When Sound Sells

These are not your mom and dad's video games. And this is certainly not your mom and pop retail experience.

Today's video games is as much a cinematic experience as it is an engaging gameplay experience. And sound is absolutely one of the most critical components of a great video game. But sound isn't just for the game, it can be used in a retail setting in an effective way to bring the potential buyer into the experience. Turtle Beach Corporation knows this, and created the Hypersound® virtual reality audio solution as a way to immerse the buyer in the experience of the product. And when it comes presenting the value a product brings to a lifestyle, audio is perhaps one of the strongest connectors.

Recently, Turtle Beach impelmented Hypersound® into Activision's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare retail displays that have been in installed in almost 1,000 Best Buy locations in North America. The installation represents the largest implementation of virtual reality audio in a retail setting.

From Turtle Beach’s press release, Rodney Schutt, SVP and General Manager said, “This marquee implementation of Hypersound® will change the way retailers think about retail audio. This is the first, large-scale implementation of a new generation of retail audio that is unlike anything that has been done before.”

Hypersound® audio emitters and a sub-woofer are integrated into the base of the retail display. They create a zone of audio that encompasses anyone standing in front of the display. The quality of the audio is three dimensional, creating a virtual reality effect that is similar to wearing a pair of surround sound headsets. The engineers at Turtle Beach have recently developed a new approach to HyperSound’s digital signal processing that creates a more immersive, three-dimensional audio experience.

Hypersound® represents a revolutionary new way to deliver targeted brand and product messages in store. Site-specific, targeted point-of-sale messaging can provide a number of benefits to retailers, including increased engagement and dwell time, and increased average revenue per customer. Because Hypersound® creates a controlled sound zone, multiple displays can gain the benefits of audio in the same store without conflicting. To date, the use of audio with displays and kiosks has been limited by the noise bleed associated with traditional speakers, and the sound reflection and low volumes associated with earlier versions of directional audio.

Said Todd Savitt, Vice President of Commercial Audio Sales and Marketing, “Immersive audio is a key engagement mechanism. In a retail setting, where sound often competes with the category or the entire store, this is a focused experience, a physical area where the customer is separated from the store by audio to truly enjoy the experience.”

You can see a demonstration of Hypersound from DSE in 2014.

You can see the press release on the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare implementation here.

Learn more about Hypersound and contact them at their member page.