Nintendo Patents Watch

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Knowledge-based discourse

In-house 3D Audio

Patent US20250350898 seems to confirm that Switch 2’s 3D spatial sound is a home-grown solution by NoA, not a licensed product. It is the latest continuation of the original 2021 patent that describes techniques to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and quality of an object-based audio spatializer.

Drawing from patent US20250350898: FIG. 5 shows example spatialization parameters.
Drawing from patent US20250350898: FIG. 10 is a block diagram of an example modified architecture that uses cross-fading.

When the original patent was published, I suspected but wasn’t sure if it’d be used in Switch 2. This new continuation added a section about generating 3D sound from a handheld’s built-in speakers (crosstalk equalization), a strong indicator that it is indeed used in NS2.

Drawing from patent US20250350898: FIG. 17 shows example cross-talk paths to a listener's respective ears from internal left and right loudspeakers of a handheld stereophonic (multi-channel) video game playing device.
Drawing from patent US20250350898: FIG. 16A is a flowchart of example automated program control steps that may be performed by a programmed digital signal processor and/or an appropriately structured digital signal processing circuit in example embodiments.

[Originally posted on 2025-11-14 Pacific Time]