Mach1, a leading spatial audio technology company, announced that its patented Mach1 Spatial audio technology is available on the Bose AR platform. Mach1’s unified audio framework gives content creators and developers a transparent and simplified approach to spatial audio -- offering a future-proofed pipeline that is platform, format and codec agnostic.

Bose AR is an audio-first approach to augmented reality using Bose AR-enabled products which have motion sensors embedded inside that can detect a user’s head orientation and body movement. Bose AR-enhanced apps can use that information, along with location data from the user’s mobile device, to provide tailored audio content. Mach1 Spatial enables spatial and positional audio rendering for content creation (encoding) and playback (decoding). The Mach1 Spatial SDK directly utilizes the sensors from the Bose AR enabled products to easily bring a range of spatial audio and multichannel handling features to any custom application. 

Mach1 has developed the most transparent and simplified approach to spatial audio that empowers audio professionals to be in full creative control of their spatial audio mix and pre-render the highest quality directional and positional audio. The Mach1 Transcode API from the Mach1 Spatial SDK also enables and supports all major multichannel channel surround and spatial formats making it easy to support any content.

Founded by audio director Dražen Bošnjak and CEO Jacqueline Bošnjak, Mach1’s radical innovation was iterated while working on the spatial sound production on some of the industry’s most high profile VR projects including The Martian VR, ALIEN: COVENANT In Utero, Chained and Dear Angelica. 

The Mach1 Spatial software developer kit (Mach1 Spatial SDK) offers a frictionless content and format handling environment for safely ingesting and future proofing all commonly seen mix formats from spatial to surround. The accompanying workflow tools in the Mach1 Spatial System allows audio professionals to work in their preferred digital audio workstation, like Avid’s Pro Tools Ultimate, while preserving traditional audio standards and best practices and allows them to be deployed for interactive mediums such as AR and XR. 

“Mach1 preserves decades of real-world experience attained by sound engineers and enables audio professionals to extend their craft on Bose AR,” said Mach1 inventor and audio director Dražen Bošnjak. 

While Mach1 SDK is now available to developers and creators through the Bose AR platform, consumers can also get a taste by listening to Bošnjak‘s Disney The Lion King remixed in Mach1 Spatial. “The Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata” are available now on BoseRadar through any Bose AR enabled device. The mixes put you in the Lion King world with vivid soundscapes from Africa where the power of spatial audio is palpable.

Spatial music is not new, in fact human beings are hard wired to hear spatially. Our ability to hear spatially is inherently connected to our evolution as a species and our very survival. 

“What is new is that for the first time spatial audio hardware is now available to consumers, which is why we are excited to bring Mach1 to Bose AR,” said CEO Jacqueline Bošnjak.

“Mach1 updates the Futurist Manifesto The Art of Noises for the 21st Century,” said Jacqueline Bošnjak, referring to Luigi Russolo’s 1913 influential text on musical aesthetics that liberated music from the tyranny of the past by incorporating noise into music. “The industrial and mechanical era may have liberated music but subsequent technologies also limited the freedom that they defined producing the static formalism of locked stereo. There were riots the first time Russolo introduced noise into traditional music, and while I don’t think liberating the world from stereo with spatial audio is going to cause any riots, it should!” 

“Sound wants to be free, it’s a spatial phenomenon,” said Dražen Bošnjak. “The magnetic tape recorder invention unleashed the genius in Cage, Schaeffer, Stockhausen, et al. We are excited to see what artists do with spatial audio.”

Mach1 Spatial API’s will be offered as a companion library to the Bose AR SDK, putting forward Mach1 as an approach to spatial audio for any developer to use on Bose AR. Any Bose AR-compatible product is capable of playing Mach1 Spatial audio when used with a compatible app. This includes Bose Frames, QC35II, and Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700.