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Breaking the Sound Barrier

By Tricia Radison | Photography by John Gaucher

Billed as “a radical departure” from any other headphone on the market, some innovative headphones have captured the attention of gamers and audiophiles and are propelling a tiny startup in Calgary into the heart of the global gaming industry.

In April, Psyko Audio Labs announced that its headphones, PsykoAudio 5.1, were now available from four online retailers and one American brick-and-mortar retailer. TigerDirect, Newegg, CompSource and NCH.com will handle Psyko’s online sales while Frys Electronics is the U.S. chain that deals in storefront sales.
It was an exciting moment for the fledgling technology company, marking the end of a long and challenging development phase and the beginning of what will hopefully be an exciting growth period.

Incorporated in 2007, Psyko Audio Labs has actually been in the works since 2000, when CEO and founder James Hildebrandt heard about a friend’s predicament. An avid gamer, the friend liked to hook his computer into his surround sound system. His wife, however, wasn’t so pleased, and the friend was unhappy about using headphones.

Typical headphones play sounds in stereo so that they are heard in one ear or the other, or in both. “So you can tell left and right, but you can’t tell 360 degrees around you where the sounds are coming from,” explains Hildebrandt.

And that’s a problem because video games are now designed with sounds happening all over the place. In the early part of the 21st century, game developers noted that while the visual aspects of video games were rapidly advancing in quality, sound wasn’t.

“Games were missing out on the potential to have a more immersive experience,” says George Thorn, vice-president of business development at MOG, an online music service, and a former member of the gaming industry. “Developers started experimenting with tools to create what we call 3-D sound, but what is really multi-channel audio.”

Instead of sending sounds out over two channels, as is done in stereo systems, multi-channel audio sends sounds out over multiple channels. The listener can then pinpoint where the sounds are coming from much more accurately.

But with multi-channel audio came another problem. “Now you’ve got a sound card in a PC capable of providing multi-channel sound, but what do you plug it into?” says Thorn. The company he worked for at the time came up with a solution, a set of four speakers that are positioned around the computer, and gamers bought it.

Gamers like multi-channel audio because being able to hear what’s going on off-screen helps them play better. A footstep behind the gamer’s character indicates that he is in danger; unheard, that footstep can’t alert the player. The richer sound also makes the game more life like.

But like using a home theatre surround sound system, speakers around a computer aren’t practical for everyone; the noise disturbs others and they take up desk space. Headphones are often the only solution and, as Hildebrandt heard from his friend, they haven’t been a very good solution.

A mechanical engineer with training in acoustics, Hildebrandt was intrigued with his friend’s problem. “I started tinkering and building things in my garage and living room,” he says during an interview in the Alastair Ross Technology Centre at the University of Calgary, where Psyko Audio Labs has a small and busy office.

Hildebrandt first taught himself about headphones and then studied psychoacoustics, the study of how we perceive sound, to discover how the human brain detects where sounds come from and create a true-to-life experience for the user. After several months, he had a prototype.

“He figured out how to take advantage of those multiple outputs by reproducing them over headphones in an accurate and compelling way,” says Thorn.

June 2010 Contents

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