The Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) calls for contributions to the first Ambisonics Symposium. As many past audio and acoustics conferences have shown, there seems to exist a group of persistent spherical audio enthusiasts. We therefore decided to go ahead and organize the first symposium on this subject to improve and intensify the ongoing scientific discussion on spherical audio. The Ambisonics Symposium will be held 25-27 June 2009 at the IEM in Graz, AUSTRIA.

SpACE-net FINAL EVENT! Discussion workshop with demonstrations

Update - event report now added....

Tuesday 16th September 2008
At: University of Derby

This email was sent to users with the following roles: authenticated user, SpACE-Net Admin, SpACE-Net Editor

Following our 2nd Spatial Audio Workshop in January 2008, SpACE-Net is pleased to announce a unique collaborative opportunity for composers, sound artists, and sound designers working anywhere in the audio industry.

After the success of the recent SpACE-Net International Spatial Audio Workshop in January, and the networking opportunities it offered, we would like to open a call for proposals for collaborative projects.
SpACE-Net can offer financial help to enable you and your proposed collaborative partner(s) to undertake activity which will result in a full proposal to an external funder (e.g. EPSRC) by 31/08/2008.

Over seventy people from all over the UK and Europe attended the 2nd SpACE-Net Spatial Audio Workshop held in the Music Research Centre on Wednesday 23rd January 2008.  The theme of this year’s event was “5.1 Surround-sound: Opportunity or Constraint?” and invited speakers considered this question from many different angles.

After the success of the first SpACE-Net International Spatial Audio Workshop in January 2007, we are delighted to announce our next major event, planned for Wednesday 23rd January 2008, to be held at the Music Research Centre (MRC), University of York, York, UK.  With this announcement we would like to open general registrations for the event via this website.

The general theme for the workshop is: 5.1 Surround-sound: Opportunity or Constraint? And this theme is reflected in the the guest speakers that have been invited and the new works that have been commissioned.

The day will last from 10:00 - 17:00 and will consist of invited presentations and demos from both practitioners and leading industry figures:

• Keynote Presentation - Jean-Marc Jot, head of Creative Labs 3D audio Research and Development at the Creative Advanced Technology Center, California, USA.
• Invited Speaker - Chris Watson, sound recordist and artist.  "Chris Watson is to radio wildlife programme making what David Attenborough is to television", BBC Radio Times.
• Invited Speaker - Aristotel Digenis, spatial audio researcher and Experienced Game Audio Programmer for Codemasters.

We have commissioned two new spatial audio works to be presented at the event (details to follow), and there will also be a poster session to highlight recent research in spatial audio from the UK and internationally.

To support the ongoing collaborative call for works sponsored by Creative special tutorial sessions will be offered by Creative audio developers during the day on the use of the ISACT toolset - this incorporates a library for building interactive spatial audio compositions into software applications.  It is strongly suggested that those interested in this call attend one of these tutorials!  More information, and the opportunity to sign-up (must be done separately to the main event as places are strictly limited!) are available in the item below.

There will be specific networking opportunities - SpACE-Net is looking to sponsor new multi-disciplinary collaborative projects over the coming year, hopefully leading to major funding applications.  To do this effectively, and to help target the people you would like to work with, once you have registered for the event, please use the Collaborator Ads to promote your interests or potential project to help facilitate initial conversations that can be followed up on the day. Alternatively you can use the forum similarly.

HHB will also be demonstrating the new Beyerdynamic Headzone portable 5.1 headphone monitoring system.

Registration is free to SpACE-Net members, who should sign-up for the event (click here and using the Sign Up option at the bottom of the item).  Membership of SpACE-Net is also free and you can register here.

Please register your interest in attending by 9th January 2008.

This SpACE-Net event is supported by Creative, HHB and Genelec. 

SpACE-Net is pleased to announce a unique collaborative opportunity for composers, sound artists, and sound designers working anywhere in the audio industry.

In partnership with leading audio company and soundcard designer Creative, SpACE-Net would like to commission a specific piece of sound design/sound artwork which has interactive spatial audio considerations at the core of its composition, design and delivery process. The piece should have broad aesthetic appeal and should be able to serve as an advertisement of the creative possibilities offered by spatial audio (i.e. it should sound good and be novel and exciting).

The selected partnership/group will be supplied with a Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi Elite Pro soundcard, a set of Creative® GigaWorks™ S750 7.1 loudspeakers and Creative’s custom Interactive Spatial Audio Composition Tool (ISACT™) software. The work should be produced, delivered and presented using this technology, which will be the artist’s to keep. In addition SpACE-Net will contribute towards artist’s fees and expenses related to the completion of this work.

The ISACT toolset incorporates a library for building interactive spatial audio compositions into software applications. In evaluating the proposals the panel will be looking for creativity and novelty in the proposed use of this combination of hardware and software to produce a high quality, stimulating and accessible piece of interactive spatial-audio-focused sound work.

Tutorial Sessions Announced!
All designers/artists who are interested in submitting proposals are required to attend an ISACT toolset tutorial with experts from Creative which will take place during SpACE-Net’s 2nd International Workshop at the University of York on Wednesday 23rd January 2008. This will also be an ideal opportunity to seek out potential collaborators for your proposal. To do this effectively, and to help target the people you would like to work with, once you have registered for the event, please use the Collaborator Ads to promote your interests or potential project to help facilitate initial conversations that can be followed up on the day. Alternatively you can use the forum similarly.

Registration for the workshop is free to SpACE-Net members, who should sign-up for the event via the workshop posting and follow the link to Sign Up at the bottom of the item. Membership of SpACE-Net is also free and you can register here.

Register for the ISACT tutorials (in addition to the workshop registration) separately via this posting for the event (click here and use the Sign Up option at the bottom of the item). Places are limited and will be offered on a first signed-up first registered basis.  We will inform you ahead of the event if your registration is successful.  If this is the case we would ecnourage you to bring along your own audio source material for use during the tutorial sessions.

Please register your interest in attending by 9th January 2008.

A full Creative-SpACE-Net two-round call for works will be issued following the workshop in January. We expect the final work to be completed and ready for presentation in July 2008 and we would also like to explore other possibilities for presenting the work further afield after this premier.