5.1 and even 7.1 speaker systems give us unparalleled surround sound and a totally unique experience. Unfortunately, they never became a mass product with the general public, who continue to watch their series and films while playing games with the speakers of a lifetime. At most we have seen lately how there are users who play with 2.1 systems to which they add a subwoofer or simply a soundbar, but losing the rear and side speakers, well, they lose the surrounding environment completely. Well, one of the solutions could be speakers with a built-in camera. How does this concept work?
Beamforming, the key technology behind it all
The first thing we have to take into account is that we are not talking about conventional speakers to which a camera is simply attached, since the concept is much more complex than that, but at the same time it is something that once explained, is easy to understand. The idea is to have an audio output device made up of several different speakers working at the same time. However, they wouldn’t all play the same sound, but variations like now:
- Play it at different frequencies.
- Create latency on others.
- Play it at different volumes.
- Use audio cancellation.
The idea is none other than the fact that each of these small speakers in the device has a small processor capable of manipulating the audio as needed and in real time. The ultimate goal is none other than to generate a surround sound environment for the user through the various speakers that make up the scene and for the viewer to end up enjoying a seemingly enveloping environment. However, this methodology requires knowing where the user is at all times in order to generate surround sound and this is where the concept of camera speakers comes in.
The future is in camera speakers
What happens if we put a set of different cameras on one device? Well, not only can we capture on video, but in combination with a series of infrared and light time cameras, we can calculate the distance to each object. Then, if we add the ability of computer vision to identify objects and people, we can know where each user is at all times in the room and therefore make beamforming more accurate thanks to speakers with camera.
It is a solution that can be applied in the future to any device as long as it is built with existing technology and is therefore easy to develop and deploy. Although the speakers are a bit different, you don’t need any kind of technology that wasn’t available before to get surround sound. It also doesn’t require the end user to build complex speaker sets and provides a much better experience than a typical soundbar or TV speaker set.
And speakers or soundbars with camera are already available on the market, an example is the recently presented Razer’s Leviathan V2 Pro, whose images are those that you can see in this article as decoration. A concept that we think many other manufacturers would copy in order to give added value to their products and that we will see not only in the form of speakers with cameras or soundbars, but also integrated into laptops, televisions, etc Have we finally solved the problem of surround sound audio at home? we think so
