The sound of success: Edge Sound Research raises $1.9 million seed round
The Edge team at the 2024 NBA All-Star weekend in Indianapolis
Val Salomaki, CEO of recent NBA Launchpad alum Edge Sound Research, says that if you want to understand his vision to transform audio production, you need to try his company’s embodied sound technology firsthand.
The same idea applies to investing in it. When Seth Berger, who heads early-stage VC fund Potential Capital, first heard of the immersive experience Salomaki and his fellow co-founder, Ethan Castro (CTO), were building -- one transducer array-embedded seat back at a time -- he had to try it.
“I just knew that when I sat down and had the speaker on my back, I literally felt the sound, as opposed to hearing the sound,” Berger said.
Berger’s Potential Capital has since invested twice in Edge, including the “no-brainer” decision to lead a $1.9 million seed round that closed this month. Elevate Ventures, Techstars and NBA Equity, which is taking a strategic equity stake following Edge’s completion of Launchpad, also participated in the round. This brings Edge’s total funding to $2.7 million.
How Edge works
As for how Edge does what it does? Allow Salomaki to explain.
“We’re a multimodal company,” Salomaki told SBJ. “And what that really means is we figured out a solution where we can actually use vibration to turn a material into sound.”
In Edge’s most prevalent use-case so far -- suite or premium seating at live sporting events -- that means attaching its ResonX Core transducer to a seat, wiring it to a venue’s sound system and, using proprietary software, configuring it to align its vibrations with the seat’s material, creating flat, master-grade audio. The ensuing sensation is that of feeling sound radiate from oneself, as opposed to blasting at you from a speaker. And the sound transmitted can be as intimate as the bounce of a basketball.
“Our success is when you can say: ‘I want to watch a basketball game, and I want to watch Steph Curry, and I’m getting the way Steph Curry is perceiving the game,’” Salomaki said. “I want to make it feel like you have a camera on his shoulder -- and everything that he’s perceiving, hearing, feeling, is what you as a fan are experiencing. That’s what going to connect you with the sporting events you love.”
In the realm of professional sports, Edge has been through the Twins Accelerator by Techstars and, during its NBA Launchpad run, tested in five seats at the Kings’ Golden 1 Center. Typically, the sound channeled through the system is pulled from the venue’s on-site microphones, but during the NBA Summer League last year, the company for the first time installed its own courtside capture system to investigate a potential audio-management software application for broadcasters.
Field experience
Edge now works with two NBA teams, the Pacers and Cavaliers. The Pacers’ partnership, Edge’s first NBA team deal, was catalyzed by Salomaki and Castro winning the Rally IN-Prize pitch competition in Indianapolis (where the company is now based). That experience wound up with the co-founders meeting Pacers President and CCO Todd Taylor, who says Edge has established an “unofficial headquarters” on the team’s campus.
Edge installed its ResonX Core technology in 12 seats in Suite 50 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse (which received a Sports Business Awards nomination for Sports Facility of the Year), which, fittingly for a company with musical roots, is sponsored by 50 Cent and used by his G-Unity Foundation. Taylor said. Edge also set up 100 square feet of transducer-embedded flooring at Gainbridge for NBA All-Star weekend, deployed the audio-capture solution from Summer League at the Indy Classic, and has a demonstration area in the Pacers’ gaming center.
“I’m really glad we’re able to test it in our environment, and we’re able to get some real-time feedback,” Taylor said. “We’re trying to figure out -- is it going to be an incremental revenue opportunity, or is it going to become sort of a standard offering from a benefit standpoint? ... Is this about future buildouts? Or, as buildings become more dynamic and flexible and creative with space use, incorporate some of these applications in non-bowl viewing spaces, so that you’re never that far from the game action.”
An 'Edge' outside sports
Edge was born from Castro’s experience as a hard-of-hearing music enthusiast, producer and scholar who relies on touch to process sonic information. He and Salomaki met while graduate students at UC Riverside -- where Salomaki got his MBA and Castro earned a Ph.D in digital composition -- then delved into grant-backed research on the concept of multimodal perception. “That’s the most important part of our company,” Salomaki said. “It’s all about leveraging multiple senses to understand information.”
The initial thought was to apply the technology in recording studios, but Salomaki now sees a path to use cases across the entertainment spectrum, from theme parks to at-home integrations to creating “volumetric audio” for immersive devices like the Apple Vision Pro. Live sports -- with hurdles like ensuring zero latency, installation in already-built venues, or filtering out superfluous noise -- was a logical place to start. Solving the biggest problems first will pave the way to scale down the road.
“It doesn’t [do] us any good if we’re just hidden in a lab and building this,” Salomaki said. “We’ve got to build with our partners, because it’s actually a real-world thing, so that we can then make sure we’re not guessing how it actually gets implemented and scaled out.”
Author: Rob Schaefer
