Quick Summary
• Sound Particles 3D Prints Its Employees’ Ears to Perfect Spatial Audio March 19
Additional Context
A 17-person audio software company in Lisbon has 3D-printed replicas of every employee’s ears, heads, and torsos to test acoustic realism, part of a push to bring theater-quality spatial sound to ordinary headphone listeners. Sound Particles, founded in 2016, uses the printed models for granular acoustic testing based on the premise that each person’s unique anatomy shapes how sound reaches the brain.
The company’s core technology borrows from computer graphics: it treats individual sounds as particles in a 3D environment, letting creators place sounds in virtual space, assign position and movement, and capture the result through virtual microphones. That approach underpins soundscapes in productions including *Dune* and *Oppenheimer*. A small number of base samples can be adjusted into t