This is ostensibly about AirPods, but it’s really about the possibilities of software:
… a simple tap of an AirPod or a quick voice command can take us to a different location via sound. Utilizing HomePods as sound receivers, an AirPods wearer would be able to “move” from the kitchen to family room. A quick tap of one AirPods, or Siri voice command could bring the wearer from the family room to kitchen to answer a family member’s question or simply to be “in” the room.
Admittedly, Apple is the only entity that’s even close to being able to deliver this sort of tech. It’s a combination of consistent hardware, fine-grained geo-fencing, identity & permissions and only then the actual audio-switching software.
This bit in the article took me back to an idea I had had years ago:
Another example involves utilizing AirPods to deliver different sound experiences to different people despite being in the same location and looking at the same thing. As an example, a single presentation shown in a school or office setting can end up delivering a dozen different experiences to those in attendance.
As an engineering undergrad student, I wondered simplistically if frequency division multiplexing could mean that different groups in a single movie theatre could enjoy different movies. The video and audio feeds would be FDMed; each group’s glasses and earphones would extract different video and audio signals. You’d get the experience of enjoying a movie together in a theatre even if you were split between what movie to watch.