[pfista]

This is actually quite amazing and one of the fields I'm most interested in.

Spatial audio / 3d audio is much more immersive and less gimmicky than 3D video, but I feel like people don't really care too much because they were so underwhelmed with 3D video. It's one of those things with high fidelity audio you can't tell a difference between what is real and what is fake.

Edgar Choueiri, a Princeton professor, was the first I know of that tried to commercialize his algorithm for spatial audio. I believe he got a deal with Jawbone to put in Jambox as a feature called "live audio mode". He did try to sell some hardware for audiophiles to build out home systems, though I'm pretty sure they were insanely expensive (10-100k range). https://www.princeton.edu/3D3A/index.html

There's also a great podcast that tells stories using only spatial audio. They're really immersive and sometimes I can't tell if the audio is happening in the podcast or outside my room. It's called The Truth: http://www.thetruthpodcast.com/

Makes me happy to see tools like this are open to developers now. I expect to see a lot more content featuring this technology now.