Jonathan Rowden Speaks in depth about Spatial Sound at Overworld Studios in an interview with Beyond Stereo Entertainment
Disclosure: This is a transcribed edit of the original conversation with Jonathan Rowden
Introduction
This week we spoke with Jonathan Rowden to get the inside scoop on the spatial audio industry. Jonathan is among the most influential leaders in the spatial audio industry. Jonathan has been the Founder and CEO of Overworld Studio for two years, and previously has been a professional saxophonist since 2006 and has completed his masters in jazz/saxophone from 2007-2011. Jonathan has also taught as a university professor at numerous universities and colleges while performing gigs as a jazz saxophonist before becoming an independent spatial audio producer, sound designer and engineer.
Jonathan provided us lots of insight to his past and journey through the industry and below we will cover the highlights of our conversation with him.
Q: How did you get involved with ambisonics?
A: “In the beginning I was a professional jazz artist in a quartet while teaching at different universities. In 2014 I had created an album titled ‘Becoming”. I have always had a philosophical angle to my music and becoming really stood for the idea that you don’t just exist, you are always in a constant state of becoming. The vibe of this project was to tell a story of the primal rage of biology and streamlining out into an ultra-modernistic drum and bass song to end the album. Aesthetically it showcased the type of music I like such as music that is extreme and also music that is more streamline and modern. So, I like both ends of it; I like free jazz as well as drum and bass and I think they have a lot in common.
After this album I created my second album called “Skyward Eye” and the intention with Skyward Eye was to create even more of a story. During this process I worked with a good friend of mine named Kazu Kibuishi who is a graphic novelist who wrote the Amulet series and he live painted a lot of fantasy and future landscapes while we were on tour and that artwork inspired the album Skyward Eye. Skyward Eye was a journey that was an outwardly focused journey rather than an internal journey that was very much a fantasy landscape airship ride which is how I envisioned it. When I was producing that album I ran across an ad on facebook for Ossic headphones and the Ossic X headphones was a headphone that had 4 drivers per ear that would automatically calibrate and generate audio in the direction of your ear to create a convincing 8 channel speaker array that would decode ambisonics and binaural audio. Now, I had never heard of ambisonics until I saw these headphones so I organized a meeting with this company in San Diego and they put me in VR and allowed me to grab sounds and move them around my head in real time and I was just totally hooked! I decided that Skyward Eye was going to be an audio video game based on this album. Unfortunately, that never panned out but the more I got into spatial audio and began learning how to produce it over the next 6 months I realized this was obviously the future of listening and even if people don’t want to invest in it right now I thought it was worth investing myself into this creative process. Which leads me to where I am now.”
Q: Tell me about the Journey of your development of Overworld.Studio. How did it all begin?
A: “During my time in the jazz world I began to see that I loved the music but I was hating the culture. Jazz was becoming overly politicized and I found it hard to be part of that community anymore. Afterward I did some soul searching and I had come up with the name Overworld because in a video game the overworld is the world map that connects all of the different regions and zones. I am a huge gamer and I have been my whole life. When I produced Skyward Eye I was playing Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger where I would try to catch these nostalgic vibes before I would go and compose and that was my creation process. To me, I have always seen myself as a bridge builder between industries and people so I would ask myself what is it that is required for spatial audio and music and now narrative projects, as I am experiencing, to have the immersive industry fit into the sound industry? I soon realized that you need and Overworld! A place where these different veins of travel intersect, we need a world map basically with easy ports of access between each end. And thats really how I came up with the name Overworld.”
Q: Who/What do you feel is the biggest obstacle in the spatial audio industry currently? What challenges do you find yourself needing to overcome with spatial audio?
A: “In my opinion, people who are in the music industry and people who are in the film industry might tell you different things. In the music industry it was hardware. The concern was how are people going to listen to this? Then it was work flows for film, TV, and music. Work flows were a big issue which are now finally being overcome. Then it was integration and hardware for those industries but now we have home speakers which are generating virtual Atmos and such through devices like sound bars. (read more about ways to consume spatial audio in our previous blog post) Now, those barriers are a lot lower.
