AES Europe 2026

The recently finalized ISO international standard (IS) on
MPEG-I immersive audio enables interactive
six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) audio rendering for a
multitude of virtual-reality; augmented-reality (VR/AR)
acoustic scenarios; applications with comprehensive
modeling of room acoustics; intricate acoustic
phenomena, including e.g. occlusion, reflection,
transmission; diffraction caused by sound obstacles,
Doppler effect,; dynamic environment changes triggered
by user interactivity. This paper describes concept,
methodology; results of the final verification test of
this standard. In the verification test, the perceptual
quality of the renderer was assessed in an interactive
listening test using different in-; outdoor acoustic
scenes, testing the above-mentioned features of the
standard. More than 50 listeners participated in the test
distributed across six labs using the ITU‑R BS.2132 [1]
multi‑stimulus method on a 100‑point scale for three
conditions (IS, mid-; low anchor) in 10 VR scenes plus
two repetitions. The results of several anchor processing
configurations are presented. The selected mid; low
anchors have demonstrated stable quality across diverse
scenes with progressive timbre; spatial degradations.
The listening test results show a clear separation of the
conditions (IS > mid > low); the low anchor was stable
(around 16 points median value) while the mid anchor varied
by scene (around 47 points). The IS is rated with a median
of 84 points among all labs, which is the “excellent”
region of the scale. The individual scenes are rated
differently. The quartile range for some scenes can exhibit
20 points. The median value for the IS of the different
labs varied, some are a bit more critical than others.