Digital, universal and innovative: the sound experience
Table of contents
Ready to elevate your experience through sound?
Keys takeaways
- Sound and Scent Share a Common Emotional Language
- Immersive Sound Design Enhances Natural Listening
- Interactive Audio Creates Deeper User Engagement
- Sound Can Be Experienced Through Movement and Gesture
From olfactory to auditory experience
Creating a sound identity shares the same vocabulary as creating an olfactory experience. Creating the portrait of a specific emotion requires an understanding of the chords, the harmony, the notes... All this to put technology at the service of the creation of an emotional object, but also to put in place a scientific approach to respond exactly to the sensation sought.
This makes it possible to create the sound of a perfume. Ircam Amplify has achieved this using the SpeaK method, made available by Ircam's Sound Perception & Design team, for Viktor & Rolf's Infrared perfume. The perfume is enhanced by a sound experience, which transmits the same sensations, at a distance, in an equally universal way.
Natural sound experience
More than just translating sensations, sound design creates a multi-sensory sound identity, enabling more optimal immersive experiences. Our aim? To give everyone access to a sound experience as if they were in the middle of a concert in headphones, or as if they were outside in their car.
To achieve this, Ircam Amplify uses sound design to create a polysensory sound identity, capable of bringing a new spatialization to the musical work while preserving the original integrity of the recording. As a result, the sound ambience transmitted is natural, instead of artificial. No matter what the quality of the material, your listening experience will be enhanced. Progressively, the immersive sound experience is being democratized.
Shaping your sound experience
Immersing yourself in a sound experience also means interacting with the sound itself. This is the aim of the NRJ Group, now the number one radio station listened to via connected speakers. Beyond live communication with presenters via smart devices, interactive audio content is offered to advertisers or in the creation of own audio content.
Aimed at children, radio station Chérie FM offers the podcast "Conte moi l'aventure", a story that plunges youngsters into the world of Alice in Wonderland, giving them options to choose from as the story unfolds to influence the course of events. Interacting by voice with audio content in real time lets them take part in the stories being told, creating a more multi-sensory sound identity.
Sound gestures
Finally, a cross-disciplinary experience can also go beyond a digital framework. Interacting with sound creations can take place in so-called "low-tech" contexts, where technology is invisibilized. This is a way of creating an even more intuitive connection to sound.
As proof of this, the Philharmonie des Enfants has set up the Maestra Maestro! device to enable youngsters to imitate the conductor's movements and influence the music broadcast according to the amplitude of their gestures. Thanks to the MuBu and Super VP technologies developed by Ircam, interaction with sound is also achieved through gesture, for a virtually complete multi-sensory experience.
Sound experiences: the new emotional Eldorado?
Find out how Ircam Amplify and its partners are shaping sensory experiences at the Forum for the Powers of Sound in Industry 2022.
