The Audio Engineering Society has announced the second International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality, taking place August 20-22, 2018, at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, Redmond, WA.

The conference and exhibition will bring together a community of influential research scientists, engineers, VR and AR developers, and content creators.

The conference’s keynote presenters – Jean-Marc Jot, Distinguished Fellow, Magic Leap; Ivan Tashev, Partner Architect, Microsoft Research Labs Redmond; and Ravish Mehra, Lead Research Scientist, Facebook Reality Labs – are at the forefront of innovation for VR and AR.

According to Tashev, “audio and video are integral components of AR/VR devices. Spatial audio is an area still under development; we need better capture, representation and rendering technologies. To make it mainstream, we have to catch up with authoring and editing tools as well.”

The three-day conference and expo will focus on the dissemination of top-level research in the field of spatial audio for virtual and augmented reality, with demonstrations and discussions focused on technical solutions and recommended practices. Leading researchers, practitioners and industry luminaries will offer panel discussions, tutorials, and workshops on new and forthcoming technologies.

The conference promises to be as interactive and cross-disciplinary as the field of VR and AR itself, and will include an exhibition of relevant software and product demos. The conference will bring together talented researchers and developers who are creating the next generation of audio tools for immersive content, with presentation topics including:

– The state of AR/VR audio content development tools and workflows, including personalized vs. generic HRTFs
– Realistic sound propagation for immersing the user in virtual environments
– Auditory distance discrimination in cinematic virtual reality
– Spatial audio capture, rendering, and synthesis over headphones and speakers
– Binaural, ambisonics, and wave field synthesis techniques
– 3D sound field navigation
– HRTF modeling and derivation from optical and/or acoustic measurements
– Reverb and room acoustics synthesis
– 3D audio mixing and content production
– Music and sound design for VR/AR
– Higher education & immersive media
– Sound for 360 VR
– XR [extended reality] audio in diverse 

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