Samsung and Google are able to push a brand new normal, Eclipsa Audio. This format will allow 3D audio experiences on sure YouTube movies later this yr, with support available across 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 popular different, HDR10 Plus. Now, it appears able to make the same aggressive push for open-source 3D audio help.
Eclipsa Audio might finally 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 knowledge equivalent to the placement and depth of sounds, together with spatial reflections” to create a 3D expertise.
The 2 firms first announced 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 said 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 support since 2015 and counts firms like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Netflix — together with Samsung and Google — amongst its members. If additionally they add help for this audio format, it might assist it catch on, though it’s already taken years for his or her AV1 video codec to see more use.
Samsung and Google are additionally making a certification program with the Telecommunications Expertise Affiliation “to make sure constant audio high quality” throughout gadgets utilizing the format, which additionally sounds much like the best way firms like Dolby and THX handle the labeling for his or her specs. We count on to listen to extra about Eclipsa Audio within the coming days, as CES 2025 kicks off subsequent week.
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