Full Bandwidth Audio – the next big audio market
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Within the audio industry, both hardware manufacturers and content providers have have reached an interesting impasse, which is how to extract more money from consumers. The bulk of users appear happy with the audio quality they’re getting from their current hardware, as well as being satisfied with their audio streaming services. Unlike the video streaming industry, which is spending billions on generating new content to attract subscribers, audio streamers are largely relying on their back catalogues. Whilst manufacturers and streamers have tried differentiation through enhanced quality, specifically by providing hi-res or lossless codecs, they’ve found the take-up disappointing, mainly because few consumers can notice the difference.
This poses a quandary for the industry. They’ve invested significant amounts of money developing new, high quality codecs, which can sample audio at rates which only bats are likely to hear. The components industry has also poured cash into developing new audio transducers, producing micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) speakers, capable of rendering audio at frequencies way beyond the limits of human hearing. This technology has led to a new generation of microphones with frequency responses which are flat up to 100kHz – a major step forward from common studio microphones, which typically have frequency responses that start falling off at 14kHz. Once again, however, what they capture is beyond human hearing.
It’s all very clever technology. But nobody really knows what to do with it. In the absence of any credible ideas, the the audio industry, which has done what it does best – coin a new initialism of FBA to describe the experience as Full Bandwidth Audio. But, at that point, they have stumbled. With the exception of a small, audiophile market, who will pay obscene amounts of money to convince themselves they have super-human hearing, the audio industry has found little consumer interest in purchasing something they can’t hear. They desperately need to find a new market where consumers will shell out money for new equipment and new subscriptions.
As often happens in audio, when the industry incumbents struggle with innovation, development appears from outside, where a totally different range of companies have started exploring the potential new markets which could be created by embracing Full Bandwidth Audio. In this case, that innovation is coming from a rather unlikely source – the pet industry.
The pet sector is currently experiencing spectacular growth. In the U.S. it reached almost $157 billion in total expenditure in 2025, driven by increasing pet ownership among younger generations, and high demand for specialized pet food. Analysts like Capstone talk about the drive for pet humanization, noting that investor appetite for the pet sector continues to be very strong. (Note that the industry no longer talks about anthropomorphism; it’s all about humanization, as the bonds between pet and owner become ever stronger. Capstone rather excitedly report that they are receiving inbound calls on a weekly basis from groups looking to enter or expand in the space. And “Expand” is what they intend to do with FBA.
One of the leading examples of how to play this market is cat and dog “wine”. The market for these non-alcoholic, nutrient-packed, or herbal beverages formulated specifically for pet consumption has experienced notable growth, driven by the “humanification” of pet diets and the desire for experiential, calming, health-functional and even shared treats. Yes – owners really have started eating pet food. It’s a market that likes punning, featuring products like “CharDOGnay”, “Pinot Meow” and “Pawsecco”. 375ml bottles typically sell for around $15, often costing more than the wine that their owner will be drinking alongside their pet. But that’s the attraction of the market.
Analysts AMR have been tracking the size of the PET wine bottle market and predict shipments of around 270 million in 2026. If we take figures for the global pampered pet market as being around 130 million, (about 30% of pets) and assume around 10% of those are being wined and dined by their human companions, then that estimate of 270 million PET wine bottles equates to around one date night every three weeks for the lucky Fidos and Kittys.
Premiumization is another common industry word, signifying the fact that pet owners have opted for higher-quality goods and services that mirror their own consumption habits. Younger consumers in particular have displayed a higher propensity to spend on their animal companions. Generation Z (aged 13 to 28) reported spending $6,103 on average annually on their pets, according to a recent Harris Poll. What is attracting the interest of the industry is that this is exactly the same demographic that in previous generations had embraced instances of audio disruption, buying transistor radios, Walkmans, iPods and Spotify. It’s largely orthogonal to the established audiophile market that the audio industry is concentrating on, and represents a completely new opportunity.
Humanisation is a booming market. Young and lonely owners can have a quiet night in with their pet, drinking wine and eating snacks together, while watching their favourite film. All that’s missing is the feeling their pets are reacting in the same way to the film. That’s where FBA come in. There are already channels targeting pets; TV channels like DOGTV and Happy Dog TV exist, claiming to reduce anxiety and provide stimulation for pets through specially curated visuals and sounds. However, these mainly offer content designed to keep pets calm and entertained when home alone. Where FBA is exciting new entrants to the pet market is through the possibility of using higher frequency audio to stimulate specific emotions in pets which could match those of their human owners.
