Immersive Audio with Jordan Herron
Meet Jordan Herron
Jordan Herron is an OU Alumnus who graduated with a bachelors in Music Production & Recording Industry (MPRI) from the School of Media Arts & Sciences in 2019, followed by a masters in Communication & Development in 2020. Currently he is working for the McClure School as an immersive media producer and audio specialist for the Game Research Immersive Design (GRID) Lab.
Immersive audio was not Jordan’s original intention when he arrived at OU. A local to Southeast Ohio, Jordan had a strong interest in playing instruments and songwriting during his undergrad years, leading him to join the MPRI Program. However, in his junior year he was introduced to immersive audio and 360-degree video content during Professor Chip Linscott’s Understanding Virtual Reality Technology course. At the same time, Jordan became a student employee for the GRID Lab. During this time, Jordan worked on a variety of Cine-VR projects, a type of filmmaking that utilizes Virtual Reality technology. His experiences developed a deep knowledge concerning the equipment and software being used to produce impactful Cine-VR content. “After graduating from the MPRI program, I enrolled in the Communication and Development program and was able to work my graduate assistantship under the GRID Lab,” said Jordan, “As I was working at the GRID Lab I began to realize that I enjoyed editing sound to moving image much more than I enjoyed music production and so I’ve not really looked back.”
As an employee of the GRID Lab, Jordan does spatial audio recording and post-production for Cine-VR. Live sound engineering, recording ambisonic audio on film sets, editing immersive sound designs, and mixing 360-degree audio effects are just a few of the things he works on.
What is Immersive Audio
Jordan describes immersive audio as “sound produced in a manner that allows an audience to experience a more dimensional aural experience than what can be accomplished through traditional mono or stereo audio playback.” Immersive audio in a way creates a 3D effect to sound. Many have experienced immersive audio in the movie theater or in the comforts of home via surround sound set up, but Jordan’s job illustrates that those are not the only mediums in which immersive audio can be achieved. In Cine-VR, Virtual Reality headsets can utilize immersive audio as well. “Immersive audio can be also be ambisonic audio, which can be recorded using what are considered VR microphones that capture 4-channels or more of audio at a time,” said Jordan, “Ambisonic audio is what we record, mix and edit for the majority of our sound design in Cine-VR content here at the GRID Lab.”
Immersive audio can also be spatial audio, a set up that essentially creates sound all around the listener in a 360 degree sphere. Jordan explains that spatial audio can “be made up of audio that was recorded in mono or stereo format that is then mixed into ambisonic formats. Using ambisonics, 4-channels or more of audio can be played back using headphones. When viewed through a VR headset, ambisonic audio changes directionality with the viewer’s perspective.”
Power of sound
Immersive audio guides the listeners attention and focus as if the sounds were being heard in real life, which to Jordan has “the power to influence the audience’s ability to suspend belief.” Jordan’s love for his work furthers when combined in Cine-VR, where immersive audio not only engrains the viewer in content, but according to Jordan also “[gives] the viewer an ability to influence and interact with what they are experiencing.” Unlike normal speaker set ups where you only hear sound from one direction, the multi direction nature of immersive audio coupled with the Cine-VR projects in the GIRD Lab result in the ability of the viewer to control that directionality. Depending on where they walk, the headset will adjust the directionality of what they are listening to via head-tracking on the VR Headset. With the headset, “when a viewer is looking around in a 360-degree environment, the sounds that they hear will move in accordance to their gaze” says Jordan, describing the experience as “very life-like.”
The McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies strives to offer the best academic programs in the IT (Information Technology), the game development and the Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) industries. Our programs and certificates cover numerous aspects of the rapidly changing industries of information networking, cybersecurity, data privacy, game development, digital animation and the academic side of esports.