audio fi le
fVIEWPOINT
50 APRIL 2020 • WWW.LSIONLINE.COM
After turning a simple 8-track home studio into a
hugely successful Miss Factory, Phil Ward turned
to pro audio journalism and became an editor and
now freelance writer. He lives in Cambridgeshire
where he also runs a small taxi fi rm for the
exclusive use of family membersA viral post | Phil Ward speaks volumes...
“The perfect storm of pandemics, climate change and terrorism may be the
trigger that starts a whole new era of entertainment technology.. .”
C
Inside my local GP surgery there are now signs saying:
‘if you feel unwell, do NOT come to the surgery’. Read
that again: inside my local GP surgery there are now
signs saying: ‘if you feel unwell, do NOT come to the surgery’.
You have to get there before you’re told you shouldn’t have.
The main sign saying you’ve taken a wrong turn is a Bush TV
screen with rolling text, right in the middle of the waiting room.
Others have been hastily printed out and pinned up along the
inner corridor. Yes, the inner corridor. It’s like sticking ‘OUT OF
ORDER’ labels on the main canopy of a parachute.
So, you have to leave the building and phone from home.
Which actually means stepping outside the door and using your
mobile to call the receptionist who, 10 yards away, just asked
you to leave. Except the call queue is even longer than the wait
for the next delivery of toilet roll at the supermarket, so you go
home anyway.
At home, you check emails. First, to see if Messe Frankfurt
has yet replied to your message with the receipt attached -
the receipt for the flight you booked having been invited as
a guest journalist to Prolight+Sound, on the understanding
that, having selected and booked the most convenient flight,
you would be reimbursed. Nothing yet. At least the hotel was
taken care of, meaning a reservation you never made has been
cancelled before you knew you wouldn’t be going, which must
do something near-fatal to loyalty points.
Then you have to decide whether to go all the way into
London, risking life and limb, to attend a concert arranged to
compensate for the cancellation of SXSW, the Austin, Texas
music festival. Organisers here have mounted a two-day event
at Production Park’s The Mill Studio in Wimbledon to showcase
all of the new talent that would have been rocking the Austin
Convention Centre, before Donald Trump hastened the evolution
of live events by stopping large gatherings and pushing them
inexorably towards a future of tightly restricted, social media
streaming. SXSW knew all about this. The website proclaims:
Welcome to the Future.
We already know that VR and its derivatives are supposed to
transform our relationship with sensory experience. Augmented
Reality (AR), the combination of virtual data-signals and
empirical participation, would suggest the most practical
application of this technology, and there’s even a specific
version of this for sound: Augmented Audio (AA), nothing to
do with roadside recovery or alcohol
abuse. It’s not clear, but AA may
be the trademarked invention of
Swedish entrepreneurial group Dohi,
with headquarters in Stockholm
and Växjö, which flags up AA’s
possibilities across its Agency,
Venture and Media ‘business areas’- at least to the extent of its own
definition of AA as “live audio being modified and/or enhanced
by computer-generated sensory input”. Elsewhere AA can mean
more generic tricks, like earbuds that tell you how far, and in
what direction, the nearest McDonald’s is.
As for the future, Dohi envisages the following:
“Entertainment will see a rise of new programs that utilise
Augmented Audio and Augmented Reality in various ways...
By tracking head movements, it can be possible to create
virtual surround sound in headphones, following the person’s
relative head position. Once developers realise the endless
possibilities that the Augmented Audio concept unveils, we
will find ourselves expecting the unexpected, extending the
human senses. While most people have probably already been
subjected to Augmented Reality in some context, the world is
still waiting for the first real killer, must-have application that
manages to harness the complete set of senses that can be
stimulated with Augmented Reality in general, by inclusion of
Augmented Audio in particular.”
However, so far AR and AA have been developed as adjuncts
to personal reality: that is to say, you have to be there. And,
while there, you attach some form of apparatus that enhances
and explains what’s actually going on around you. That’s not
going to work if large gatherings are not allowed. We need
a reversal of that paradigm, such that the technology makes you
really feel you are there when you’re not. Object-based audio
offers the opportunity to design online feeds that get closer
than ever before to the real thing, as opposed to broadcasting’s
lulling compromise, however superbly executed. Object-based
video can do the same; we’re told, in fact, that object-based
broadcasting is coming. Maybe quicker, now.
The perfect storm of pandemics, climate change and
terrorism may be the trigger that starts a whole new era of
entertainment technology - one that finally renders IP useful for
more than just shopping, unreliable information and slagging
off people you don’t like in the mistaken belief that you’re
untouchable and untraceable. This also needs to happen before,
metaphorically speaking, we get to the surgery and discover
that the industry we need has been irreparably damaged.
Governments are now blithely advising people to keep away
from clubs, bars and theatres, disclosing the same cavalier
attitude already reserved for radio spectrum: worse, in fact,
because although resourceful, suppliers can adapt to some
pressure while lobbying on essential
bandwidth, but nobody can survive
the casual dismissal of the very
lifeblood of this business: audiences.
That’s a parachute out of order, if
I ever saw one. IN.B. This was written before the full
UK lockdown was enfourced.