As part of its efforts to regain favor with users, Netflix has announced the progressive rollout of its spatial audio catalog, by Sennheiser.
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In recent months, Netflix announced its first ever drop in users, with the loss of 500,000 matched in North America: since then, the search for ways to reverse the trend has begun.
Specifically, a test has begun to curb the sharing of passwords, some productions have been cut, some layoffs have been made and, at the last edition of the Cannesi Lions Festival, the co-CEO (and chif content officer) Ted Sarandos revealed that it would be The plan to introduce low-cost subscriptions was accelerated towards the end of the year as they are supported by advertising. Another solution has just been added to these solutions, that of spatial audio.
In a press release released by Netflix, the streaming giant announced the implementation of spatial audio in its catalog, starting with some titles, as “sound can have a significant impact on the general atmosphere of a scene and change the how the public responds to it “. In succeeding in securing this result, the OTT partnered with Sennheiser, who provided the technology known as “The AMBEO 2-Channel Spatial Audio“, which has already been successfully tested on the Sennheiser Ambeo soundbar.
This technology, without the need for ad hoc hardware, or a surround system, on all subscriptions, from TVs, headphones, stereo systems, PCs, tablets, smartphones, translates into an upmixing system implemented by the Netflix app that , having analyzed the sound originally, in the case of an immersive type, then with separate tracks for the various channels, in Dolby Atmos or 5.1 surround formats, it mixes everything into a stereo output.
The big N specifies that, in the presence of surround speakers, it is good to set settings such as Dolby Atmos or 5.1 surround while, having no such speakers, you will not need to do anything, since the spatial audio will be rendered automatically, on all devices equipped stereo sound, on compatible content. To find the latter (which currently include eg Stranger Things 4, Red Notice, The Witcher) simply type the string “spatial audio” in the search form of the app.