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A NEW OPPORTUNITY IN AUDIO: PART 1
Technicolor’s Scott Gershin on Audio for Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality
By Andrew King
S
cott Gershin, supervising sound
editor and mixer with Tech-
nicolor, is presenting a session
at The 2018 NAMM Show called
“Mixed Reality & the New Oppor-
tunity for Audio.” We invited him
to share some thoughts on the technolo-
gies and techniques being used for these
applications, and where he sees the most
potential. Here’s part one.
PS: How long has Technicolor been serv-
ing the audio for virtual and augmented
realities (AVAR) market, and what has
the field’s growth looked like from your
perspective in recent years?
SG: I’ve been with Technicolor now for
nearly two years. Before that, I was at Soun-
delux and Formosa Group. Technicolor has
a s trong commitment to try to advance
the technology and content in immersive
media, whether it be for entertainment,
scientific, or medical usage. They’ve had
a strong commitment to add their talents
to that and recruited me to head up the
immersive unit.
[This industry] is very, very young. It’s
the wild west, but it’s getting a little more
focused in regards to the working methods.
The biggest hurdle that I feel the industry
has is that we need to get to a point where
people rush home and can’t wait to put
on and experience something in AR or VR.
Once we get to that point, the industry will
become another alternative to the many
things available to entertain us now.
PS: What are some of the ideas you plan
to cover in your NAMM presentation?
SG: One thing is I’m comparing VR to several
other mediums like gaming, TV, film, and
even commercials, because how VR is used
depends on the type of storytelling the
content creator wants to create.
Some things work better than oth-
ers. Some things are ported from a more
linear format that’s been used previously
and put into a VR environment, and some
things are being created conceptually from
scratch – new ways of storytelling where
we take what we’ve learned – whether it’s
lighting, where we put the camera, picture
cuts – and manipulate them to visually or
audibly tell a story.
Is it a documentary? Is it a video game?
So basically, I’m stealing knowledge from
those other industries to see how, in audio,
I can use my toolbox to come up with
something new and interesting.
PS: How quickly is the technology in
this sector developing? Are there areas
where you still see a significant amount
of untapped potential?
SG: I think there’s still a lot of untapped
potential. Right now, the biggest problem
with VR and AR is nobody’s quite sure how to
monetize it, because, again, nobody’s racing
home to put on the goggles just yet. So it’s
difficult for people to acquire content, or
creators to know how to push their content.
It’s still very young, but there are definitely
pioneers that have been jumping into this
aggressively.
So with the tool sets, you’ve got compa-
nies like Lenovo, which is now with Google,
G’Audio Lab, you’ve got Dolby, you’ve got
Audio Ease – there are probably a half-dozen
or so companies trying to make a dent into
the tool sets we use to create and consume
content, and they do it in many ways. Some
are using first, second, third order ambison-
ics, some are using quad binaural. There
are many different techniques to create
the audio, but there’s a problem that hasn’t
been solved, and that’s with the technology
for the end user.
At the end of the day, for you to hear
3D audio, we’re using some form of [head-
related transfer function, or] HRTF. With that
comes the problem that everybody’s head is
slightly different, so when they create HRTF
models of the head for you to hear how you
normally hear, they’re generalizing the size
of your head and length of your ear canal,
et cetera, et cetera. So somebody’s going
to hear something and say, “Wow, it flew
around my head. I can feel it on my hair.
Amazing!” The next person sitting right be-
side them might say, “I can’t hear any of that.”
So there are people looking to solve
it, but ultimately, we need to be at point
where someone can measure your head
and perhaps even your ear canal to precisely
get the tech closer to how each individual
actually hears, because everyone hears a
little differently.
PROFESSIONAL SOUND 9