Sony Announces ECM-AX10 Spatial Audio Microphone With Eclipsa Audio Support
Sony is building the capture side of a format the playback side has not finished building, so the Eclipsa Audio support lands ahead of the environments that would play the audio back.
Reporting from 1 source: ASCII.jp.
Sony announced the ECM-AX10 on October 9, a microphone that connects directly to a smartphone's USB-C port for spatial audio recording. It ships October 23 at open pricing, expected around 30,000 yen. Four omnidirectional capsules sit diagonally on a spherical housing, and a switch selects ambisonics (4ch), binaural (2ch), or stereo (2ch) output through Sony's Spatial Audio Video Tool app.
Sony put the capsules on a ball that juts out past the phone body, which keeps reflections off the handset from smearing the spatial image. The four omnidirectional mics are aimed diagonally up and down, front and back, so the recording carries height and rear sound rather than only what faces the lens.
There is no internal storage. Recordings go to the phone through the Spatial Audio Video Tool app, and the physical switch picks ambisonics, binaural, or plain stereo. Other camera apps fall back to binaural. The microphone weighs about 24 grams and runs on USB power from the phone.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.