AES publishes 3D audio standard
Published: MEA
WORLD: The Audio Engineering Society has published AES69-2015, a new standard which provides the framework for the binaural and 3D personal audio industries. The standard, which describes the format and exchange of spatial acoustics files, is the product of the AES Standards Committee.
The new AES69-2015 standard defines a file format to exchange space-related acoustic data in various forms. These include head-related transfer functions (HRTF) as well as directional room impulse responses (DRIR). The format is designed to be scalable to match the available rendering process and is designed to be sufficiently flexible to include source materials from different databases.
This project was developed in AES Standards Working Group SC-02-08, with the writing group being led by Matthieu Parmentier and principal authors Piotr Majdak and Markus Noisternig. The standard builds upon an earlier project to define a spatially-oriented format for acoustics (SOFA), which aimed at storing HRTF data in a general way, capable of supporting any transfer-function data measured with microphone arrays and loudspeaker arrays.
‘AES69 represents a fundamental piece of architecture for taking personal audio to a new level of performance,’ said AES Standards Committee chair, Bruce Olson. ‘Using this, product developers will be able to take advantage of transfer-function databases from all over the world to produce a truly immersive 3D audio experience.’