About this project
OSSIC X: The first 3D audio headphones calibrated to you
$2,708,472
THE WORLD’S MOST ADVANCED 3D AUDIO HEADPHONE
OSSIC X is the world’s first 3D audio headphone that instantly calibrates to the listener, increasing the sense of auditory space, and acoustically recreating the way you hear the world everyday. By pairing advanced 3D audio algorithms with head-tracking and individual anatomy calibration, we deliver incredibly accurate 3D sound to your ears. Experience music like never before. Get more immersed in virtual reality. Bring gaming to the next level.
INSTANT CALIBRATION FOR A 10X AUDIO EXPERIENCE
OSSIC X calibrates to the individual listener’s head and ear features, increasing overall sound quality and ensuring the most accurate sound placement, making for a listening experience that’s ten times more immersive than current technologies.
- Increased audio immersion
- Hear your movies and music like never before
- Increased sense of space with your audio content
Audio is a crucial part of the way we experience content. By implementing accurate 3D audio, any content can take the listener to new places by improving the following:
OSSIC X FOR VIRTUAL REALITY
In virtual reality, sound is key. With accurate 3D sound we can give a sense of space and direct your attention to elements outside your field of view for a more immersive experience.
- Drastically improved sound localization
- Increased sense of presence
- Accurately render sound in any x,y,z coordinate in space
OSSIC X FOR GAMING
Having accurate sound in gaming can make or break the experience, allowing you to know what’s going on in the spaces of the game that you can’t see.
- Immerse yourself in the game
- Accurately position sounds for a competitive advantage
- Boomless mic for continued audio communication
OSSIC X FOR MOVIES
Imagine being able to watch any movie on the best speaker setup money can buy, from the comfort of your couch, bed, or anywhere.
- Enjoy any movie theater audio experience from wherever you are.
OSSIC X FOR MUSIC
OSSIC changes the way you listen to music. Imagine being able to listen to any song from your collection on the best speaker setup money can buy, or hear a concert from the best seats in your favorite concert hall.
- Replicate the ideal listening room or speaker setup.
- Hear your music exactly how the artist intended.
See and hear what others have said about hearing 3D audio for the first time.
WE ALL HEAR THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY BASED ON OUR ANATOMY
How we hear the world is not a one-size-fits all situation. It's our physical anatomy that plays a critical role in defining how sound enters our ears. This is called our head related transfer function, or HRTF. Our individual HRTF is based on:
- Our position in space
- The size of our head
- The shape of our ears
TRADITIONAL HEADPHONES DON’T ACCOUNT FOR OUR ANATOMY
With traditional headphones the listeners anatomy is not taken into account. This makes for an incredibly small listening experience, where sound remains close to your head rather than around you. This leads to:
- A “close to your head” listening experience
- Inaccurate ability to place sounds in space
- Degradation in overall sound quality
CALIBRATION PUTS YOU BACK INTO THE LISTENING EQUATION
OSSIC X calibrates to the individual listener’s head and ear feature, increasing overall sound quality and ensuring the most accurate sound placement, making for a listening experience that’s ten times more immersive than current technologies.
HOW IT WORKS
The OSSIC calibration process starts as soon as you put the headphones on. The data is instantly paired with our smart algorithms to determine accurate sound playback based on your anatomy and position. No laboratories required.
3D Audio naturally replicates the way we hear the world everyday, with measurable results.
This is done with two types of testing:
PHYSICS-BASED TESTING
Acoustical, physics-based testing. With a microphone in the ear, does the headphone reproduce the same signal as a real sound in space? Here we compared the OSSIC X to a gaming headphone.
PEOPLE-BASED TESTING
We ask people where they think the sound comes from with the headphone on, and compare it to where the sound was supposed to come from. Here we can see the OSSIC X places sound at the right angle and depth and the gaming headphone does not.
Using the AUX or USB connection, OSSIC X is compatible with a multitude of devices to provide 3D audio playback.
While the OSSIC X already supports existing standard 2D formats such as stereo, 5.1, and 7.1, we want to make it easy for game and sound designers to go beyond. By using the OSSIC X, you can design fully immersive soundscapes without installing ceiling speakers or sitting in your studio.
FOR GAME ENGINES
In gaming engines, the sounds can be tied to any objects or characters, and these are already natively positioned in 3D. Currently these sounds get compressed to, at most, 7 channels (and a subwoofer) on a ring around the listener. We are designing plugins that let natively 3D audio pass through to the listener.
We already have a prototype FMOD plug-in running, and it sounds great and operates efficiently. We are testing it with some early developers now. We would love to hear from you! Please fill out the survey to prioritize roll-out for the different platforms: Unity, Unreal, FMOD, Wwise, VST, AU, and/or others.
FOR SOUND DESIGNERS
For audio produced using standard DAWs, we will be supporting VST and AU.
ABBEY ROAD RED
OSSIC is proud to join the latest class of innovative companies at Abbey Road Red, a music and technology incubation program within the world famous Abbey Road Studios. More information can be found at http://www.abbeyroad.com/abbeyroadred
THX LIMITED
We’re excited to be working with THX to ensure that OSSIC X meets the highest standard for audio reproduction.
EVONEXUS INCUBATOR
OSSIC is proud to be supported by the EvoNexus Incubator in San Diego, CA.
