to be an exchange of services that are located in different clouds, there is still no inter-cloud communication standard.
About the author
- Writer: Suchit Leesa-nguansuk
- Position: Reporter
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