About this project
$125,171
589
Our Kickstarter is over but you can still find Neoh on www.3dsoundlabs.com
Neoh : the first smart 3D audio headphones
Please meet Neoh, headphones for cinema sound anytime, anywhere ! Neoh is the first wearable home theater system. These headphones provide spatial sound simulation, using embedded motion sensors to provide the most immersive sound experience technology has ever brought to you. Our mobile application simulates multi-point sound sources in a virtual environment. The experience is comparable to the latest generation of movie theater surround sound systems or the most sophisticated home theater equipment on the market. With our 360° sound technology, we have successfully introduced a realistic and theatrical sound experience to 3D audio headphones.
What we call 3D sound is the real life’s sound. With Neoh headphones, we have ability to reproduce a sound that will appear to come from anywhere we want it to come from. We create a full artificial environment (360°) with sound sources you will perceive as coming from any distance or direction.
MONO
One source, one speaker, one channel… This is a monophonic sound reproduction. It is the sound given to you by the gramophone in our video.
STEREO
Two sources, two speakers, two channels… Most of the time the stereophonic sound is represented by a left and a right speaker. It is what you have found in all the other headphones up-until today. Don’t be afraid, it’s over now.
MULTISOURCE
This is what you got when you bought a home-theater sound system. You had to install five speakers, two behind you, three in front and one subwoofer for the bass. You can find 5.1 sound on DVDs, Blu-rays use 7.1 sources (same principle, 2 more speakers). It means you would have to buy and install up to eight speakers, to enjoy it but in one room only... However this provides a pretty good surround sound !
Today, you don’t need this anymore. Neoh is your own personal home cinema and you can take it with you anytime, anywhere.
Some new 3D audio formats are coming up, with even more virtual sound sources and a large number of speakers to reproduce them. Get ready ! Neoh breaks the barrier of having a limited amount of sound source.: You will be completely immersed in the sound.
- Install the free Neoh player, to
- watch a movie on your iPad with 3D Sound. If you don’t have an iPad, maybe you could
- watch a movie on your iPhone with 3D Sound. Soon you will be able to
- watch a movie on your laptop too. You have to
- call your friends to tell them you’ve got a Neoh. Obviously, you can
- listen to music from any device you want but most importantly,
- enjoy it with your friends ! Very soon, you will
- watch movies with Android devices,
- play video games in the most immersive way or
- enter a virtual reality with a real 3D sound !
Our mobile application uses advanced signal processing algorithms to position the different audio sources.
For instance, with a movie providing 5.1 audio channels, if a sound is defined to be coming from the source on your back right, you’ll hear it coming directly from your back right.
You will be able to play any movie and any music without having to change their format as we have made it compatible with most of multimedia standards available out there. We have also made it easy for you to access all of your content :
- Direct download
- Connection to your Dropbox
- Connection to your Google Drive
- Connection to your personal server
Of course, you can also use Neoh without our mobile application: Neoh will work like any other pair of headphones.... Only without the realistic and immersive experience of 3D sound.
Motion sensors:
The housing on the left of the headset encloses our electronics. It is composed of many components, including gyroscopes, an accelerometers and a magnetometers. The sensors’ data are sent to our application by a Bluetooth Low Energy chip. All the system is powered by a rechargeable battery. The sensors track every one of your movements. Indeed, you do not stay completely motionless while watching a movie, and we have to offset even the smallest of your micro-movements to completely immerse you in your activity.
This is due to a psychoacoustic effect.
In your daily life, you subconsciously make a detailed analysis of your environment and you're brain gives specific attention to any kind of change within this environment. When you hear a sound, you unconsciously move your head in order to figure out the exact origin of the sound. The difference perceived in the sound is necessary for your brain to accurately locate sound sources. It does not need a large movement, just a few degrees is enough. You also make those micro-movements when you are watching a movie. This gets more important as the number of sound sources increase. Neoh compensates those movements to create a fixed audio sources relative to the screen. Without this your brain won’t be able to figure out exactly where the sound is coming from: This is the only way to have a full immersion and an experience comparable to that of reality.
