CEVA and VisiSonics Bring 3D spatial audio to true wireless

The collaboration combines VisiSonics’ RealSpace 3D audio software optimised for CEVA’s low power audio and sensor hub DSPs together with CEVA’s MotionEngine head tracking algorithms running on its BNO080 9-axis System in Package (SiP). The result is a high precision real-time 3D audio solution for System-on-Chip (SoC) vendors, OEMs and ODMs looking to provide the ultimate hearing experience for VR, AR and the new generation of motion-aware earbuds where 3D audio enhances the overall user experience.

VisiSonics RealSpace 3D Embedded for Headphones solution incorporates a suite of algorithms that give the listener a feeling of being present in an actual three-dimensional acoustic scene. This patented and proprietary technology allows one to precisely place auditory objects in virtual auditory space including both ambisonics and object based input, as envisaged in the Dolby Atmos and MPEG-H standards.

It also enables injection of personalised head related transfer functions and interfaces with CEVA MotionEngine head tracking to give rock solid images of the auditory scene. CEVA’s powerful audio and sensor hub DSPs, including the CEVA-X2, CEVA-BX1, CEVA-BX2 and SensPro family, enable this full suite of algorithms to run seamlessly in an extremely low power footprint.

“CEVA’s broad success in low power audio DSPs is self-evident, having powered billions of devices from many of the world’s leading OEMs,” said Dr Ramani Duraiswami, CEO, VisiSonics. “By partnering with them to bring our RealSpace 3D Audio technology to headsets and hearables powered by their DSPs, with the ability to offer our state-of-the-art spatial audio personalisation to the end user, we can accelerate the adoption of this technology in mobile applications, and bring the power of immersive 3D audio to everyone.”

“VisiSonics’ RealSpace 3D audio technology provides an incredible listening experience and we’re pleased to collaborate with them to further enhance the performance with our audio/sensor hub DSPs and 3D head tracking software,“ said Moshe Sheier, Vice President of Marketing at CEVA. “The use of contextually-aware audio for mobile and wearables is set to grow exponentially in the coming years on the back of 5G, and together with VisiSonics, we can help OEMs and ODMs leverage high precision 3D audio in their hearables to ride this wave.”

CEVA's scalable audio and sensor hub DSPs are optimised for sound processing applications ranging from always-on voice control up to multiple sensors fusion. They have been specifically designed to tackle multi-microphone speech processing use-cases, high quality audio playback and post-processing, and on-device sound neural network implementations.

In addition, a large 3rd party ecosystem of audio/voice software, hardware and development tools companies have optimised their solutions for CEVA DSPs, for a wide array of use cases and applications.