A new board game has emerge, not yet on the market, but sparking interest in 3D sound for children and adults alike.
Brett Paine Murphy developed the SoundStage tabletop board game for children and adults alike to explore 3D audio in a playful way. At the recent Dumbo Arts Festival in Brooklyn, NY, SoundStage was able to show off this new 3D suounded board game. The company actually uses a double quadraphonic sound system with four speakers arranged in a square, and four more speakers closer to the floor. Illuminated from below there’s a 2-foot square table within the eight-speaker sound cube and a large number of “sound objects” such as musical instruments, animals, and an assortment of planes and cars arranged around the table.
With this as they placed a sound object on the table, such as a jet you would hear a very plane like sound of an engine roaring, and if you move the jet across the table, the sound would accelerate, take off and sound as if it were flying. The character of the sound changes as the objects are moved out to the edge of the table, which makes it sound like it’s moving away through space.
At the Dumbo Art Festival there was much fascination by the way SoundStage engaged people of all ageswith this great 3D sound technology applied to their board game.
SoundStage employs elements of Ambisonic surround technology, and uses a camera under the table to identify which figures are in use and track their movements. The camera’s information is sent to a Mac mini computer, and a MOTU Ultralite-mk3 audio interface that sends the sound out to eight M-Audio BX5a speakers.
SoundStage isn’t a product you can buy, but the company is exploring the option of making this available to consumers everywhere. SoundStage would be great for museums and schools or even as an iPhone app.
Source: http://news.cnet.com
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