Immersive Audio sounds like something you might hear about in an AMC pre-movie commercial where Nicole Kidman wistfully waxes poetic about the beauty of cinema for about a minute. And while we are headed the right way with our thought process, the concept of immersive audio is actually a lot more accessible than … whatever it is I spent the first sentence trying to describe.

According to an article on the Grammy’s website, immersive audio is the art of putting “listeners in a specific place, localizing ‘sound — not just in front of you or inside your head but all around you…’”

Great. Now you know what it is. Or maybe you knew that already. But did you know that this technological art is beginning to make real (sound) waves in the AV industry? If you knew that too, keep reading. Here are five things about immersive audio that you might not know.

1. Immersive audio. It’s not just for cinema. Or the Sphere.

Right. So if you know anything about this, you’ll know it’s very heavily used in movie theaters. But did you know that it’s also used in museums, corporate AV and even houses of worship? According to an article in Religious Product News, immersive audio in a house of worship “elevates the congregational experience, making it more engaging and interactive. Instead of just hearing music or words from the front of the room, the sound wraps around you, making you feel like you’re a part of the worship experience.” (If you want to know a little more about the science behind how this works, check this article out.)

2. This isn’t actually a new concept.

The idea of rigging sound waves to wrap around a listener has been around for years and years. It’s just had a few different names! Mark Willsher, a scoring mixer and music editor in London, U.K., writes for the National Academies of Engineering, Science and Medicine about how people use the terms surround, spatial, immersive and binaural interchangeably — and this all stems from multiple audio trends that began a long, long, time ago.

“Binaural reproduction (immersive audio specifically for headphone playback) has been done since the dawn of stereo in the late nineteenth century,” Willsher said. “There was (and probably still is) an impressive binaurally produced audio tour of the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay. I had the joy of experiencing it in the early 2000s … Not to mention Ambisonics (too big a topic to go into here), which has been around for decades, and even 5.1 and 7.1, which can all be incredibly immersive. None of these are new.”

3. It leverages psychoacoustics to create 3D soundscapes.

Yes, yes. I know I mentioned before that if you wanted to read about the science of all this, you could read the article from last year. I changed my mind. Sound acoustics is the scientific study of sound perception and audiology. Immersive audio plays upon this to, seemingly, immerse the listener in sound. Or, really, music, so much so that the listener is not paying attention to their surroundings. To make a 3D soundscapes, there is a lot of science and math involved. But you do want at least a 5.1 system, with the speakers high on the walls and ceiling and pointed down. You also need an immense understanding of the room — including its materials, measurements, etc.

4. Immersive audio uses both channel- and object-based audio.

Channel-based audio is when a channel of audio directly feeds a speaker. This is true for mono, stereo, 5.1, 7.1 and 22.2. For object-based audio, each channel has “positional metadata attached to it.” This metadata has all types of information like length, width, direction, etc. Each channel/object represents one single sound in an entire scene and there can be multiple that build up at the same time. In this same vein, objects can only exist for a finite amount of time or can move position during a period of time. An article on Analog IC Tips says immersive audio/spatial utilizes both channel- and object-based audio, along with scene-based audio to create the most immersive experience possible.

5. The price might go down soon.

As with any technology that hits the market and/or becomes really trendy and marketable, it’s expensive. But, before you know it, it becomes so popular that to compete in the market, companies find ways to accomplish it for cheaper and cheaper. The environment is just right for the price to start dropping. The tools and software are already becoming less expensive and more accessible to integrators. I say give it another year. Perhaps all our living rooms will be decked out in immersive technology (probably not but a girl can dream).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading these facts as much as I enjoyed writing them. Have any more immersive audio fun facts? Email them to me here.