AES 2026 AVARIG Conference

The rapid growth of extended reality (XR) technologies has highlighted the critical role of immersive audio in enabling natural, effective, and socially meaningful interactions. While visual realism has traditionally dominated XR development, auditory perception remains a key driver of presence, communication, and behavioural response. The EU-funded SONICOM project (GA 101017743), ended in June 2026, aimed at addressing this cIRCAM:Galleryenge by advancing the scientific, technological, and perceptual foundations of immersive audio for augmented and virtual reality, with a particular focus on personalisation, interaction, and reproducibility. This workshop presents a comprehensive overview of SONICOM’s outcomes, structured around its core Work Packages (WPs), and delivered directly by WP leaders. It is designed as an interactive session, where each WP will briefly introduce not only scientific findings, but also tangible outputs including datasets, software tools, hardware prototypes, and open research resources. In addition, SONICOM will be represented across the broader conference through multiple contributions, including demonstrations, papers, posters, and tutorials. This workshop will explicitly connect to these activities, guiding participants towards relevant sessions where specific aspects of the project can be explored in greater depth. The first part of the workshop will focus on WP1 (Immersion), which has advanced the modelling of both listeners and environments for high-fidelity spatial audio rendering. Key contributions include novel approaches to Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) personalisation, combining physical modelling, machine learning, and perceptual validation. The SONICOM HRTF dataset, comprising over 300 subjects with associated 3D morphological data, will be presented as a major open resource for the community, supporting reproducible research and data-driven approaches to auditory modelling. Additional outputs include parametric pinna models, numerical simulation frameworks, and techniques for real/virtual acoustic blending, addressing one of the central cIRCAM:Galleryenges of audio augmented reality. The workshop will then move to WP2 (Interaction), which investigates how spatial audio influences human behaviour, perception, and social interaction. This includes studies on auditory proxemics, adaptation to non-individual HRTFs, and speech intelligibility in complex environments. WP2 has generated a range of experimental paradigms and datasets linking acoustic features to behavioural and cognitive responses, providing new insights into how sound shapes social dynamics in XR. In WP3 (Integration), research outcomes from WP1 and WP2 are consolidated into a unified technological framework. Central to this effort is the Binaural Rendering Toolkit (BRT), a flexible and extensible software platform enabling real-time, personalised spatial audio rendering. The workshop will briefly present the architecture and capabilities of the BRT, as well as its integration with novel hardware prototypes, including self-personalising headphones equipped with multiple microphones and loudspeakers. WP4 (Experience) extends these technologies into ecologically valid scenarios, evaluating immersive audio in realistic use cases ranging from social communication to professional XR applications. The workshop will present the design of these scenarios and early insights into how personalised audio affects user experience, task performance, and perceptual plausibility. The final technical section will focus on WP5 (Beyond), which ensures long-term impact through open science and community engagement. SONICOM has contributed to and expanded key infrastructures such as the Auditory Modelling Toolbox and SOFA standard, while also developing its own ecosystem linking datasets, models, and tools. A key highlight is the Listener Acoustic Personalisation (LAP) cIRCAM:Galleryenge, which engaged the international community in advancing data-driven approaches to HRTF personalisation. Throughout the workshop, emphasis will be placed on open outputs and reuse: participants will be guided on how to access SONICOM datasets, software, and models, and how these can be integrated into their own research and development pipelines. The session will conclude with a panel discussion involving all WP leaders, focusing on future cIRCAM:Galleryenges in immersive audio, including scalability of personalisation, as well as integration with emerging AI technologies.

Procedural audio is an essential part of building interactive media. Game engines have long supported procedural techniques for designers and engineers. The demand for sounds that feel natural and realistic continues to grow, and spatial and interactive sound design play a key role in creating plausible auralizations. Many factors go into creating realistic virtual collision sounds across multiple objects. Speed of motion, size, material, and design intent from game mechanics all intertwine into a web of interactivity, spatialization, modeling, storytelling, and logic. The sound of footsteps changes with movement and with the materials beneath, pressing buttons or fabrics might require tactility, and explosives in a variety of rooms and different listening positions pose spatialization subtleties. What are the right tools to realize these intricacies? What does the current landscape look like for addressing remaining cIRCAM:Galleryenges? What developments are emerging in machine learning and AI? In this workshop, organized by the AES TC Spatial Audio and AES TC Interactive Media and Gaming, speakers will share workflows, systems, and their experience developing spatial, interactive, and generative sound design. The session is intended for those looking to expand their toolkit, rethink existing approaches, and better understand the practical and technical considerations behind procedural and spatial audio systems for virtual sounds.

