Spatial Democratizes 3D Sound for Real-World Environments with Global Open Access to Its Immersive Audio Service & Creator Tools

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., March 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Spatial, the award-winning immersive audio company and software service, revealed today its plans to democratize 3D sound with the global availability of its immersive audio platform.

Today, Spatial goes unhinged! Anyone in the world can get started creating sound objects and soundscapes in minutes with license-based access to fully develop and deploy Spatial scenes.

For commercial use, Spatial is now offering a simple $10,000/year subscription license, including access to its full platform and library of shared soundscapes, making its previously gated software available to retail, hospitality, museums, estates, venues, hospitals, theme parks and more who believe that sound is the most underutilized sense in shaping today's human experiences.

For creative uses, Spatial offers Backstage Pass, the free license that allows creators to design immersive 3D audio environments easily with Spatial Studio, the company's macOS authoring tool; and Spatial Reality, the real-time performance engine that runs the audio simulation in real world physical spaces. In a model that has worked extremely well for game engines like Unity and Unreal, Spatial is democratizing access to 3D sound design by providing free access to full design and publishing capabilities. This enables a much larger ecosystem of creators to publish dynamic 3D soundscapes directly to Spatial commercial customers for use across a wide variety of spaces and experiences. 

"Designing acoustic experiences, at all levels, in all kinds of spaces, with the full power of sound in mind is no longer a millions-of-dollars capability constrained by highly specialized and inflexible systems," shared Calin Pacurariu, Co-Founder and CEO of Spatial. "We created Spatial to put that power in the hands of everyone, and we're excited to see how our creators and customers build a range of experiences from magically entertaining immersive locations to deeply therapeutic retreats for healthcare worker recovery. Creators around the world are already taking this technology and reshaping the human experience in that infinite universe we call reality."

Since its inception in 2017, Spatial has been on a journey to unlock the full potential of immersive technology to enhance human experience – in real world and everyday environments. From retail stores, hotels and theme parks to work spaces, hospitals and museums, Spatial's award-winning audio design platform offers new creative possibilities to enhance environments for meaningful engagement, powerful entertainment, and optimum well-being. Spatial liberates sound design from linear and channel-based audio, allowing people to do things with immersive sound that have never been done before in places that traditional audio has long forgotten. Running on Macs and iPhones, Spatial is more easily and affordably deployed than existing audio solutions – and scales without constraints.

New Capabilities for Spatial Studio, Spatial Reality & Spatial Control
After a year of incredible feedback from sound designers, engineers, and technology partners around the world – including Eight, Made Music Studio, Meow Wolf, HealthTunes, Catalyst by Wellstar, Zeitgeist, National Geographic, Nightscape, the California Academy of Arts (CalArts), and the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences (CRAS), among others – Spatial is introducing significant feature improvements that make it easier than ever to design, create, and deploy realistic, interactively dynamic, and flexible 3D sound experiences.

• Unbelievably Believable: Experiences That Truly Envelop – With Spatial, augment any space with natural, immersive sonic experiences that feel completely real, where layers of sounds move about a room, seemingly coming from anywhere and everywhere. Spatial soundscapes bring environments to life, evoking emotions, influencing behaviors, and elevating moments. Built around how sound works in nature, the system allows for sound objects to be defined with both natural physics and behaviors: not just position/location, but also realistic size, shape, distance, motion, and speed. With today's updates, the Spatial platform further improves critical sound behaviors like loudness, delay, indoor and outdoor distance effects, doppler effect, and more. To make sure users always get the most out of their technology investments, Spatial now offers improved rendering and support for scalable high performance, with Spatial Reality now able to support up to 64 channels of audio on a single Mac mini.
• Dynamically Interactive: An Ever Changing Symphony – Spatial experiences are designed to live in for weeks or even months. Objects have natural and realistic behaviors so you can stay in a virtual world and never hear quite the same scene twice. Spatial soundscapes can respond to movement, video, lighting, music, and other inputs that trigger actions. With comprehensive support for inputs and outputs, there is unlimited potential to create responsive, immersive experiences optimized for specific audiences. Improved and powerful event-driven behaviors, loudness animation and fading, and increased integration with Open Sound Control (OSC) inputs and outputs for dynamic sound scenes, can make soundscapes an effortless combination of naturally random, timeline-driven, and event-driven content. This enables a whole new level in the power of designing with sound: audio can finally become a living pillar of any experience design, with real impact on behaviors, mindsets, and memory recall.
• Completely Flexible: Immersive Audio Anywhere – Built for flexibility, Spatial soundscapes can be deployed in any size indoor or outdoor space. Soundscapes can be adapted to any speaker configuration at a fraction of the cost of other immersive sound technologies. Place speakers wherever you want them, or even just where you can. The same scene built in Spatial Studio can smartly reshape itself to any layout and environment. On a quest to eliminate friction from both creative and execution points of view, today's updates include: Spatial Headspace, allowing a soundscape designer to preview and simulate their target deployment via headphones or stereo speakers; improved adaptation to spaces and interaction with modeling transforms; as well as more expansive support for sound fields coming from traditional immersive formats, via native integration with Steinway Lyngdorf.
• Simple Set-up & Ongoing Account Management – Spatial also released today a number of additional tools geared to facilitate initial setup as well as ongoing management. Starting with hands-on account management through a web admin view, and improved, privacy-shielded analytics to better understand the use of Spatial and make improvements going forward. Also improved are logging, warnings, and troubleshooting for enterprise-level stability.

Experience the Spatial Holodeck at SXSW 2022
Spatial invites all SXSW attendees to its Spatial Holodeck experience in Austin later this week, March 11 through 14. In addition to guided demos of Spatial, hands-on tutorials on Spatial Studio, and in-depth presentation of the anatomy of an immersive experience project, several special highlights will bring to life the full power of Spatial sound across the four days:

• Spatial partner Meow Wolf will be opening up a daily interdimensional portal to their latest thrilling immersive experience, featuring Spatial audio.
• Spatial investor and partner National Geographic Society will host a Saturday evening party, All Around the World with National Geographic, an immersive tour of some of Earth's most beautiful wonders.
• Rich panel programming, with a special SXSW featured speaker event with Jill Tiefenthaler, CEO of the National Geographic Society; as well as discussion panels on the future of real-world entertainment, the opportunities presented by sound to redefine healing experiences, and the infinite possibilities that brands can unlock when they design with sound.
• Experiences and panels will include leading industry experts from Eight, Made Music Studio, TAIT, Zeitgeist, HealthTunes, Catalyst by Wellstar, and more.

For additional information on the Spatial Holodeck and SXSW programming, click here.

About Spatial
Spatial is redefining the human experience by creating virtual soundscapes where you work, where you play and where you stay. Spatial's technology is flexible, powerful and scalable, breaking down traditional audio barriers. Serving customers in corporate, retail, theme parks, museums, hotels, estate entertainment and more, Spatial is taking audio to a new level and allowing creators to unleash their creative soundscapes. Spatial's team and demo locations are located in Emeryville, California and Scottsdale, Arizona. Led by experienced leaders from Apple, Nest, LucasArts and Disney and backed by DBL Partners, BITKRAFT Ventures, National Geographic Society, The Kraft Group, Marquee Sports Holdings, WS Development and others, Spatial is poised to reimagine immersive human experiences and entertainment. To learn more, visit spatialinc.com or follow us on Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Spatial Reality, Spatial Studio and Spatial Control are trademarks of SpatialX Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

Media Contacts
Ted Miller
305-331-8334
[email protected]

Maria Larrazbal
786-897-3259
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SOURCE Spatial