"Over the last few years, the processing power available to smart wireless headphones, also known as hearables, has made enormous progress. By today it is feasible to run multiple services on a low-power wireless platform so tiny that it fits into the sleekest earbud on the market. Together with specialized sensor technology and advances in wireless connectivity, this is one of the essential drivers of a revolution that turns an entire segment of the audio industry on its head," states Gary Spittle, CEO at Sonical.
"Hearables have turned into a must-have in our increasingly mobile work and leisure environments, and with innovative audio features such as personalization and immersive sound becoming established in video and music streaming, the expectations of their performance are high. Headphone manufacturers have to keep up with innovation by providing customized feature packages comprising a variety of highly specialized individual software solutions, and ensure a fast time to market for their products at the same time," he adds.
Sonical started the work on their CosmOS platform in 2020 with the declared goal of delivering the flexibility to hearables that will make them independent smart devices which can be customized in much the same manner as smartphones. As a driver of this “Headphones 3.0” concept, Sonical created the CosmOS operating system to enable developers to write apps on a comparatively high level and to deploy them quickly without having to adapt to individual manufacturers and firmware. It is then possible to pick and choose from those apps to create custom, specialized feature sets to match devices' or users' specific requirements.
Fraunhofer's Cingo is a binaural rendering technology that enables dynamic spatial audio and is a perfect match for the next generation of smart headphones running CosmOS. As opposed to traditional headphone reproduction, Cingo ensures a lifelike experience in which sound sources are perceived around the listener, which results in a fascinatingly immersive auditory environment. Low-latency dynamic head tracking provides an immersive and stable sound image that always keeps the user in the sweet spot.
Any audio input can benefit from the Fraunhofer technology – from channel-based stereo to fully fledged 3D audio using state-of-the-art object-based formats. To meet all requirements of up-to-date headphone solutions, Cingo delivers personalization options such as content-specific presets, loudness as well as dialogue enhancement, and device-specific equalization. The versatile and lightweight solution can be deployed on common headphone DSPs and is now implemented on the CosmOS platform, which means that it can be experienced and configured by implementors to match their use cases.
"The CosmOS platform allows us to deliver into an ecosystem which combines a growing portfolio of cutting-edge solutions with ease of implementation," explains Adrian Lorenz, Product Manager of Headphone Processing at Fraunhofer IIS. "The innovative approach of Sonical and the entire CosmOS developer community drives the change towards the next generation of smart personal audio devices, for which we are excited to deliver solutions like dynamic spatial audio with Fraunhofer Cingo."
"We are excited to partner with Fraunhofer IIS," says Gary Spittle. "They understand that a platform approach such as CosmOS is just as much about meeting a range of user and product needs as about trialing multiple approaches and solutions. Cingo with its flexible profile and several customization options is a great fit for our philosophy that puts the user first, and we look forward to seeing how our partnership will develop."
Cingo for headphones will be one of the demonstrations at CES 2024, available at the Fraunhofer booth #15726 in the Central Hall of LVCC, and Cingo running on CosmOS will be demonstrated at the Sonical suite on The Venetian hotel.
www.iis.fraunhofer.de
www.sonical.ai
