The Audio Engineering Society has announced the publication of the AES69-2015 standard, which provides a framework for the growing binaural and 3D personal audio industries. The standard describes the format and exchange of spatial acoustics files and was authored by the AES Standards Committee.
The AES69-2015 standard defines a file format to exchange space-related acoustic data in various forms. These include head-related transfer functions (HRTF), as well as directional room impulse responses (DRIR). The format is designed to be scalable to match the available rendering process and be sufficiently flexible to include source materials from different databases.
This project was developed in AES Standards Working Group SC-02-08, with the writing group being led by Matthieu Parmentier and principal authors Piotr Majdak and Markus Noisternig. The standard builds upon an earlier project to define a spatially-oriented format for acoustics (SOFA), which aimed at storing HRTF data in a general way, capable of supporting any transfer-function data measured with microphone arrays and loudspeaker arrays.
AES Standards Committee Chair Bruce Olson stated: “AES69 represents a fundamental piece of architecture for taking personal audio to a new level of performance. Using this, product developers will be able to take advantage of transfer-function databases from all over the world to produce a truly immersive 3D audio experience.”