Being able to hear sound where they’re supposed to come from is also very useful in a lot of video games. First Person Shooter games are an obvious field of interest; Neoh gives you an incredible tactical advantage. Improving the perception of your environment, it enables you to have quicker and better reactions to game events.
Finally, compensating those micro-movements increases the realism to an incredible extent to truly immerse you in a virtual reality.
What do we mean with mobile cinema ?
When we think about mobile cinema, we think about you, watching a movie anywhere, anytime you want. You’re on a mobile device, such as a mobile phone or a tablet. We have chosen to start our development on iOS but we are already working on deploying our technology to others platforms.
Why are we doing this ?
We are doing this to let everybody enjoy the quality of movie theater sound. A home-cinema system can be expensive, requires a lot of space and is used in only one room. While on a tablet, you can enjoy a cinema sound experience in each room, while traveling or even at the office!
What’s next ?
We are already working to extend our technology to personal computers. A successful campaign could help us accelerate this ! We already integrated it in our video because this is planned for the near future, and your support, we will be able to make it happen faster, as soon as this summer !
GAMING
Our technology will be a great enhancement to the gaming world! By now, every gamer can probably imagine the incredible potential of Neoh in gaming. Imagine being fully immersed in your favorite digital world. Battling it out in a war zone? Have an edge on your opponent by hearing them attacking from behind. Racing cars? Hear the roar of the engine from the driver's seat as you zoom by your opponents..
Your support will accelerate the development of the computer platform for Neoh. With your help this could be as soon as this summer
VIRTUAL REALITY
We think that virtual reality will become increasingly important in the foreseeable future. In fact, we are not the only ones to think so ! This is why more and more companies develop VR technologies and devices. New features are introduced everyday !
So far VR has been mostly about video. Audio is needed to bring a more realistic and immersive reality.
The Verge: "You can buy these head-tracking headphones instead of 25 speakers"
Gizmodo: "In trying it out for a a few moments just now, it definitely works: The sound stays put spatially, even as your head moves."
Tom's Guide : "3D Sound Labs may have found the winning formula with its Neoh"
We are a team of professionals, entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers passionate by sound.
It has been a long journey already: from algorithms development, electronics and mechanical prototyping, assembly of the first samples, testing, then ... re-doing it over again until we reach a result that satisfies us ... to supply chain and logistics...
Today, Neoh is almost ready to hit the shelves. Molds are built and the headphones are industrialized. We even designed a nice packaging to give you a great Neoh experience, right out-of-the-box.
But we are not yet at the end of the road:
CERTIFICATIONS
We are going to get our products certified (Wireless certifications, FCC, …). We have done everything from start to facilitate this. From electronics to plastic components, everything has been pre-checked and validated.
APPLICATION
We are finalizing our mobile application. We have optimized all our algorithms and developed an alpha-version. From now on we need to develop a great user-interface to make your experience with Neoh as intuitive and straightforward as it deserves to be.
USAGES
We really would like to accelerate the development to cover more usages and platforms. First, we would like to be able to run on any PC. Then, we’ll address the virtual reality market. Everything depends on you.
Risks and challenges
We are really happy to launch the first smart 3D audio headphones and we can’t wait to see Neoh on your ears !
It is functional and we got great feedback during the CES 2015 in Las Vegas. We still have to finalise our mobile application and get the product certified:
Everything has been done to make sure we’ll pass those certifications in multiple countries, starting with FCC in US, IC in Canada, and CE in Europe. However we don’t fully master the delays that could arise during the process.
We want a beautiful and easy-to-use mobile application. Our developers have a working prototype for the core part of the player. We still need to put together a great UX, and get the app approved by Apple.
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Funding period
- (27 days)