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Since establishing significant operations in Indianapolis in late 2023, business has been booming for immersive audio company Edge Sound Research.
In December, the California-founded firm not only closed on its latest round of capital funding—details of the round won’t be made public until June—but also worked with Major League Soccer to showcase its technology as part of the league’s second Innovation Lab startup cohort.
The company’s work focuses on creating audio infrastructure that can be used for a variety of applications, ranging from sports and live entertainment to theme parks and immersive environments.
Edge Sound Research’s first invention, called embodied sound, re-creates audio not through speakers but vibration. It uses proprietary software and audio-capture technology as well as specially designed plates that can be attached to objects like stadium seats to reproduce and amplify vibrations into sounds as if a listener is right on top of the action.
Co-founder Valtteri Salomaki said the use of vibration is “very different” from traditional speakers because Edge’s method engages a listener’s entire body, rather than just the ears.
“Why not have it be that every single object in your living room, from your coffee table to your couches to your paintings on your walls” are reproducing audio through vibration? he said. The technology “changes the way you can create new spatial experiences … because we’re not trying to compete with speakers. The whole couch becomes the sound.”
Jeff Hintz is CEO of Sports Tech HQ, an organization that serves as a contracted arm of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to procure and connect sports technology companies to entice investment around the state. The organization doesn’t invest in prospective companies but makes connections to venture capital firms and others that might be interested in doing so.
Hintz said there’s been extensive interest in Edge since the company, founded in 2020, first said it would establish a business headquarters in Indianapolis (its CEO still lives in California, but most of its operations are in Indiana), because of the company’s unique approach to audio.
“The fact that you kind of feel it, and they’ve replicated the actual sound that may be happening on the court into a seat back where it’s almost a digital twin of the sound, is pretty fascinating,” Hintz said.
Edge has already implemented its system in a limited capacity at a few venues, including some suites at Gainbridge Fieldhouse and Indiana University’s Memorial Stadium through partnerships with Pacers Sports & Entertainment and investment group IU Ventures, respectively. The organization is also implementing the technology in some race-day suites at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway before making a push to expand into full venues.
The company also hopes to add facilities and sports enterprises statewide as partners, Salomaki said, including Purdue University and the Indianapolis Colts. But he also has hopes for more commercialization.
To that end, he said, Edge Sound Research plans to roll out “large partnership announcements” with other audio industry players in the coming months that will focus on further distribution of the company’s technology.
“The bigger vision we have is, absolutely, a majority of the seating in the venue,” he said. “But I would actually argue our technology’s value is taking that experience out of the venue and actually putting that in every single living room around the world. There’s more people that are big fans of a sport that never get to attend a game, and that opens the door for new types of ticketing and premium subscriptions.”
Edge is also pursuing partnerships for another invention that Salomaki, co-founder Ethan Castro and the rest of the 10-person company hope to integrate with the other side of the business.
Salomaki said through partnerships with the NBA and MLS, Edge is working to improve audio capture during sporting events, also with the goal of creating a more immersive experience. The company was part of the NBA Launchpad program for startups in 2023.
The new invention aims to use existing microphones and other emerging types of audio-capture devices to help track movement more precisely. It does so by using algorithms to listen through every microphone available around a field of play to triangulate an object and get what’s known as a “clean feed,” or sound that’s not polluted by other noises.
He pointed to the game-winning shot made by Indiana Pacers player Tyrese Halliburton that sealed a first-round playoff win against the Bucks on April 29.
“Imagine an audio track of him all the way from the point of running down the court to making that final shot, and it’s just him,” Salomaki said. “That’s what we’re able to unlock with our audio-capture technology.”
Those partnerships, he said, could enhance the viewing experience, not only for those at the game or watching at home using future Edge-powered devices but also at venues that specialize in broadcasting immersive sports.
Cosm, a Los Angeles-based company that creates large virtual environments meant to mimic the at-game experience, could theoretically be among the companies Salomaki said could benefit. He said Edge does not have a partnership deal with Cosm—which sources have told IBJ is looking closely at Indianapolis for a future location—but that the audio element is the next evolution of furthering the experience for visitors to that and similar types of venues.
“The foundational problem in these new types of immersive experiences is no longer the visual side—we’ve figured that out,” he said of the industry. “Audio is always left behind, but it is the thing that spatially makes us feel like we’re in an environment. Right now, a lot of these [companies] are learning the limitations of how you can utilize audio in your spaces to match these beautiful visual perspectives people are getting.”
In addition to applications in the entertainment industry, the company hopes to create inroads for the technology to be incorporated into the engineering and medical fields. Salomaki said Edge hopes to partner with institutions like Indiana University Indianapolis and Purdue on those endeavors.
“We’re not the team to be able to do clinical studies on that, [but] we can work with local universities on it, and there’s a lot of applications in the medical field,” Salomaki said. “We have the mechanism and the tool and the know-how. … But the more we can work with academic institutions on validating all these other impacts of controlled vibrations into the human body, the more that unlocks over time.”•
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