Audio Experts from Thuringia at Prolight + Sound and Musikmesse

Hear where the action is – this is the vision under which Fraunhofer IDMT's directional sound mixer has created impressive acoustic effects on the festival stages in Bregenz and Mörbisch for many years. The directional sound mixer, developed at Fraunhofer IDMT, allows the au-dience to perceive singers and orchestra always from the right perspective and can follow the stage action acoustically, too.

At this year's Prolight + Sound, Fraunhofer's directional sound mixer is presented not only in a new, more compact version, but also under a new name – SpatialSound Stage. The compact version has been developed especially for clearly arranged stages with a limited number of actors. It is ideal for controlling sound and direction simultaneously. This way, also the SpatialSound Stage Compact features first class sound quality for directional sound and scenes.

The award-winning Fraunhofer flat speakers feature an extremely slim design with only 2.4 cm depth as well as convincing sound quality. So far, conventional flat speakers needed a certain distance from the wall to unveil their full sound. The ultimate advantage of flat speak-ers – to be mounted closely to walls to save space – can not be used this way. In contrast, Fraunhofer IDMT's flat speakers develop also their full sound quality if mounted directly to a wall or if integrated into furniture. As a premiere at Prolight + Sound, the acoustic experts present their active plug&play version of this speaker system. All electronics is directly inte-grated in the loudspeaker. It includes a DSP and a two-channel class D amplifier.

At the Musikmesse that is held at the same time as Prolight + Sound in Frankfurt Fraunhofer IDMT is present with its software Songs2See. In our digital age, children experience the world of sound and rhythm not primarily through playing a musical instrument, but by using a computer. Game consoles run applications like Singstar, Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Songs2See makes learning to play real instruments as easy and entertaining as a video game. The difference is that you don’t play along on a guitar shaped game controller, but instead with real instruments. This motivates and trains both the musical knowledge and mo-tor skills. And the clou is: With just a few mouse clicks, you can convert your favorite song into an exercise and arrange it with others into an exercise portfolio. Songs2See is still under development and is presumably available as a product at the end of 2011. For further infor-mation and an up-to-date demo version, please refer to www.idmt.fraunhofer.de/songs2see.

Come and visit us at Prolight + Sound in hall 8.0/stand H20 and at Musikmesse in hall 5.1/stand C55.

Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau conducts applied re-search in the field of digital media and works on leading projects and topics in the field of audio visual applications.

Besides sound solutions for home- and professional users (e.g. IOSONO® Wave Field Synthesis technology) software technologies for analysis and characterization of multime-dia content as well as audio-visual applications for medical engineering are being devel-oped. Furthermore interactive AV applications for entertainment and knowledge manage-ment and the design of architectures for digital online-distribution are in the institute’s re-search focus.

The Fraunhofer IDMT realizes innovative scientific results through prototypes and applica-ble solutions which come up to customer and market requirements in close cooperation with partners in economy, culture and science.

Since 2008, Fraunhofer IDMT has two new branch labs. The department Children’s Media, based in Erfurt, works on the development of innovative computer based program and edu-tainment formats for children and adolescents. The new project group Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology, based in Oldenburg, researches topics of audio system technology concerning the fields of health, transportation, multimedia and telecommunication.