In R&D right now, a few of us are becoming very interested in interactive spatial audio and sound-led augmented reality. Partially, this is a build on previous work in R&D 鈥� the excellent work by our colleagues on binaural audio, for instance, or The Turning Forest (which started life as a sound-only experience). It鈥檚 also a response to trends we see in the hardware market - the arrival of consumer-level playback and recording hardware like , and seem to suggest that 3D audio and smarter headsets are on the rise. For myself, I had a demo of the Frames at SXSW last year, was very impressed by the sound quality and got excited about the possibilities presented by the form factor 鈥� and .

I鈥檝e had a long-standing bugbear with visual AR so far (as delivered by phones and tablets, in the main): I feel like it imposes itself on the world, getting in the way of your view by forcing a screen between you and what you can see. This screen is usually a lot smaller than your field of view, so you end up viewing the augmentations through a fairly small window. Not particularly immersive, and diverts your attention to the screen rather than your surroundings - it鈥檚 supposed to augment, but ends up becoming the focus.

To me, this seems to short-sell the promise of AR - that we can add a layer to the world that enhances what you鈥檙e seeing, that blends into and enhances your experience of the world.

In some ways, audio is a much better medium for this. Ambience delivered through headphones really does complement what you鈥檙e seeing, without getting in the way, and all the rendering is done in the participant鈥檚 imagination. Which is much better and cheaper than any visuals we can generate - theatre of the mind and all that.

From the point of view of doing this inside the 蜜芽传媒, it鈥檚 interesting in that we can view it as creatively inheriting from radio - and thus tap into all the production skill and experience available in the organisation.

Some very early prototyping - and past experience - point to as something which could work very well on an audio AR device, mixing ambient, spatial and geolocated audio elements with a participant鈥檚 aural perception of the world. So, this will be the focus of our research for the next little while.

In our next post, we鈥檒l go for a walk around Whitechapel, London with Janet Cardiff鈥檚 .

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• 蜜芽传媒 R&D - Audio AR: Sound Walk Research - The Missing Voice
• 蜜芽传媒 R&D - Virtual Reality Sound in The Turning Forest
• 蜜芽传媒 R&D - Binaural Sound
• 蜜芽传媒 R&D - Spatial Audio
• 蜜芽传媒 Academy - Spatial Audio: Where Do I Start?
• 蜜芽传媒 R&D - What Do Young People Want From a Radio Player?
• 蜜芽传媒 R&D - Prototyping, Hacking and Evaluating New Radio Experiences
• 蜜芽传媒 R&D - Better Radio Experiences: Generating Unexpected Ideas by Bringing User Research to Life