01/09/2026
Apple markets "spatial audio" like magic. Samsung slaps "Dolby Atmos" on everything. Then a company you've never heard of hired me to find out why they are better.
Their problem was simple, the solution difficult: The team could hardly explain, what makes their rendering for headphones arguably more immersive.
And if you can't name it, you can't build it, sell it, or promote in marketing.
So I stopped reading spec sheets and started listening.
Same tracks, same head-tracking, real movement: walking, turning, looking down.
The way people actually listen, not how a lab measures.
Then I did the part that's actually my job. I translated every engineering decision into what a listener really perceives.
Change an early reflection here, and the voice externalizes more.
Shift a tuning there, and the room stops feeling like a room.
Thinking from a content perspective what makes it sound "better".
I sit in the middle and connect the two, so a team knows what to build, what to fix, and how to say it publicly.
Their VP, Chad Lucien, put it better than I can: I bring "a deep understanding of the technology and its impact on the listening experience."
You can't spec your way to immersion. You have to listen for it.
Building headphones or spatial audio and stuck on what "immersive" really means for your product? That's the conversation I have. 👇
