A remarkable feature of the human auditory system (and that of many animals) is that the audio processing centre of the brain has evolved to ignore irrelevant information, or more specifically has adapted to filter out short-bounce echoes. When we do hear echoes, they are known as long-bounce echoes. If our brains didn’t filter short-bounce echoes, we would struggle to make sense of each other and the audible world.

Can we hide information in the ‘blind-spots’ of the human auditory system? Making use of this natural filter for short-bounce echoes, we take source content containing all kinds of audio (speech, music, sound effects etc.) and we modify it very slightly by introducing artificial echoes. This method of inserting inaudible echoes within existing audio gives us a form of audio watermarking, a way of embedding information into audio.

Intrasonics audio watermarking is ideal for use in cases when there is direct access to the source audio or video that needs to be encoded.

Because the same piece of audio can be uniquely watermarked, it is possible to identify not just the content but also the context - e.g. the same TV advert running on different channels, or on the same channel at different times.

1. Using Intrasonics software, extra sounds are hidden in audio and video content through an encoding process called Audio Watermarking.
2. The Intrasonics decoder listens via a device's microphone and extracts data from the watermarks it hears. Decoder Software Development Kits (SDKs) are available for Android, iOS and Javascript.
3. Your app, website or embedded hardware code is programmed to respond to watermarks in exciting and engaging ways. We provide some full examples in each SDK on which you can base your project.

Audio matching can be used without direct access to the audio or video media content. For example, if the same TV advert airs on multiple channels then it will be identified as the same piece of content. However, since the audio track is identical, differentiating between them is only possible using external data such as the known times of broadcast for the advertising.

1. Using Intrasonics software, a recording of the audio or video to match is analysed and a "fingerprint" hash file is created.
2. The Intrasonics SDK samples audio from a device’s microphone and compares the resulting real-time fingerprints with those for known content. A set of fingerprints can be stored locally in the client device for faster matching and a huge database of fingerprints can be held on a server for broader matching.
3. When a match is found, your app or website is programmed to respond in exciting and engaging ways. We provide some full examples in each SDK on which you can base your project.

Piracy is a big threat to content owners, creators and distributors. Original content is a key draw for users and hence controlling the distribution of the content is of prime importance.

Intrasonics’ watermarks are robust enough to survive most, if not all, pirate attacks and even survive recording ambient audio.

Intrasonics can provide a combined solution for content protection, engagement as well as audience measurement all in one package.