—As the AES hosts its 57th International Conference next month on the “Future of Audio Entertainment Technology: Cinema, Television, and the Internet,” a special emphasis will be placed on audio’s next big horizon: immersive sound formats —
New York, NY, February 20, 2015 — The Audio Engineering Society hosts its 57th International Conference, the “Future of Audio Entertainment Technology: Cinema, Television, and the Internet,” on Friday, March 6 through Sunday, March 8, 2015, in Hollywood, California, at the renowned TCL Chinese 6 Theatres. The conference will feature the AES’s first-ever Immersive Audio Day (Sunday, March 8), an entire conference day packed with panels, papers, workshops and demonstrations focusing on one of the most active new areas of audio technology: immersive sound. Starting with the day’s presentation by Francis Rumsey entitled “Immersive Audio: Status and Challenges,” the day will delve into issues pertaining to mixing, asset management and processing for these massive multichannel formats.
Immersive Audio Day will bring together both pioneers and up-and-comers in the field to discuss immersive audio formats and how they continue to change the way we experience sound in cinema, on television, in music and online. For instance, representatives from Radio France will show and discuss how its new website, nouvOson, will broadcast 5.1 and binaural sound, utilizing a binaural technique initially chosen to reach people who do not have a home theater set for 5.1 productions.
A workshop, “Cinema Immersive Audio Delivery Standards,” co-sponsored by SMPTE and chaired by Brian Vessa of Sony Pictures Entertainment and also featuring panelists from Barco, DTS, Dolby Laboratories and Auro Technologies, will convey how standards for immersive audio are being developed.
Object-based audio, which is a key foundational element in immersive sound, will be addressed by three specialists from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria, through the presentation of the paper “Producing 3D Audio in Ambisonics.” The presentation will offer an overview of the current state-of-the-art in Ambisonics, including content production using Ambisonic main microphone arrays, or panning of virtual sources, spatial effects, and reproduction by loudspeakers and headphones.
Further exploration of object-based audio will continue with the presentation of “Localization of Audio Objects in Multichannel Reproduction” by the Fraunhofer Institute of Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau, Germany, which will also look into the new MPEG-H standard codec for high-efficiency coding and media delivery in heterogeneous environments.
“Next Generation Surround Decoding and Upmixing for Consumer and Professional Applications” will outline a new spatial audio algorithm that creates a channel-based three-dimensional sound scene from two or more input channels, while looking at how these new technologies will be applied to consumer and professional products for home, mobile and cinema applications.
The rest of the day is dedicated to residential applications of immersive audio, including for broadcast and webcasting. Chair Francis Rumsey will lead a panel looking at “Integrating Object-, Scene-, and Channel-Based Immersive Audio for Delivery to the Home,” followed by the workshop “How to Make Big Small—Can We Really Bring Immersive Sound to the Home?”
“Immersive Audio remains a major direction in which professional audio is headed,” stated Bob Moses, AES Executive Director. “This is the logical extension of the work that resulted in 5.1 surround sound becoming a standard for movies and television. AES’s efforts helped establish those standards, and what we accomplish on our Immersive Audio Day at the 57th International Conference will go a long way towards doing the same for immersive sound.”
For information on the AES 57th Conference on The Future of Audio Entertainment Technology, as well as further Registration, Travel and Technical Program information, visit http://www.aes.org/conferences/57/. An AES Member and Student discounts apply.
