Youths stage Taiwan sound technology revolution

2016/03/30

A startup by four Taiwan youths is making the greatest sound revolution in the past 80 years on the back of its immersive sound technology recently launched in the U.S.

Los Angeles-based Ambidio has developed an algorithm that makes listeners think they are hearing surround sound as opposed to conventional stereo.

Iris Wu, the 29-year-old founder and chairwoman of Ambidio, said the secret to their technological success is using psychoacoustic principles and treating the brain as a decoder.

“We insert common cues into audio files that the brain uses to identify and perceive where different sounds within the stream would have come from to create the experience.”

Wu added that the algorithm can be easily used in laptops, tablets, smartphones and TVs by directly adding it into movie and audio files, or as a plug-in for processing sound in real time.

The technology’s potential application in film, TV, music and gaming has earned Ambidio support from some of industry’s biggest names such as rapper will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas; Hong Kong-based Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Li Ka-shing; and the startup’s strategic advisor Skywalker Sound under Lucasfilm Ltd.

As a medical laboratory science and biotechnology student who later studied music technology at New York University, Wu is choosing an entrepreneurial path showcasing all of her creative talents.

And she is not alone. According to the latest survey by online employment service 1111 Job Bank, up to 85 percent of Taiwan youths want to start their own businesses, with 42.1 percent of this number motivated by a burning desire to make their dreams come true.

Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=243418&ctNode=2194&mp=9)