Clubhouse adds spatial audio to app and makes it default

Audio chat app Clubhouse is getting the feature to play conversations with spatial audio. As a result, audio from people will seem to come from a certain place. That should make it easier to distinguish voices.

The feature will first come out on iOS and later also on Android, Clubhouse reports. It will become the default way of tracking conversations within the app. There will be an option to turn it off in the settings, but if users use earphones or headphones, it is on by default. On iOS, that will happen in the coming weeks, when the feature on Android will be available exactly is not known.

The function should work by not distributing the audio of voices equally between the left and right channels and also slightly adjusting the timing of the sound. That works with HRTF. This should give the illusion that the persons belonging to the voices are in a certain place in a 3D space around the user. That should make it easier to distinguish those voices, because there is a spatial association involved. Plus, conversations need to feel that way.

Clubhouse came out for iOS last year and became very popular. The app lets users create chat rooms in which the hosts can talk to each other. Other users can also enter these areas if allowed, but can only listen to the conversation. Meanwhile, the app has competition from various companies, who have incorporated the functionality of Clubhouse into their respective platforms. Earlier this year, Twitter introduced Spaces, Facebook and Discord introduced Clubhouse-like features, and Spotify introduced its Greenhouse audio chat app.