Most of the activity in this sector is still happening in stealth mode, as the companies involved are keen to have a solid product before announcing it to the market. Historically, there has been a limited amount of research into the response of animals to high frequency sounds beyond the extent of human hearing. Most of this has been about control, from inaudible dog whistles, to broadcasting sounds which produce a fear response, predominantly to try to keep animals from where they might cause damage. The most well known of these are bird scarers at airports and fish deterrents at the cooling inlets at power stations. In recent years, the emphasis has changed, as researchers have realised that sounds in this higher frequency range, inaudible to humans, can be used to induce a range of emotions in animals from comfort to low level anxiety.
Several startups are working on how to match these reactions with popular TV streaming series, adding an FBA stream that mimics the expected emotion of the human viewer. So, when a film inspires an adrenaline rush in the viewer, the FBA track would result in a similar reaction being felt by the pet. When a romcom produces a warm surge of love, your dog or cat would respond similarly. It is a blatant play to humanisation, where the sales pitch is to share emotion. Despite the fact that the pet’s emotion is unlikely to have anyting to do with the film’s content, the owner will easily convince themselves that they are experiencing a shared passion. Somewhat cynically, the new industry already talks of FBA as Fur Baby Audio.
There is a problem. Adding a FBA track to popular video content would be a gargantuan task, like adding new languages. Industry players are already referring to this approach as Petflix (although that name is already in use), but it is difficult to see how adding a FBA emotion track to every video stream could ever recoup its production costs. However, the emergence of edge AI processors is changing the game, allowing a new breed of companies like EmPEThy to generate these FBA audio elements on the fly. The FBA algorithms in their products analyse the sound track of streaming videos in real time as the film is viewed, assessing the type of emotion that is likely to be present. It uses this analysis to select from its database of emotional phonemes, rendering these in their dedicated FBA speakers, which the owner will position next to their TV or sofa. They claim to have developed over five hundred of these emotional phonemes, which can accurately match the reactions of the human viewer. The appeal of their approach is that their FBA box can be sold as a stand-alone box that is attached to the audio output of any TV or PC. They also claim good results with an integrated microphone which picks up ambient sound from speakers.
Cat engagement appears to be one of the first applications to come to market. Feliciti – an early stage startup which is due to emerge from stealth mode, is rumoured to have attracted significant funding for their claimed ability to keep cats interested for extended viewing times. This is something which has always been seen as one of the challenges separating dog and cat engagement, with cats more likely to disengage with their owner during the course of the film.
All of the new entrants are focusing on subscription models, following the learning of current pet accessory suppliers who have discovered that owners who are happy to spend money on pets as companions are generally prepared to commit to annual plans. Subscription models have performed well for dog and cat treat boxes, with the average cost of a monthly treat box from Pampered Pooch or DogBox sitting at around $55 per month. Cat treat boxes are generally cheaper, but the difficulty of keeping cats engaged may mean they could command significantly higher FBA subscriptions if the promises of prolonged engagement can be met.
Never shy to introduce new acronyms, some of the FBA players have recently coined HAPPI – the Home Alone Pampered Pet Indulgers to describe their target market. They report that 49% of U.S. adults who have never been married own a pet, 55% of Divorced/Separated/Widowed individuals own pets, 57.1% of single women living alone own pets. Single men living alone with pets have traditionally been less common, but have recently seen a rapid increase, rising to 42.8%.
What is less clear is when the first products will appear. A few of the players are looking at product announcements at next year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2027, but there is a strong feeling that some startups may try an earlier soft launch to grab the Christmas market. One question that the industry is grappling with is the route to market. It’s unlikely that any traditional audio companies are willing to participate, at least in the short term as it is too far from their comfort zone. However, FBA entrants need to supply hardware to connect to TVs or streaming devices, which includes some fairly challenging new technologies. The companies developing the emotional phonemes also need to build their algorithmic models and work out licensing and application programming interfaces. Neither are trivial, which may mean that we see little before 2027.
What is clear is that there is a huge potential untapped market, where pet owners appear happy to pay fo get emotionally closer to their pets. If subscriptions match the volume of wine shown above, it implies a market value of around $7.8 billion, just for annual subscriptions. That’s larger than the $7.2 billion that FutureSource Consulting are projecting for the premium consumer audio market. A major attraction for investors is that it is a completely new space, implying that new entrants have no competition from major players, at least in the early years. Those who can get market share have a clear run to become unicorns, which is driving the funding interest. Although the audio hardware behind FBA was designed primarily for audiophiles, it looks as if it will spawn a completely new audio industry based on indulgent owners and their fur babies.