Samsung isn’t talking about Eclipsa Audio at CES 2025

Before the start of CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Samsung Announce Its spatial audio collaboration with Google will be available on its website 2025 TV and Sound bars. Fine details about the platform were noticeably absent from this announcement, with the company only noting that 3D Eclipsa Audio will be available this year to YouTube creators. There was also a general explanation that the platform would enable creators to “adjust audio data such as the location and intensity of sounds, along with spatial reflections, to create an immersive 3D audio experience,” according to the press release.

If that sounds like Dolby Atmos to you, that’s what I assume Samsung and Google are trying to replicate here. And if that’s the case, if Samsung really wants its own immersive audio standard, there’s a backstory worth revisiting here. In 2023, Samsung and Google revealed for the first time Their spatial audio ambitions. At the time, Samsung said its research department had been working on 3D audio since 2020 and the first fruit of the collaboration was the open source Immersive Audio Model and Format (IAMF) adopted by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) in October 2023. .

There’s also the fact that Samsung doesn’t offer Dolby Vision on its TVs. Instead, the company uses HDR10+, an open source, royalty-free platform for encoding HDR metadata. And in this 2023 audio announcement, Samsung Research’s WooHyun Nam explains that 3D audio technology should be open to everyone as well. “Providing a complete open source framework for 3D audio, from creation to delivery and playback, will allow for more diverse audio content experiences in the future,” he said.

Samsung currently supports Dolby Atmos on its speakers, including its flagship headphones Q990 series And the newly announced QS700F. It appears that the company no longer wants to pay for an Atmos license from Dolby. In order to continue offering immersive 3D audio on its products, this collaboration with Google aims to build an alternative. It is worth noting that AOM includes among its members Amazon, Apple, and Netflix, in addition to Google, Samsung, and others. The group’s AV1 video format was introduced in 2018 and is now used across Netflix, YouTube, Twitch, and other sites.

The strange thing about all this is that no one from Samsung wants to talk about Eclipsa Audio. I attended several events and product demos hosted by the company this week and the response when I asked about them was either “We haven’t been told anything” or “Let me see if I can find someone who can talk about it.” The latter, of course, never showed a “person” or follow-up. I even asked a representative to let me know if the company wasn’t willing to discuss details and I didn’t receive a response to that either.

The most detailed explanation I’ve seen this week It came from the armwhich also appears to be developing Eclipsa Audio alongside Samsung and Google. Eclipsa is a multi-channel surround sound format built on IMAF, the chip designer said. The vertical and horizontal channels will create immersive sound, aiming to make movies, music and TV shows more engaging in your living room. Again, this is exactly what Dolby Atmos actually does.

Arm also explained that Eclipsa Audio can automatically adjust audio based on the scene and that there will be a degree of customization for users. A bitstream can contain up to 28 input channels which can be static (musical instruments or microphones) or dynamic (composites in movie scenes), with support for the LPCM, AAC, FLAC and Opus codecs. Binaural viewing is also available for headphones and headphones, and the new technology will be available to content creators who use consumer devices in their workflow.

So far, Samsung and Google have only listed YouTube as the platform or service where Eclipsa Audio content will be available. If the duo really wants to compete with Dolby Atmos, this list needs to expand quickly. Additionally, Dolby already has brand recognition and widespread adoption in both the audio and home theater categories for Atmos. It’s even Available in cars.

Samsung said in its pre-CES announcement that it and Google will work with the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) to develop a certification program for devices that support Eclipsa Audio. So, it seems that serious groundwork has been laid to get this technology onto devices, starting with Samsung’s 2025 TVs and speakers. But as we’ve seen with… Sony 360 Reality Audio And in the early days of Dolby Atmos music, it can take some time to build an engaging content library. This means that Samsung is likely to keep reminding us that Eclipsa Audio is a thing, even when it doesn’t have much to say.