Immersive sound, the next major step forward in audio recording and presentation, is getting serious attention from an expanded partnership between the USC Annenberg Center for Communication and the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

The goal of immersive sound is to convince the listener that she or he is somewhere else, explained Adam Clayton Powell III, director of the Viterbi center. “Instead of presenting the listener with a wall of sound [stereo] or an incomplete surround experience [5.1-channel ‘surround sound’], IMSC’s audio immerses the listener in a much more convincing experience.”

Powell said that while immersive sound is optimized for 10.2-channel presentation, it can improve 5.1-channel home theaters, two-channel stereo and even headphones. “After spending an afternoon in the audio lab, even a high-end stereo system sounds pretty tinny,” he said.

“With this new support, IMSC further explores the very limits of immersive sound, sound reproduction and human perception. We are very excited by the potential for this new initiative.”

The partnership with IMSC, now in its 10th year, is part of the USC Annenberg Center's focus on the impact of new communication and information technologies on politics, society and innovation.

“The USC Annenberg Center’s partnership with IMSC and the Immersive Sound project is a concrete example of our common commitment to interdisciplinary research to promote innovation in communications technology,” said Jonathan Aronson, executive director of the USC Annenberg Center for Communication.

The IMSC Immersive Sound project conducts cutting-edge research at the intersection of audio, psychoacoustics and signal processing. The project is developing algorithms for capturing and rendering sound that is indistinguishable from reality, providing an immersive experience for the listener through greater imaging and envelopment capabilities.

The hope is that this kind of immersive experience can become practical for various playback environments such as movie theaters, home theaters, headphones and the desktop computer.

Chris Kyriakakis, IMSC deputy director, will serve as principal investigator for the expanded immersive sound research initiative. He is also the founding director of the IMSC Immersive Audio Laboratory, which for the past 10 years has conducted leading interdisciplinary research efforts in the areas of multichannel audio signal processing, room acoustics and immersive musical performance capture and rendering.

Kyriakakis said immersive sound research will produce milestones in the next year in all four IMSC research clusters: scalable immersive environments, decision support, serious games and human performance engineering.

“We have an opportunity to not only pioneer a new interdisciplinary field,” Kyriakakis said, “but also to make USC the leading institution in immersive sound with research that cuts through traditional school boundaries.”