Meeting Topic: The Rise of Immersive Audio
Moderator Name: Randy Conrod, Frank Lockwood
Speaker Name: Michael Nunan — Senior Manager, Broadcast Audio Operations, Bellmedia; Jeff Riedmiller -- Dolby Laboratories; Ron Lynch — Audio Engineering Manager, Technicolor.
Other business or activities at the meeting: Frank Lockwood welcomed everyone to the meeting. He thanked all the sponsors and SMPTE for the meeting. Tony Beracker of SMPTE thanked his sponsors. He noted the organization of this meeting involved 267 emails. Randy Conrod (of SMPTE) was the host for the meeting and thanked the organizers.
Meeting Location: Ryerson University RCC 204, Eaton Lecture Room; Rogers Communications Building Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Toronto sections of the AES and SMPTE presented an overview of the state of immersive audio technology. This meeting was streamed throughout various AES and SMPTE sections across Canada.
The presentation was divided into three parts: part 1 was concerned with ATSC 3.0 presented by Michael Nunan; part 2 dealt with "Dolby AC-4" presented by Jeffrey Riedmiller; and part 3 concerned MPEG-H presented by Ron Lynch.
The evening progressed smoothly and without a break. Randy Conrod introduced each of the speakers before their presentations and provided a brief background of their credentials. A Q&A period followed each of the presentations. Also at the end of each talk, the presenters were given a Toronto AES Certificate of Appreciation and AES coffee mug.
Mike Nunan's presentation addressed many questions: What is Immersive Audio? Why do we (think we) need it? and What is the framework which will support it? He spoke about ATSC 3.0 noting it is scalable, interoperable, and adaptable. Some considerations involving ATSC. 3.0 were efficiency, adaptability, personalization, and it is immersive. Some barriers to entry were technology itself and usage which has a less certain outcome: most have yet to learn to fully exploit the current formats.
Jeffrey Riedmiller's portion was titled "Dolby AC-4: Next-Generation Audio".
The goal here is improving what's currently available: providing efficient delivery to all devices, intelligent loudness management, A/V frame alignment, dialogue enhancement to name just a few. Like ATSC 3.0 the goal also includes scalability, personalization, and being immersive. He discussed new mixing approaches focusing on Object-based Audio, and Dolby Atmos adoption into the industry. Much of his talk looked at requirements for successful delivery, notably rendering. Only one codec is needed for all content.
Ron Lynch's presentation looked MPEG-H Audio. He discussed Ambisonics which is a full-sphere surround sound technique, which in addition to covering the horizontal place, covers sound sources above and below the listener. Its transmission channels do not carry speaker signal, instead containing a speaker-independent representation of a sound field (B-format) which is then decoded to the listener's speaker-setup. He went on with more of the details and configurations. Some points in summary: MEPG-H allows one-microphone capture of the sound field and the core technology of Ambisonics is free of patents and offers a complete tool chain as free software for all major OS's.
This meeting was quite successful indicated by the many independent discussions after the close of the meeting.
