There's a new Dolby Atmos rival in town – and it's set its sights on soundbars

There’s a new Dolby Atmos rival in town – and it’s set its sights on soundbars

British company Audioscenic has unveiled a new Amphi Hi-D® spatial audio standard Dolby Atmos And DTS:X.

The new standard was unveiled earlier this week and will initially target the computer monitor and laptop market, with Audioscenic claiming it will provide full-fledged spatial audio on everything from ultra-thin three-speaker notebooks to six-channel gaming displays.

For movie fans, it has confirmed plans to expand into home theater hardware, starting with soundbars at some unspecified point in the future.

Amphi Hi-D® reportedly works using the company’s ‘position-adaptive’ technology, which it claims uses machine learning-powered tracking to deliver ‘consistent 3D audio regardless of the listener’s movements ‘.

Details on how the machine learning technology actually works have not been given in detail, but head tracking at this level is a basic feature on many platforms, including Apple spatial audio – which is powered by Dolby Atmos and runs on the company’s own AirPods Max headphones.

Dolby Atmos has also been a staple of laptops for years, although as we’ve noted before, our experiences with it have been mixed.

Based on our tests, even soundbars, including the five-star ones Sonos Arc Ultrawhich has top-firing speakers custom designed for Atmos, struggles to deliver the same sense of height and “dome of sound effect” as a true 5.1.2 multi-speaker setup.

Amphi Hi-D logos

(Image credit: Audioscenic)

Audioscenic claims its standard will partially circumvent this by providing superior control over 3D sound reproduction using advanced crosstalk cancellation to optimize performance between speakers.

This will also deliver a variety of benefits, according to the company, including a more uniform frequency response, a broader cancellation spectrum, more loudness and fewer reflections.

Marcos Simon, CTO and co-founder of Audioscenic claims that these optimizations and Amphi Hi-D®’s focus on smaller products will see it carve out a niche in the already crowded standard surround sound market, where Atmos is currently the top dog.

“As consumer expectations for immersive experiences grow, Amphi Hi-D® delivers a distinctive user experience that will differentiate products in the crowded consumer electronics market. People love the enveloping experience of immersive sound, and Hi-D® multichannel deepens and elevates taking that experience to the next level,” said Simon.

Unfortunately, we can’t comment on the standard’s performance or its chances, as we have not yet heard Amphi Hi-D® or seen any hardware that supports it.

Audioscenic has collaborated with numerous gaming hardware manufacturers in the past, including Razr, Acer, MSI, Cirrus Logic and Zylux, and is working to “expand this list” with Amphi Hi-D®.

The technology will make its physical and sonic debut at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January 2025. There will be people on site covering the event and trying to do an opening listen and report. their findings then.

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