SpatDIF, the Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format, is an ongoing collaborative effort offering a semantic and syntactic specification for storing and transmitting spatial audio scene descriptions. The SpatDIF core is a lightweight minimal solution providing the most essential set of descriptors for spatial sound scenes. Additional descriptors are introduced as extensions, expanding the namespace and scope with respect to authoring, scene description, rendering, and reproduction of spatial sound. A general overview presents the principles informing the specification, as well as the structure and the terminology of the SpatDIF syntax. Two use cases exemplify SpatDIF’s potential for pre-composed pieces as well as interactive installations, and several prototype implementations that have been developed show its real-life utility.

The full paper can be found here. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the SMC conference 2012 where it received a Best Paper Award. More information on SpatDIF can be found at www.spatdif.org.

I just learned that Gordon Monahan received the 2013 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts. The picture shows a performance of his piece Speaker Swinging, premiered in 1982. It uses three or more swinging loudspeakers and eight audio oscillators. Congrats!

Read the article here.

While reading this 18 page document I was positively surprised to see how many different interest groups have an interest in spatial audio related issues.

The 10 groups which mention spatial audio are:

• Games
• Audio Recording and Mastering Systems
• Automotive Audio
• Coding of Audio Signals
• High Resolution Audio
• Signal Processing for Audio
• Spatial Audio (obviously)
• Audio for Telecommunications
• Transmission and Broadcasting
• Microphones and Applications

The 7 groups that do not seem to think much about spatial audio are:

• Semantic Audio Analysis
• Network Audio Systems
• Human Factors in Audio Systems
• Hearing and Hearing Loss Prevention
• Fiber Optics for Audio
• Audio Forensics
• Archiving, Restoration, and Digital Libraries

Similar to last year, I am teaching two modules at CNMAT’s MaxMSP Summer School.

The patches of today’s lecture on Software Testing in Max (which is based on this paper) can be found here.

On Friday, I will use CNAMT’s multichannel loudspeaker system to teach spatial audio using Jamoma.

Today Trond Lossius, Jan C. Schacher, and me received the Best Paper Award for “SpatDIF: Principles, Specification, and Examples” at the 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference.

This paper presents the current state of our long-term effort in creating a community-driven interchange format for spatial audio scenes. More on www.SpatDIF.org.

Here the reference:

@inproceedings{SpatDIF-SMC12,
 Address = {Copenhagen, DK},
 Author = {Nils Peters and Trond Lossius and Jan C. Schacher},
 Booktitle = {Proc. of the 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference},
 Title = {{SpatDIF}: Principles, Specification, and Examples},
 Year = {2012}}

We are now invited to submit a revised and expanded version for publication in The Computer Music Journal (MIT Press).

• Peters N., Schacher J., Lossius T.: SpatDIF: Principles, Specification, and Examples, to appear in Proc. of the 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC), Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012.
• Peters N., Lossius T., Place T.: An Automated Testing Suite for Computer Music Environments, to appear in Proc. of the 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference (SMC), Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012.
• Peters N., Choi J., Lei H.: Matching artificial reverb settings to unknown room recordings: a recommendation system for reverb plugins, to appear at 133rd AES Convention, San Francisco, 2012.
• Peters N., Lei. H., Friedland G.: Name That Room: Room identification using acoustic features in a recording, to appear at ACM Multimedia 2012, Nara, Japan, 2012.