AES Europe 2026

Immersive audio systems are increasingly deployed in
large-scale live music contexts, yet there is limited
research addressing how immersive concerts are perceived
; experienced by audiences. This paper presents a
practice-based; ethnographically informed study of the
immersive audio design; audience experience of the band
Heilung’s concert at Roskilde Festival, staged in the Arena
Tent where a large-scale multichannel loudspeaker system
including main, surround,; overhead arrays was used.
The study combines insights in technical system design;
pre-production methods with qualitative audience research
in order to explore how immersive sound alters perception,
embodiment,; social engagement in live concerts.
Pre-production involved scaled system simulations,
reference listening positions, timing strategies,;
power-matched test environments to translate an immersive
studio mix to a festival-scale venue. During; after the
concert, audience experience was investigated through
in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant
observation, binaural; ambisonic recordings,;
phenomenologically inspired interview techniques.
Findings indicate that immersive audio contributes to
heightened affective engagement, bodily involvement,; a
sense of envelopment that exceeds conventional stereo
concert experiences. Audience members described the
experience as multisensory, ritualistic,; spatially
ambiguous, often lacking technical vocabulary but
emphasizing embodied; emotional responses. Importantly,
immersion was not perceived as sound alone, but as emerging
from the interaction of sound, visuals, architecture,
social presence,; narrative framing.
The paper argues that understanding immersive concerts
requires the integration of anthropological insights with
audio engineering knowledge. While technical approaches
explain how immersive sound systems operate,
anthropological perspectives are essential for
understanding how such systems are experienced,
interpreted,; given meaning by audiences. The study
contributes to the limited body of research on the effects
of immersive concert formats by examining how audiences
perceive immersion; how they ascribe meaning to
immersive sound.

Join us to hear the finalists selected for this category of
the Student Recording Competition. We will hear their
presentations and recordings, and comments and feedback
from the judges. Award and prize placements will be
announced on the last day of the convention.

As spatial audio moves to a consumer standard, the demand
for sophisticated design frameworks has never been higher.
This panel brings together key contributors from the
recently published "Immersive Sound Volume II: The Design
and Practice of Binaural and Multi-Channel Experiences" to
bridge the gap between theoretical research and real-world
production. The session will explore the recent and
developing trends and practices of immersive audio,
focusing on the core design principles that define modern
binaural and multi-channel workflows. Panelists will
discuss themes from the text, including current guiding
principles and system design, and the creative practice of
building immersive sound experiences. Through a mix of case
studies and technical perspectives, the authors will
provide insights into a roadmap for engineers and creators
looking to master the immersive soundstage.

HAMLET is a research project that investigates the
integration of Artificial Intelligence; co-creation
practices within the creative industries. The project
proposes AI-driven enablers to support artists through
collaborative workflows between creative practitioners;
technology providers. This work focuses on an automated
sound design framework for text-based role-playing games,
where the game narration is dynamically generated through
player textual interaction with an LLM. To address this
unpredictability, the proposed system generates adaptive
soundscapes automatically from textual scene descriptions.
An LLM identifies semantically relevant sound sources,
which are then matched to audio libraries through metadata
alignment. The files are assessed for quality,; are fed
to an automated mixing module. The framework addresses
challenges related to semantic alignment, audio quality,
aesthetic balance,; file size constraints.

The acoustic design of music rooms is well supported by
existing guidances which are covering recording spaces,
practice rooms, green rooms,; large-scale performance
environments. However, the direct application of these
standards to high school; college buildings is often
constrained by limitations in budget, space, client
requirements; construction timelines. As a result,
educational music spaces present various design challenges
that require specially considered solutions. This paper
examines key architectural; acoustic issues for music
teaching; performance spaces in high schools, including
wall performance between non-compatible spaces, limited
room volumes,; other acoustic challenges, i.e.
interconnecting doors; windows between the spaces. A
case study of a good design implemented at the large school
project is presented to demonstrate how strategic planning
; interdisciplinary coordination can result in
high-quality, functional,; acoustically successful
learning environments. It is highlighted that the
collaboration between the design team; acoustic
consultants was the key to resolve the major project
challenges to achieve the best possible performance results
across all spaces.

This presentation develops a conceptual framework for
understanding how visitors cognize sound in museum
exhibitions. While sound increasingly features in museum
practice, research has focused primarily on measuring
visitor enjoyment; engagement rather than examining the
specific meanings sound generates. This gap reflects the
absence of a framework conceptualizing sound's
meaning-making capacities to guide empirical investigation.
Drawing on scholarship from music studies, semiotics,
phenomenology,; embodied cognition, I propose a
seven-component spectrum identifying distinct yet
interrelated meanings that sound can convey in museums:
aesthetic, representational, emotional, sensorial,
imaginative, social,; political. These meanings can be
apprehended independently or in combination, typically
through emergent, pre-conscious perception rather than
deliberate awareness.
The spectrum builds on the premise that museum sound
meaning-making unfolds through dynamics internalized from
early childhood as we attune to the world sonically. It
draws on the notion of sound as a "sonic aggregate"
(Grimshaw; Garner 2015)—encompassing social, contextual,
temporal,; embodied experiences—rather than reducing
sound to wave phenomena. Visitors actively co-produce
meanings by drawing on their moods, memories, knowledge,
; imagination during exhibition encounters.
Each meaning category is illustrated with exhibition case
studies, demonstrating the spectrum's applicability across
diverse sound-based multimodal museum practices—from
popular music exhibitions to sound art installations. The
spectrum aims to catalyze research through varied
methodological approaches; establish analytical
standards for studying sound in museums, with potential
adoption by international standardization bodies.

