At Brandenburg Labs, innovation thrives at the crossroads of technology, creativity, and curiosity. In our Expert Insights series, we speak with the brilliant minds behind our work, uncovering their perspectives on audio technology, research, and the creative processes that drive breakthrough ideas.
For this special holiday edition, we’re closing the year with someone whose vision and legacy lie at the core of Brandenburg Labs: our CEO and co-inventor of MP3, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Karlheinz Brandenburg.
In this conversation, Prof. Brandenburg reflects on his journey from pioneering audio research to building a company rooted in innovation, curiosity, and real-world impact. We explore how Brandenburg Labs came to life, how Ilmenau’s vibrant research ecosystem continues to shape our mission, and what the future of immersive audio might hold.
As the year comes to an end, he also shares personal traditions, aspirations for the new year, and his advice for the next generation of engineers and entrepreneurs.
Join us as we explore the story and the vision of Brandenburg Labs at its heart.
You’re known globally as the co-inventor of MP3. How did your personal journey with audio technology ultimately lead you to start Brandenburg Labs in 2019?
My journey in audio technology began long before Brandenburg Labs. From a young age, I was driven by curiosity in engineering and mathematics, building electronics and exploring how sound and technology intersected. This passion ultimately led me to pursue electrical engineering and digital signal processing during my studies, and later to research perceptual audio coding, the work that became the basis for the MP3 format.
During my time at the Fraunhofer Institute in Ilmenau and as a professor at the Technical University of Ilmenau (TU Ilmenau), I worked extensively on challenges related to the reproduction of immersive sound via loudspeakers and basic research in spatial audio. When my contract at Fraunhofer IDMT was coming to an end in 2019, I realized there was still some unfinished work I wanted to pursue, and that is what led me to found a start-up.
Brandenburg Labs emerged as a spin-off from TU Ilmenau and Fraunhofer IDMT, allowing us to build directly on decades of seminal research in audio science. Over many years of research and development, one challenge remained particularly persistent, creating truly immersive audio experiences over headphones. With this mission, our team strives to create cutting-edge audio technology that is inspired by how we listen to the world.
When you started Brandenburg Labs, what core vision did you have for the company, and in what ways has that vision evolved as the team and technology have grown?
We had already been working extensively on the concept of PARty during my time at TU Ilmenau, and this represented the long-term goal for the company from the very beginning. The idea of PARty, short for Personalized Auditory Reality, was developed at TU Ilmenau and Fraunhofer IDMT and aims to extend the limits of the human hearing experience.
The vision behind PARty is to enable highly personalized listening through intelligent audio systems, allowing users to focus on relevant sound sources while reducing unwanted background noise. This concept formed the technological foundation of Brandenburg Labs from the start. An important part was the ability to recreate a sound illusion in a room via headphones, similar to what can be done via many loudspeakers with Wave Field Synthesis.
At the same time, translating a long-term research vision into a viable company requires intermediate steps. We needed to identify practical product milestones and develop a sustainable business model over time. As the team grew and the technology advanced, our product strategy and business plan evolved accordingly, while the core objective, to connect the digital and real-world through immersive audio and unlock the full potential of human hearing, remained unchanged.
Ilmenau has a strong research and startup community. How has being based here shaped Brandenburg Labs’ culture, collaboration opportunities, or innovation?
During my time at TU Ilmenau and the Fraunhofer Institute IDMT, I worked together with many colleagues to help establish Ilmenau as an internationally recognized center for audio technology. That visibility and reputation naturally supported the founding of Brandenburg Labs and continued to enable strong collaboration opportunities.
In addition, my long experience within both the university and Fraunhofer environments shaped my understanding of how research-driven teams function, how collaboration is organized, and how a shared culture develops within such groups. These experiences influenced the way we think about collaboration and culture at Brandenburg Labs today.
You navigate multiple roles as a scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. How do you balance long-term research ambitions with the day-to-day demands of leading a growing technology company?
This is something I have been doing since the early to mid 1990s. From the beginning, my work has involved combining basic research with development, leading teams, and thinking about practical implementation and business models at the same time.
That combination is what I like about my job. It is multifaceted, and balancing long-term research ambitions with day-to-day responsibilities has long been an integral part of my work.
The past few years have brought rapid changes in spatial audio and VR/AR. From your perspective, which emerging technologies will have the biggest influence on immersive audio in the near future?
Over the past few years, there has certainly been progress in this area. In terms of real breakthroughs, however, I would argue that the work we did in Ilmenau represents the most significant advancement in immersive audio in quite some time.
Looking ahead, one of the key factors that will influence the further adoption of immersive audio is the widespread availability of headphones that are truly capable of recreating immersive sound. At the moment, this is still not fully the case, and it remains an important prerequisite for the technology to reach its full potential.
Looking five to ten years ahead, where do you see Brandenburg Labs in terms of product direction, market presence, and technological impact?
Looking ten years ahead, our goal is to become a major brand, offering our technology and devices worldwide. We want Brandenburg Labs to be recognized not only for strong research, but also as a leader in headphone technology.
As we look ahead to the new year, are there any personal or professional traditions and goals that you’re excited about?
On a personal level, one tradition that has remained important to me for decades is spending New Year’s Eve with close old friends. We come together for a quiet evening, share a good dinner, laughter and enjoy meaningful conversations, without the noise of fireworks.
For young engineers, researchers, or entrepreneurs who admire your work, what guidance would you offer as they begin shaping their own careers and ventures in audio and beyond?
I often quote a journalist from 20 years ago who wrote about the MP3 team: our success came from vision, over-time efforts and persistence, but you also need some luck.
The lesson is simple: don’t be discouraged if something doesn’t work on the first attempt. Progress takes time; persistence is essential, and sometimes a bit of luck is required to bring things together.