Nothing is more painful than having to turn your speakers up to cater to an extremely quiet individual with a very poor microphone, only to have a very amped up person join your chat room and speak with garble and static. It's not uncommon, and it's one of the most annoying aspects of modern VOIP. Dolby aims to correct this little oversight in voice over internet protocol, by offering up what they've called "Axon."
Axon aims to differentiate itself from other voice over internet protocol programs by offering up uniquely designed visual chatrooms where people can position and reposition themselves in each channel's "Room", the room contains about a hundred different tile settings allowing currently, up to 50 different people to crowd the area without crowding the voice chat, even if they're all talking at once. This is primarily because your location in the room determines the volume of your microphone depending on the direction that your "arrow" or "nose" is pointing as well as how far you are from the person you're talking to. This is particularly ingenius because it allows you to distance yourself from those really loud garbled individuals with poor microphones without cutting them off completely. It also allows you to move in closer to the people with really quiet microphones to turn up the volume on them, without turning up the volume on other people on the channel.
Another major benefit to Axon is the amount of flexibility and variety involved. You can be in multiple channels with multiple different push-to-talk buttons. You can even set it up so that you can talk to multiple channels simply by mapping it properly in the options menu. With some work, a guild leader could very easily talk to hundreds of people at once, and only be able to hear only the individual channel leaders. There are even individuals "rooms" or "splits" for each channel to mute or separate individuals, giving even more customizability and flexibility for leaders.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Dolby's Axon can be found in the surround sound effects. Based on the position of people in your chat channels to your position, you will be able to hear them on your left, your right, your front, your back. If they're facing away from you, you won't hear them as much, if they're talking directly at you, you'll be able to pick them out with ease, even if there are dozens of conversations going on in a single chat channel. It's almost like being in a natural crowded room and being able to pick out individual conversations.
So far only 50 people can fit into a chat channel, but, Dolby hopes to improve on this number, and frankly, we do too.
Dolby's Axon is projected to be in beta on September 27th, but release has yet to be determined.
~Dairuka Sutain