New Spatial VR audio library for videoconferencing

Convert mono to spatial VR audio to help fight Zoom fatigue

Videoconferencing audio is about to change. By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) technologies, LCT has invented Spatial VR Audio for videoconferencing to make audio natural and to help fight Zoom fatigue. The company announced today that a spatial VR audio software library is open to all business partners with videoconferencing solutions.

Videoconference calls are tiring people out [1]. It has been reported that people are experiencing a new kind of fatigue while attending virtual meetings that they don’t experience in an in-person meeting. According to researchers, four causes of fatigue are: excessive amounts of close-up eye contact, watching yourself on screen in real time, reduced visual mobility, and higher cognitive load [1]. Part of the reasons is we have to pay additional attention to the screen and figure out who and where is the talker. If two attendees have a similar sounding voice, we then have to use our vision to distinguish between them. In in-person meetings, this is done by acoustic cues without any additional effort. Also, the mono audio videoconference is not as comfortable as the sound we naturally hear using our two ears because all spatial cues are lost.

To address these problems, LCT developed software in 2020 which can convert an attendee’s voice to spatial VR audio according to his/her location on screen; thus, the listener can easily understand where and who is talking from acoustic cues and doesn’t need to watch the screen. For example, one attendee’s voice is from the front right while another attendee’s voice is from the front left, so we can easily distinguish between them from the cues of voice direction embedded in spatial VR audio, even though their voices are very similar and there is no eye contact. Our software makes listening to a video conference more confortable and natural sounding, thus helping to reduce fatigue.

To benefit all videoconference users, LCT is releasing the spatial VR audio software library to videoconference providers. A demo of videoconference with LCT Spatial VR Audio is available in [2]. LCT will help business partners to ensure a smooth and quick implementation. It is an software only solution and there is no need for any additional hardware.

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References:

[1] Stanford News: https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions

[2] LCT, Video demo of videoconference with Spatial VR audio: www.licreative.com/3dsoundstage

Updated: 18 Aug. 2021