The app, which is backed by venture capital firm Andreessen
Horowitz, jumpstarted the social audio trend last year and became known for
chatrooms of thousands that included chief executives and celebrities. However,
it faces increasing competition from larger tech giants like Facebook, Twitter,
and Spotify, which have all introduced their own social audio chat features.
The new surround-sound-like feature will help Clubhouse lean
into performances and entertainment rooms that have proliferated on the app.
Depending on how many speakers are in a Clubhouse room and a
variety of other factors, the app's technology will assign users a spatial
positioning, so that the listener will hear the voices surround them in their
headphones, said Justin Uberti, Clubhouse's head of streaming technology.
In comedy rooms for instance, Clubhouse's technology will
detect the main speaker and place that person's voice in the "front,"
while the laughter of other people could sound as if they're coming from a
listener's left and right sides, he said.
"I could hear people laughing and the room erupts
around me," Uberti said. "You can imagine in music ... there's a lot
of potential."
The spatial technology also makes it easier to detect when
different users are speaking, whereas people previously might have to pay
attention to the speakers' cadence and vocal timbre, he added.
Clubhouse, which started as an invite-only app and recently
was opened to all users, said more than 700,000 rooms are now created each day,
up from 300,000 in May.
Spatial audio will roll out first to iOS users and then
Android users soon after, Clubhouse said. © Reuters