Reading You to Sleep: Pilōtalk and Binaural Audio
FREDERICTON – Amid bright screens and distractions, Pilōtalk is using binaural audio to help you sleep better.
The Fredericton-based startup, founded in November of 2014, releases audio content including open-source stories, original relaxation exercises and ambient sounds to help those with sleep troubles fall asleep more easily.
Binaural audio recordings are reproductions of sound the way our ears hear it. The audio is created using a microphone which simulates a human head by recording sound on either side. The result is often called 3D audio: an experience that allows the listener to detect the direction the sound is coming from. This makes the listening experience so life-like that listeners are able to feel as if the narrator is in the room with them.
Co-founder Alex Kall says he came up with the idea for Pilōtalk when he was home alone during Hurricane Arthur in the summer of 2014.
“My fiancé was out of town with her parents and I was having a really hard time getting to sleep and it got me thinking about how being alone in the house was really affecting that,” he explains. “Being up at night without anyone around got me thinking about audio books and how having someone in the house reading to you can be really helpful.”
Kall first found out about binaural audio through his education in music technology and was so fascinated with the concept that he invested in binaural audio recording equipment. He then recorded mostly concerts for a few years and established a startup called Kall Binaural Audio in Halifax.
Kall says Pilōtalk is a spinoff of Kall Binaural Audio and initially kicked off at a startup weekend hosted by Planet Hatch last year when he banded together with his fellow co-founder Tom Creagh to make his dream a reality.
Tom Creagh’s interest was immediately captured by the idea. As a former residence advisor at St. Thomas University, he’d had contact with counsellors there who talked about the high volume of students with sleep related issues. Creagh saw the Pilōtalk idea as an opportunity to help people improve their sleeping habits and through that, contribute more generally to the improvement of their mental health.
Creagh says they’ve found encouragement not only through hearing from people who enjoy their audio books, but also from a sleep expert he met at a mentorship dinner who believed Pilōtalk could make a real difference.
Pilōtalk and its co-founders have received support from the startup community in Fredericton and mentors they’ve come across in the business’s development.
“We’ve had amazing support. We’ve even had legal work done for us by Aaron Savage. He was one of our professors at UNB and he’s been a great help to us and a great mentor,” Creagh explains. “Everyone’s looking to help and share their story and let you bounce your idea off them and give advice. It’s a great community for that.”
Creagh describes Fredericton as a big enough place to pursue opportunity, but small enough that connections are easily made.
Pilōtalk is now working toward increasing production and offering even more content for their customers. They’ve recently expanded their creation team and are exploring more ways of getting their content to the public.
Creagh and Kall encourage anyone who has trouble sleeping to give Pilōtalk a try. Kall explains that hearing binaural audio for the first time is a jaw-dropping moment for many, since it’s so different and more lifelike than stereo audio.
Demos of their stories, relaxation exercises and ambient sounds are available on their website.
“For us it’s all about trying to do our little part to make people’s lives a bit better. In our case it’s trying to help them get to sleep,” Kall says. “I really do feel that Fredericton has had a really big part in enabling us to do that.”