Obsidian Neural is a novel, open-source VST3 plugin that
addresses the technical challenges of integrating
generative AI models directly into a low-latency digital
audio workstation (DAW) environment. This workshop will
provide a deep dive into the architecture designed to use
AI as a real-time performance instrument. We will cover the
C++/DSP strategies necessary for minimizing latency during
the asynchronous generation of audio loops via models like
Stable Audio Open. Crucially, we will detail the system's
ability to maintain musical coherence during a live mix,
achieved through an internal LLM "Brain" that processes
contextual session data (BPM, key, existing tracks) to
enrich generation prompts. Furthermore, we will explore the
technical solutions implemented for seamless integration
with the live mixing paradigm: quantized MIDI triggering,
multi-output routing, and the novel "Draw-to-Sound"
feature, which employs a Vision Language Model (VLM) to
translate visual input into musical parameters. This work
demonstrates a robust framework for generative AI to
function as an instantaneous, adaptable partner within
professional audio engineering workflows.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a sonification
system that maps live heart rate data to real-time spectral
filtering of a runner's preferred music. Assessed using a
within-subjects design (n = 13), the system employs
high-pass; low-pass filters to indicate deviations from
target heart rate zones, providing instantaneous
biofeedback without requiring visual attention.
Quantitative analysis revealed no statistically significant
differences in target zone accuracy or response time
between auditory, visual,; combined conditions. However,
qualitative thematic analysis identified a clear division
in user preference. Participants favouring the auditory
condition demonstrated faster mean response times to audio
biofeedback. Findings suggest that while sonification
promotes environmental focus; "gamifies" training, its
efficacy is highly dependent on individual processing
styles; music familiarity.

‘Nexus Sonance’ is a unique sonic space that is dependent
on time, place, and the people interacting with the
installation. At its core, the concept is a sonic portal
where the Cosmos, Earth, and Humans are unified through
sound in a single location. For this iteration of this
project, we decided to focus on real-time satellite data
sonification and put it as the core concept as our network
makes it possible to collaborate with ESA (European Space
Agency) therefore by sonifying real-time satellite data, we
create an evolving spatial environment where cosmic events
are felt and heard in the present moment.

This installation applies innovative machine-learning based
synthesis techniques with immersive spatial audio to embody
the experience of these unstoppable physical forces,
harnessing real-time satellite and geomagnetic data
provided by the European Space Agency (ESA), by simulating
neural network model corruption via cosmic radiation
following real-time patterns transmitted by the L1
satellite cluster.

While the cosmos is traditionally conceptualized through
heavily processed and "colorized" visual imagery, this
installation shifts the lens to a sonic perspective. Here,
the positioning and synthesis of sound are governed by
live-data streams from orbital satellites and global
geomagnetic stations, creating an immersive environment
where the listener experiences a unique, time-bound sonic
representation of our solar system. As our lives are
increasingly dependent on machine learning and neural
networks whose fundamentals are based on binary forms of
data, introducing the concept of cosmic radiation and data
corruption (based on a Single Event Upset phenomenon)
throughout the duration of the work references the idea of
Entropy as ever changing and expanding state.

Using an ESA-provided data from satellites that measure
specific states of solar weather, namely the Interplanetary
Magnetic Field (IMF) measurements including such variables
as Bt (the total induction of the IMF) which are assigned
to parameters such as intensity, saturation and amount of
the created sonic particles. Other variables include Bx,
By, Bz that compose a 3D magnetic force field measurements
are translatable to positioning, velocity of travel, and
direction of travel. In case ESA could not provide such
data, a backup plan is to use publicly available data from
https://norlys.live/rtsw. Furthermore, with data from L1
ESA-operated satellites, the readings regarding cosmic
radiation flux in space could be used to train a model
predicting the Single Event Upsets (SEU) and simulate
events that impacts the way that RAVE (Ircam) outputs
audio. This creates a metaphorical and literal decay of the
machine-learning output, mirroring the impact of radiation
on digital infrastructure

The earth and human layers that sit as a canvas background,
are a pre-sculpted soundscapes in combination with RAVEs
generative output that is trained on a private collection
of earth recordings (using geophones) and spatial audio
recordings of Georgian Polyphonic Choir “Adilei” which
symbolises the earth and human element within the
spatial-sonic setting. Furthermore, using publicly
available data on geomagnetic changes across the globe
through an intermagnet.org website with a MagPy package, we
are able to influence the textural output of the RAVE where
the changes are related to the positioning of the actual
reading stations. This way achieving a multi-layered sonic
representation of earth’s constantly changing geomagnetic
field, which in combination with real-time space weather
sonification in spatial audio creates a complex and
innovative spatial soundscape that is driven predominantly
by real-time data, meaning, that every time the work is
presented, the outcome is unique, depending on the
circumstances under which it is played.