Licensing computer chip design to Japan seems a bit like carrying coals to
Newcastle. But a small company from Sydney has done just that with an innovation
to make the sound in headphones more realistic. The technology is already being
used by one of the world鈥檚 major airlines.
Japanese consumer electronics companies are always on the lookout for
anything that might give them an edge over their rivals in a fiercely
competitive market. So perhaps it鈥檚 not surprising that Sharp, the electronics
giant based in Osaka, should sign a deal late last November with tiny Lake
Technology for the right to make chips based on the Australian firm鈥檚 patented
design to enhance the quality of sound in headphones for portable audio products
such as CD and MP3 players.
While some might see the deal as a loss to Australian industry. Lake
Technology鈥檚 co-founder and chief technological wizard, David McGrath, begs to
differ. 鈥淎ustralia has this tradition of innovation,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut it goes in
hand with a tradition of disgruntled inventors who complain that they couldn鈥檛
find an Australian company that would buy their invention or fund further
development. And yet another Australian invention goes overseas. Our first
reaction is, 鈥榃ell that鈥檚 good, that鈥檚 where inventions should go.'鈥�
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The original impetus for Lake鈥檚 technology came through a contract with CSIRO
Radio Physics to build a specialised computer to study pulsars. This stimulated
McGrath to dabble in the 鈥渂lack maths鈥� of digital signal processing.
He came up with improved algorithms鈥攚ays to do the
processing鈥攖hat turned out to have applications in the new field of audio
simulation. The Australian company鈥檚 computers could be used to simulate audio
environments, to determine, for example, how to make teleconferencing sound more
natural. But this was only a small niche market.
Meanwhile, however, a big change was taking place in audio consumer products.
During the 1990s, 鈥淪urround Sound鈥�, a digital technology originally developed in
1982 for use in cinemas by Dolby Laboratories, began to infiltrate the living
room.
The technology enabled the producers of sound effects to create aural
illusions, such as rockets appearing to shoot over the head of a listener and
explode behind.
This is fine in a cinema, but hardly in the home, where there are neighbours
to think of. And if you use conventional headphones, you lose the illusion of
space. The rockets sound like they鈥檙e going off inside your head, rather than
all around you. The problem facing headphone designers was how to externalise
the sound.
Before reaching the eardrum, sound from loudspeakers interacts with the
listener鈥檚 head and outer ears. This interaction provides spatial cues crucial
to perceiving sound in three dimensions.
With headphones, the sound goes straight to the eardrums, without the
intervening head and outer ears. So the trick is to use digital signal
processing to simulate the spatial cues that make the sound appear to be outside
the listener.
In 1996, McGrath patented a new digital filter for doing this. Two years
later, Lake licensed the technology to Dolby Laboratories in the US who promptly
dubbed it the Dolby Headphone. The simulator works not just with Surround Sound
movies, but also with conventional music CDs.
Since then, Lake Technology has gone from strength to strength. Last May,
Singapore Airlines became the first company to employ the Dolby Headphone
commercially, to enhance the quality of its in-flight entertainment. Other
airlines, including Qantas, reportedly are following suit.
The next step for Lake was to simplify the technology in the Dolby Headphone
so it could be put into an inexpensive, low-power chip suitable for use in
portable stereos. This is a clever strategy because it means that Lake gets two
bites of the royalty cherry鈥攐nce when chip manufacturers like Sharp
license the design, then again because the equipment makers have to pay a fee to
license Dolby Headphone. It鈥檚 like carrying the coals to Newcastle, and then
using them too.