Dolby Labs’ Dolby Atmos FlexConnect platform is a clever concept. It’s software that’s designed to be built into a TV, where it performs some room calibration magic, ultimately letting you place your speakers anywhere you want, while still getting an Atmos experience. And now it has its first competitor: Fraunhofer UpHear Flexible Rendering.
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (better known as Fraunhofer IIS, or just Fraunhofer) — the organization that created the ubiquitous MP3 music format — will be demoing UpHear Flexible Rendering at CES 2025, exactly one year after the first demos of Dolby Atmos FlexConnect.
Just like FlexConnect, Fraunhofer says that UpHear Flexible Rendering will make it possible to place wireless speakers (just one, or multiple units) almost anywhere in your room, and the AI-driven system will automatically calibrate it to deliver optimized stereo or surround sound formats.
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“Currently, users can only connect to one smart speaker at a time or to a fixed setup per room,” said Fraunhofer IIS’ product manager for UpHear, Sebastian Meyer. “With the UpHear technology, you now have the flexibility to conveniently combine any number of speakers into an immersive speaker cluster wherever you want. Party music in the kitchen? Transform your living room into a movie theatre? Operas in the bathroom? It is all possible without a fuss.”
One big difference between FlexConnect and UpHear is that UpHear can be integrated into a variety of devices, including TVs, soundbars, and smart speakers, which means you may be able to create an UpHear system without trading in your existing TV.
When Dolby announced Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, it said the first FlexConnect TVs would be coming from Hisense and TCL. Those still haven’t shown up (maybe we’ll see them at CES 2025), which gives UpHear Flexible Rendering a chance to catch on and possibly take the lead on flexible speaker systems.
While UpHear Flexible Rendering is a new offering, Fraunhofer’s UpHear technology portfolio has been around for several years. It has already been integrated into a variety of devices like Sennheiser’s family of Ambeo soundbars, where it provides surround sound virtualization. Different versions of UpHear have been developed for cameras, smartphones, VoIP devices, headphones, and earbuds.
