AES Europe 2026

In today’s live; electronic music events there are some
sound reinforcement systems that are using horn loaded bass
speaker cabinets to provide the low-end section. Especially
for the electronic music applications the PA system is
designed to use one or multiple clusters of bass cabinets
to provide the needed SPL; impact in the low frequency
range. Despite being large; heavy the horn loaded bass
speakers have some advantages like the efficiency;
directivity which makes them a great option for electronic
music. Even more, the enthusiasts are describing them as
having a longer projection of the sound when compared with
bass reflex units. When used in clusters the bass horns
present a mutual coupling due to a larger mouth surface
area; the physics behind. This effect alters the working
parameters in a good way regarding sound reproduction;
is clearly noticed at high levels. This mechanism increases
the output close to the low edge of the frequency response
interval; changes the directivity pattern. A cluster of
four or six double 18” horn loaded bass bins placed in the
front middle of a dance area will provide good impact
described a “punchy” sound, so acclaimed in the electronic
music party scene. In this paper I will describe an
investigation of the mutual coupling between horn cabinets
using electrical; acoustical measurements to reveal the
mentioned above mechanism. Electrical impedance measurement
together with SPL; frequency response in coupled;
uncoupled scenarios are used to describe; demystify the
mutual coupling phenomena.

EMORSION is an exploratory study examining how film audio
design shapes audience emotion; immersion. It was
conducted using scenes from four films in the horror (2)
; drama (2) genres, with two mainstream; two
independent productions. For each scene, multiple
alternative audio mixes were created by systematically
manipulating three core aspects of audio design; frequency
(pitch), dynamics (loudness),; directionality (spatial
placement). Three audience groups were exposed to the
scenes in a cinema setting, with each group experiencing
either one manipulated audio mix; a control mix.
Audience responses were assessed through a multimodal
framework combining self-reported emotion; immersion via
a questionnaire,; physiological measures, including
heart rate monitoring; video-based motion tracking.
Results show that subtle changes in audio design
significantly affect emotional perception; immersion.
Unconventional mixes produced greater variability in
interpretation, while conventional immersive mixes led to
stronger agreement across audiences. Notably, participants
often reported perceived visual changes despite no
alterations to the visual content.

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.

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.

Dialogue intelligibility is a fundamental aspect of audio
post-production. Ensuring speech clarity in complex sound
mixes remains challenging across different playback
systems. Selective auditory attention plays a central role
in how listeners track dialogue in busy mixes, so small
changes in spectral or spatial structure can influence
perceived clarity in unexpected ways. This study
investigates the effectiveness of psychoacoustically
informed techniques, equalisation; spatialisation, in
reducing auditory masking; improving the clarity of
dialogue. The listening test was completed on participants’
own playback systems, which reflects typical domestic
viewing conditions; aligns the study with real-world
listening environments. The techniques were tested
individually; in combination to assess their impact.
Results show that equalisation was more effective than
spatialisation in reducing masking, while their combination
produced a significant improvement in intelligibility,
clarity,; reduced interference. The effectiveness of
these methods varied between the two groups of clips,
suggesting that their application should be adapted to the
specific acoustic context of each scene.

Sound plays a critical role in virtual reality (VR),
shaping attention, narrative comprehension, emotional
engagement,; experiential plausibility under conditions
of embodiment; user agency. Although a growing body of
research addresses VR audio techniques, perceptual effects,
; sound taxonomies, existing approaches remain fragmented
; largely descriptive. In particular, they do not provide
a unifying, VR-specific account of how sound meaning;
emotional intent are operationally linked to user agency
; non-linear narrative progression. This paper presents a
narrative review of selected literature spanning game audio
frameworks, immersive sound design, narrative theory,;
plausibility-related research in games; VR. Through
synthesis of these perspectives, the review identifies a
conceptual gap in current research, namely the absence of a
VR-specific, agency-coupled sound design framework for
structuring sound meaning; emotional intent in support
of experiential plausibility as users actively shape events
in interactive VR environments.

This paper presents a systematic literature review on
inverse synthesis; sound matching, which focus on
predicting synthesizer parameters to recreate a target
audio waveform. Automating this process using machine
learning is impeded by distinct technical challenges: many
to one mappings where different parameter settings produce
the exact same sound, the non-differentiability of
commercial black box synthesizers, a scarcity of musically
structured training data,; a lack of standardized
perceptual metrics. Existing approaches are categorized
into non-differentiable synthesizer methods, utilizing
evolutionary algorithms; deep learning, incorporating
techniques to bypass gradient limitations such as neural
proxies or generative models. In contrast, differentiable
synthesizer methods, enable the integration of audio loss
functions into training pipelines via custom signal
processing environments. The analysis identifies a critical
reliance on spectral representations for evaluating
perceptual similarity, given that parameter based metrics
frequently fail to align with human hearing. The findings
indicate that while deep learning has reduced inference
times, the field lacks a unified production solution.
Future progress requires the establishment of standardized
benchmarks to evaluate models, the implementation of novel
advancements in generative models not yet applied to this
problem,; the development of hybrid architectures to
simultaneously address these distinct technical challenges.