Samsung and Google are able to push a brand new commonplace, Eclipsa Audio. This format will allow 3D audio experiences on sure YouTube movies later this yr, with help accessible throughout Samsung’s 2025 lineup of TVs and soundbars. Through the years, Samsung notably hasn’t supported Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR for dynamic HDR metadata, selecting as a substitute to advertise its most well-liked different, HDR10 Plus. Now, it appears able to make an identical aggressive push for open-source 3D audio help.
Eclipsa Audio may ultimately function a free different to Dolby Atmos, the dominant 3D audio format that {hardware} makers like Samsung pay to license for TVs and different tools. Samsung says that much like Atmos, this audio format helps adjusting “audio information reminiscent of the situation and depth of sounds, together with spatial reflections” to create a 3D expertise.
The 2 corporations first introduced a partnership to develop spatial audio expertise in 2023, initially calling it Immersive Audio Mannequin and Codecs (IAMF). On the time, Samsung spatial audio head WooHyun Nam mentioned the format would offer “an entire open-source framework for 3D audio, from creation to supply and playback.”
The IAMF spec has additionally been adopted by the Alliance for Open Media, a gaggle that has been pushing for royalty-free codec help since 2015 and counts corporations like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix — together with Samsung and Google — amongst its members. If in addition they add help for this audio format, it may assist it catch on, though it’s already taken years for his or her AV1 video codec to see extra use.
Samsung and Google are additionally making a certification program with the Telecommunications Know-how Affiliation “to make sure constant audio high quality” throughout units utilizing the format, which additionally sounds much like the way in which corporations like Dolby and THX handle the labeling for his or her specs. We anticipate to listen to extra about Eclipsa Audio within the coming days, as CES 2025 kicks off subsequent week.
