Hasta La Gadget!

SweetSpotter is a quite ingenious application that adjusts the output of your stereo setup so you are always in the “sweet spot” using nothing but your webcam and some clever trickery.

The problem: Every pair of speakers has a sweet spot floating between and in front of them. If you plant your head (and therefore your ears) in this spot, you get the full stereo effect. With well made music, and good enough speakers, you will perceive voices and instruments placed in 3D space, or a “sound-stage”. Move out of this spot and the magic disappears in a 2D puff of noise.

Install SweetSpotter and you’ll always be in the right place. The software, from Sebastian Merchel and Stephan Groth at the Technische Universität Dresden, uses your computer’s webcam combined with face-detection to track your head. Armed with this information, SweetSpotter adjusts the volume and delay of each channel making sure the sound reaches your ears at the right time to maintain the effect.

Of course, it is limited to a computer with a webcam, but for laptop-listening why not fire it up? If you are running any flavor of Windows since XP, you can grab a free download and try it out. Or, of course, you could just put on some headphones.

SweetSpotter [TU Dresden via Engadget]