Daniel Fletcher | Sounding Future

Daniel Fletcher is the inventor of Airsound Spatial and founder and CEO of Airsound Ltd. A second-generation audio engineer, he spent eight years designing and hand-building the acclaimed Joemeek recording equipment range with his father, the engineer and console designer Ted Fletcher. In 2005, experimenting with Mid/Side playback, father and son made the discovery that became Airsound. Its latest generation, Airsound Spatial, is designed to make Spatial Audio much more accessible – using Mid/Side dipole steering to deliver a fully immersive sound field, including Dolby Atmos mixes, from as few as two speakers.

The audio solution that was waiting for its problem

Almost a century ago, Alan Blumlein set out to understand how recorded sound technology could be developed to deliver a lifelike experience of sounds from different directions. Stereo became the practical answer and conquered the world. But the question Blumlein was asking was much bigger, even, than stereo itself.We tend to assume that good ideas in audio arrive ahead of their time. Some do. But a few are not early so much as waiting: complete, correct, and quietly irrelevant until a problem turns up that needs them.The most interesting idea I work with is one of these, and it is almost a century old.

Daniel Fletcher