The MIT Spatial Sound Lab is a community studio for making immersive sound productions and for researching the social possibilities of immersive audio, especially for public performance. We started in November 2019, thanks to a collaboration with d&b Audiotechnik. We are housed in the MIT Stratton Student Center at 84 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139 in room W20-429, a shared space operated by MIT Office of the Arts. We have a 14.2 speaker system that runs the d&b Soundscape, an object-based mixing platform.
We organize workshops, listening sessions, sound events as well as ongoing research, experimentation and production.
Exploring the Social Possibilities of Spatial Sound
We are particularly interested in the social possibilities of new kinds of listening spaces and experiences. So much of contemporary media is unidirectional — the screen, the podium, the book — whereas spatial audio gives us a chance to hear multiple voices at once. Diverse perspectives can be meaningful in tension with one another. Spatial sound can help us appreciate that sensibility. Moreover, we can hear things behind us, hear people we cannot see. In a world where algorithmic feeds often dominate media flows, spatial audio reminds us to close our eyes and listen, with both intention and a spirt of open-minded exploration.
We also hope that spatial audio can encourage a new balance of attention, emphasizing both artworks and complicated acts of listening. We embrace that idea each person will hear and experience things differently. This reminds us that reality itself is collaboratively constructed, shaped by diverse experiences and partial ways of knowing, in all the things we do. We hope that by experimenting with new techniques of listening, playback and performance, we can encourage new ways of relating to each other and the world around us.
What is spatial sound?
Spatial sound or immersive audio generally refers forms of listening, playback and performance that go beyond traditional stereo. There are many approaches to presenting sound in ways that highlight different spatial relationships, including object-based mixing, wave field synthesis, ambisonics and more. A variety of companies create their own approaches too, including the d&b Soundscape, Dolby Atmos, Apple Spatial Audio, L Acoustics L-ISA, Meyer Constellation, Grapes (ZIMMT), and SpaceMapGo. Rather than focus on technology, we are particiular interested in spatial and social ways of listening, thinking, and interacting.
If you’re interested in getting involved or learning more, please send us an email. We hope to see you! Contact: Ian Condry (Professor, MIT) condry@mit.edu