Last updated: August 7th, 2026 at 10:14 UTC+02:00
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Unlike Dolby Atmos, which requires proprietary licensing, Eclipsa Audio is open-source and royalty-free.
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Samsung
Google and Samsung unveiled Eclipsa Audio in 2024, and the spatial audio technology debuted with Samsung's soundbar and TV lineup in 2025. Now, the South Korean firm has revealed more details about how its Dolby Atmos rival works.
Eclipsa Audio was jointly developed by Google and Samsung and is based on the Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF) specification, which is maintained by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). The two companies engineered the core system, spatial audio metadata framework, encoding, and playback pipeline.
Samsung Electronics
Eclipsa Audio's pipeline for recording, mixing, processing, and reproduction
The technology natively supports channel-based audio setups, such as 5.1.2-channel and 7.1.4-channel configurations. It incorporates spatial metadata for 3D positioning across front, back, left, right, and height dimensions to deliver immersive audio beyond fixed-channel systems. As a result, sound automatically adapts to a playback device's capabilities, whether it is a soundbar (or a home theater audio system), TV, or a combination of both.
When Eclipsa Audio content is played on unsupported devices, it gracefully falls back to stereo audio rather than triggering a playback error.
Because Eclipsa Audio operates on an open, royalty-free standard independent of any specific codec or licensing model, it allows for seamless integration across various content types (such as concerts, movies, musicals, and sports) and hardware platforms (including phones, tablets, and TVs).
Last month, Samsung announced that it is bringing its first Eclipsa Audio experiences to TVs via Samsung TV Plus. While Samsung Research co-developed the Dolby Atmos rival alongside Google, its commercial implementation on Samsung TV Plus was carried out by Samsung's Visual Display (VD) division, which manufactures the company's TVs and soundbars.
Samsung tested the acoustics of Eclipsa Audio in a 280-seat live concert venue with the help of a professional sound engineering firm. Its goal was to verify how to capture real-time spatial audio, encode it, live stream it via Samsung TV Plus, and reproduce the audio experience faithfully on supported devices.
The test also ensured that switching between the spatial audio of a musical concert and the stereo audio of TV advertisements would not cause audio stuttering or audio-video sync issues.
Samsung
Eclipsa Audio feature on Samsung TV Plus' STN channel for an immersive musical concert experience
Following successful testing with classical and K-pop musical concerts, Samsung plans to expand Eclipsa Audio to live sports coverage, movies, and TV shows.
In its long-term roadmap, Samsung aims to use spatial audio metadata to give users granular control over their listening environment. This will allow listeners to isolate or emphasize specific audio elements, such as boosting vocals, suppressing crowd noise, or highlighting live sports commentary.
First Samsung device: T100
Asif is a computer engineer turned technology journalist. He has been using Samsung phones since 2004, and his current smartphone is the Galaxy S23 Ultra. He loves headphones, mechanical keyboards, and PC hardware. When not writing about technology, he likes watching crime and science fiction movies and TV shows.
