Audio Engineering Society European Convention in Warsaw, Poland

Immediately following the intense schedule of the High End show in Munich, Germany, audioXpress attended the 2025 Audio Engineering Society European Convention (May 22-24) in Warsaw, Poland. An exciting event where most deeper technical sessions focused on spatial and immersive audio. But what does Immersive even mean? What Is the Future of Spatial Audio for Consumers? Those were questions asked and debated at this AES convention, where leading audio engineers and researchers focused on the latest advancements in those audio applications.

Immersed in Audio Innovations. More than 20 demonstration cars. Record number of sponsors. Sold-out registrations for the 5th Audio Engineering Society (AES) Automotive Audio Conference at the spectacular Geely Uni3 Center, in the historic town of Gothenburg, Sweden. Roger Shively explains why the 5th International AES Conference on Automotive Audio, in Gothenburg, Sweden will be one to remember.

Swedish audio DSP pioneer Dirac promoted a demonstration of the world's first in-car IAMF spatial audio installation in cooperation with Google Open Media and sound design house Vaudeville Sound. The Immersive Audio Model and Formats container format is being promoted for User Generated Content (UGC) and professional audio applications, as an open format alternative, which Google will support for Youtube content. Dirac setup an immersive system on a Volvo to showcase the potential applications for automotive.

The Alliance for Open Media is a non-profit industry consortium formed to develop open, royalty-free technology for multimedia delivery that can "serve as alternatives" to the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) standards. The organization is the creator of the AV1 Video Codec and now proposes an Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF) Container Specification that the organization says will enable ecosystem-wide innovation in the Immersive/Spatial audio domain.