Our other parters, friends, and supporters:
Thank you to everyone who has helped make this campaign possible. We wanted to also provide a few shout-outs to John Veleta and our amazing video team, Neology Concepts for helping spread the word, Nuuk Digital, and Gil Shterzer and Iddo Sternberg, for their help with our online marketing, and to all of our friends and family for their amazing support and dedication!
Stretch Goal 1: We'll be providing an additional USB cable with shipment for connections needing extra distance.
Stretch Goal 2: We'll now incorporate packaging improvements including robust box design, travel handle and protective sleeve. These elements will make the box reusable and travel friendly.
Stretch Goal 3: We will now enable 3D audio connectivity through phones and tablets equipped with micro-USB.
Stretch Goal 4: This stretch goal will allow 3D audio connectivity via Lightning cable to Apple phones and tablets.
OSSIC started in a home living room in August 2014. Since that time, we’ve spent the last year and a half developing over 9 generations of prototypes and countless acoustic tests in order to bring accurate 3D audio to headphones.
TESTING
PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT
A MISSION TO CHANGE THE WAY WE HEAR SOUND
After working in the audio industry for a combined fifty years developing some of the top selling headphones and speakers on the market, our founding team realized there was a large gap in what was currently available for 3D sound, and what was possible. The technology was available, but limited by intensive laboratory calibration and typically coming at very high cost. The team believed that everyone should have access to the highest level of audio experience possible, so they formed OSSIC in 2015 with one mission: to redefine the way we hear sound by taking the final leap between reproduced audio and audio that's indistinguishable from reality.
We’re redefining the way we hear audio in headphones. While we’ve come this far with an incredibly small team and a boot-strapped budget, we need your help in making this technology a reality.
MANUFACTURING COSTS
This is the most capital intensive part of our next phase. We’ve developed many headphones over the course of our careers, so we’ve got a very good idea on costs needed to produce the initial molds, purchase supplies, meet the minimum quantity order, and ship to consumers. We need your help to get us to the production phase of our hardware.
CREATING THE NEXT GENERATION OF 3D AUDIO
Our goal is to not only develop a product, but help educate the world on the potential of what a 10X improvement in audio immersion can sound like. To do this, we need your support from this initial campaign to not only fund our production, but also get the word out about what we’re developing.
Risks and challenges
As with any hardware project, there are always schedule risks associated with manufacturing and supply chain logistics.
The OSSIC team has successfully delivered hundreds of audio products to market. We understand the unique challenges of audio hardware and are familiar with how to avoid and mitigate any issues that arise. Additionally, we are working with a familiar tier-one manufacturing partner that builds for some of the best brands in the business.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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OSSIC X has excellent sound quality. Because they match the way you normally hear, they do not sound like any headphone you have heard before. They sound like real-life.
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OSSIC X has been designed and built with long term comfort in mind. It features soft earpads and an innovative micro-adjust earcup to conform comfortably to your head. You’ll be able to wear it for extended play and mixing sessions. The earpads are also removable and washable.
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OSSIC X is designed and tested to be durable. It is constructed from aluminum and other premium materials, and has been subjected to harsh quality control testing to ensure that these headphones both look good and survive in the real-world.
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OSSIC X enhances your existing content including stereo, 5.1, and 7.1 formats. For the newer 3D formats, we are working with companies to ensure there is access to object based formats, whether that be decoding available in the player, or through drivers in our device. We will keep you posted as updates become available. We will also support ambisonic formats, and are working with content developers for direct access arbitrary channel and object counts.
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Yes. The OSSIC X sounds great with stereo music, and can even spatialize a mono sound.
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In gaming engines, we are designing plugins that allow 3D audio pass through to the listener. For audio produced using standard DAWs we will be supporting VST and AU. We would like to hear from you what gaming engines and/or audio middle-layer platforms are most important to you. Please fill out the survey to prioritize roll-out for the different platforms: Unity, Unreal, FMOD, Wwise, VST, AU, and/or others.
http://goo.gl/forms/QvU1DXAxas -
The virtual barbershop is a binaural recording, which means that the sound was a one time capture with microphones in the ears of a person or dummy head. Where binaural recordings excel is at capturing the spatial acoustics of the sound source in an environment, but they have issues with spatialization accuracy and sound quality for the listener because generally the dummy head anatomy is not your anatomy and it is fixed frame, meaning that you cannot look around with a sound-field and have it react to you. OSSIC X can take arbitary audio files and spatialize them in any location around any listener.
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In research it is known that your HRTF can be quantified in an anechoic chamber with hours of calibration measurements and this can be played back to make you believe that sound is coming from any location. However, despite this knowledge there was a chasm between what is known and what is available to consumers. This was our frustration and is why we founded OSSIC.
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Yes, playback will be spatialized. However, you will have the ability to bypass the spatialization.
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The HRTF, or Head Related Transfer Function, is how you hear spatial sound. It is the difference between sound at an empty point in space, and sound at your ear with your body interacting with the soundfield.
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We will send a survey to all backers once our funding period on Kickstarter has officially ended requesting all necessary information for shipping your rewards to you (i.e. mailing address).
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At this time the OSSIC X will not include wireless connectivity, as the data transfer rate for Bluetooth and other wireless connections are currently too low to manage high-quality 3D Audio. This would increase latency and degrade the overall 3D Audio experience.
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Your additional shipping fee covers shipping and handling to your destination. If you are shipping outside of the United States, it does not cover VAT or additional country taxes.
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Email info@ossic.com for any additional questions!