SENNHEISER’S UWE CREMERING

SOUND+IMAGE (JEZ FORD): When I first came into contact with AMBEO it was nine-channel music recording, and then it was the likes of the microphone and smart headset and stuff. So I think there’s a little confusion over what AMBEO actually is. What is it? UWE CREMERING: AMBEO actually is a listening experience. It’s not a codec, it is not a dedicated product line, so at the end, it’s a kind of listening experience. And I can say this because I developed the entire AMBEO journey from five, six years ago. We saw immersive audio as a kind of trend in the market and we had a set of meetings with the EMB (executive management board) and the supervisory board and we decided strategically that we will invest in 3D audio technology. We hired 10 people who do nothing else than AMBEO. And of course, if we develop a soundbar, we have to integrate more people.

And at that point of time, it was not clear for us what we would do. Do we invest in a kind of codec like Dolby or MPEG-H? Or do we invest in a dedicated product line, like speakers or speaker-phones. And so we identified five business areas where we would like to be active in the future. There’s sports broadcast, augmented reality, virtual reality, listening, and 3D recording. And whenever we do this, we come from a holistic point of view. So, we would like to cover the entire chain from the recording to the mixing to the listening part. And in the future you will learn more about our approach because we are investing more in mixing, we bought some companies, we’ll come up with some products — but this is our intention, when it comes to products, we look