From a creator standpoint though, I would say the biggest hurtle is meaningful education and propagation of content. There just needs to be an extensive amount of content out there. Trying to get creators to use it and put out ambisonic content regularly and getting it to go viral is what I believe will push us over this obstacle. Thats what I am most interested to see what happens with independent creators who adopt this idea and influence others to follow.”
Q: Who would you consider to be a leader or role model in the spatial audio industry, and what do they do differently that elevates them to this role?
A: “At the time I started diving into spatial audio I didn’t know anyone on the west coast that was doing spatial audio so it was one of those situations where I looked for inspiration and mentorship from people who would run game companies. For me I would say the people that I thought were leaders at the time were people like of friend of mine who was doing sound programming at Magic Leap and people in the Facebook groups that I am a part of who are really great in this like Erik Lohr, the head of audio at Ryot Studios who I really saw as a leader because he is the head of audio at a major studio that does a lot of spatial audio stuff. Although, in music I don’t really see anyone who is a leader yet. I think right now its very much an engineer game for leaders, I think the people who are programming the tools and technology like IEM and universities who are spear-heading spatial audio production or CEO’s of major companies like MH Acoustics or Voyage Audio who do ambisonic microphones or workflows for artist, those people are the real leaders right now.”
Q: What predictions can you make about the future of the spatial audio industry in the way it is currently heading?
A: “I think because of what is going on for consumers right now there is a lot of incentive for creator workflows to improve. It seems like thats happening with relatively short order. A lot of people in a new industry are innovating really quickly like Dear Reality, part of the Sennheiser group has new features rolling out soon. Many major audio companies like my endorsers say that they have their eyes on spatial audio right now and again thats where I am trying to help serve them. It feels like everybody knows its coming but they just want to see what the roll out is like. For instance the new AirPods with the new IOS update that supports head-tracking has made a big advancement.
Although I will say this, I think the future is bright but in order for the future to work out the way that we want it to we have to be very committed to making content and not monopolizing it, we have to be committed to expanding the industry for everybody. Even if that mean that the giants remain giants, creators who want to get into this have to focus on making the best content possible, and if we do that then it makes it look better for everybody. So if you succeed then it is by proxy helping me succeed and that is what it is going to take. A huge part of the future to me, and this is just a gut feeling, is the innovation of spatial audio radio drama podcast and audio books. I think these areas will be way bigger than Dolby Atmos music ever will be and there is one reason for that; almost nobody sits down and listens to a song just to listen to it. When you listen to an audio book, you are more engaged moment by moment than when you listen to music, generally speaking. Now, that doesn’t mean that music is less than it’s just the nature of how people listen to music; they skip through their playlist then listen to the drop and then move on to the next tune. But in a story you’re obligated to sit there and listen to it so to me its a very natural medium. That is why I think it this will be the next big intersection of this technology. And like I said, this is totally anecdotal, it’s just a gut feeling.”
Q: What goals does Overworld.studios have to continue bringing value to the spatial audio industry and community?
A: “Currently we have a platform that we want to build to help creators. It is not in competition with anybody out there who is making plugins or more of something where we will work collaboratively with them so I am in discussions with that vision, It is a dream of mine that I want to see become true and I don’t know if it will happen but I definitely planning as though it will. That’s the only way to get from ideation, which is when you come up with an idea to actually producing something whether it’s a piece of music or a platform or anything else. Then there is the goal that I want to keep working with Splice and creating sample packs and blow out their library with ambisonic content. I also have some other partners that want to do some larger up mixing projects that would essentially expand their libraries of what they do already to multichannel and Atmos and binaural.
I think the main goal right now is to finish what I started with those partnerships. The short term goal is to just keep creating and make awesome content, and then the long term goal is to make it easier for other people to create it. “
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our interview with Jonathan Rowden as much as we did. To learn more about Jonathan Rowden and Overworld.Studio go to www.Overworld.studio or follow them on Instagram @overworld.studio, To listen to the ambisonic Path of Legends podcast go to any major podcast platform and search Path of Legends or click here.
What questions do you wish we’d asked? Post a comment below!
