Fraunhofer Highlights upHear Tech at CES 2025

Erlangen, Germany (December 9, 2024)—At CES 2025, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (Fraunhofer IIS) will present upHear Flexible Rendering, a new audio technology designed to simplify immersive sound experiences on consumer audio reproduction devices.

The latest addition to Fraunhofer’s upHear range of audio processing technologies, upHear Flexible Rendering enhances and distributes sound to all available speakers for an enveloping immersive audio effect. Adding or removing a speaker from the system is handled by its automatic adaptation to the current playback situation, the company says.

According to Sebastian Meyer, Product Manager upHear, Fraunhofer IIS, “Currently, users can only connect to one smart speaker at a time or to a fixed setup per room. With the upHear technology, you now have the flexibility to combine any number of speakers into an immersive speaker cluster wherever you want.”

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At CES in Las Vegas in January, the company will demonstrate how, using smart speakers, the upHear algorithm optimizes the sound image based on the current setup. Visitors will be able to try out repositioning speakers for themselves. The wireless speaker setup will also use the Fraunhofer Communication Codec LC3plus for ultra-low-latency wireless audio transmission.

Fraunhofer IIS will also show its upHear microphone processing technologies. An “office” in the developer’s demonstration suite at the Venetian Hotel will show advanced AI-based technologies such as echo control, noise reduction and the latest feature, voice isolation. Users can create a “fingerprint” of their voice, which makes it possible to remove all sounds but their voice from a call for a personalized live call experience.

Also on show will be upHear Mobile Audio, Fraunhofer’s virtualization platform for spatial playback experiences on headphones. It works from a multitude of sources, from legacy stereo to current immersive formats, and can run on DSPs for any audio device class—headphones, mobile devices, home audio systems or low-power XR devices.