Creating personalized and immersive sound has never been easier.
The media landscape is currently adapting to the changed consumption behavior of its global audiences. High-end content needs to be available anytime, anywhere, and on any device. When it comes to its audio features, broadcasters and streaming service providers are looking to deliver customizable experiences. This means that audio creation needs to change fundamentally – or does it?
Contrary to what might be expected, the production of customizable immersive audio does not have to differ that much from working on traditional projects. To make sure their customers will reap all benefits of the full feature support of MPEG-H Audio that comes with Nuendo 13, Steinberg, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of professional audio software and hardware, joined forces with Fraunhofer IIS, primary developer of the MPEG-H Audio system. The integration of the Next Generation Audio codec from the world’s leading institution in audio R&D makes designing customizable audio experiences a breeze.
The unique personalization capabilities of MPEG-H Audio make it possible to amp up the accessibility of content through fully adjustable dialogue levels and customizable audio descriptions. It also enables the integration of multiple languages and even interactive object positioning. As a result, creators can allow their audience to choose their preferred sound in TV broadcast, film, streaming, and advanced music creations.
“With the integration of MPEG-H Audio in Nuendo 13, content creators can produce immersive audio that includes comprehensive personalization options. The range of rendering and authoring functionalities was carefully designed to enable unique sound experiences without deviating from customary workflows,” explains Timo Wildenhain, Head of Professional Audio at Steinberg. “A few simple tweaks to the familiar process are all it takes to design, edit, and mix content that consumers can sculpt to their own preferences.”
Working with Nuendo 13 means that the advanced features of MPEG-H Audio are integrated seamlessly into the mixing process. Key to their control are metadata: Their creation, editing, import, and export in form of MPEG-H Audio Master (MPEG-H BWF/ADM) files is a crucial advantage of the new release. Thanks to them, users will be able to produce new mixes with sound sources that move through a three-dimensional space, just as they do in reality, or import and adapt existing immersive mixes to open the door to the most fascinating and custom audio journeys yet.
“Cooperating with Steinberg to enable full feature support of MPEG-H Audio in Nuendo marks a major milestone in MPEG-H content creation. It’s a huge step towards accessible, personalized, and immersive content, which has already proven to be a major advantage for consumers in various genres such as documentaries, dramas, music, and live sports,” says Marc Gayer, Head of the Audio and Media Technologies’ Business Department at Fraunhofer IIS. “A dialog-enhanced option for better speech intelligibility, defining the level of the crowd sounds in an arena, and even choosing the favorite commentator or preferred position are suddenly just a click away.”
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About Steinberg
Steinberg is known the world over for its music and audio software and hardware solutions. The company has been developing, manufacturing and selling innovative products for musicians and producers in the music, film, post production and multimedia industries since 1984. Steinberg products are used by Grammy and Oscar award-winning composers, engineers and producers. Visit www.steinberg.net for further details.