The tools for building social capital in any career are based on networking, mentorship, and role models. For immersive audio, underrepresented groups are upskilling, teaching others, and innovating in order to pursue their ambitions. Dr. Leslie Gaston-Bird talks about her initiative "Immersive and Inclusive Audio", which has been running for over five years, and how the Pro Tools | Dolby Atmos Certification plays a role in the efforts of women and minorities to "leak up, not out" of the immersive audio career pipeline.

The SONICOM Ecosystem is a repository dedicated to spatial hearing and binaural audio. It provides means to store data as databases and tools (including their metadata), to create relations between them, and to enable specific data visualization tailored to the needs of the auditory community. It also enables persistent publications via digital object identifiers (DOIs) and supports the authors along their typical process of publishing scientific articles. In this workshop, we will guide the participants through the key features of the SONICOM Ecosystem and show how the Ecosystem can support researchers during their publication workflow.

Source directivity constitutes a fundamental acoustic property of musical instruments, describing the variation of radiated sound pressure as a function of direction. This behavior is dependent on the geometry, material properties, and excitation mechanisms of the instrument, and plays an important role in spatial sound perception. In the real world, the directional characteristics of a source contribute significantly to how sound is localized, how timbre is perceived across different listening positions, how sound is captured with different microphone techniques and placements, and how sound interacts with the surrounding environment. Yet, despite its importance, source directivity is often simplified or neglected in contemporary spatial audio rendering approaches, particularly within AR/VR/XR applications where computational constraints and system complexity frequently dictate design choices. Directivity describes the angular dependence of radiated sound pressure and constitutes a defining acoustic signature of each instrument. Acoustic directivity measurements are based on demanding and carefully controlled procedures. Typically, they are conducted in anechoic or low-reverberation environments using dense microphone arrays, and rely on excitation mechanisms, in order to improve measurement accuracy and repeatability. It should be acknowledged, however, that there exists a gap between acoustic research and its practical integration into immersive media technologies. Many current XR applications rely on simplified or generic source models, prioritizing computational efficiency and ease of implementation over acoustic accuracy. While there is a clear benefit on the use of simplified directivity approaches, such practices reduce the perceptual realism and fidelity of the reproduced sound field. This raises critical questions: To what extent does accurate directivity contribute to perceptual realism? Are approximations sufficient, and under what conditions do they compromise the experience? This workshop addresses these questions by exploring both the scientific foundations and practical implications of incorporating source directivity into AR/VR/XR systems. It is structured in three parts, offering theoretical information and practical perspectives on the role of sound source directivity in immersive audio applications. The first part discusses source directivity and its importance in sound emission, perception, and spatial realism. Emphasis will be given on recent research involving the capture and analysis of directivity patterns of the human signing voice across different music genres and traditional Greek musical instruments. Two directivity databases dedicated to this research, which are publicly available through the SONICOM Ecosystem repository (https://ecosystem.sonicom.eu/) will be also presented, along with an overview of their structure, content, and potential applications. The second part focuses on the integration of directivity data into spatial audio rendering pipelines for AR/VR/XR environments. Participants will be introduced to the latest updates of the SOFA (Spatially Oriented Format for Acoustics) conventions specifically created for storing and exchanging directivity information. In addition, the Binaural Rendering Toolbox (BRT), developed within the SONICOM project, will be presented as a practical tool that facilitates the implementation of directivity-aware rendering workflows. The third part concerns a critical discussion on the practical implications of using accurate or approximated directivity data in immersive audio applications. Drawing on results from selected case studies, the session will evaluate the perceptual and computational trade-offs involved, offering guidance on when high-precision data is necessary and when simplified models may suffice in AR/VR/XR applications.

The Vaulted Harmonies project reconstructs the acoustic and musical heritage of Notre-Dame de Paris through immersive audio-visual experiences spanning multiple centuries of the cathedral's architectural evolution, developed as part of the Past Has Ears at Notre-Dame (PHEND) research project. Building upon the dome screening presented earlier at AVARIG 2026, this presentation focuses on the spatial audio production workflow underpinning the project and the perceptual trade-offs involved in adapting it across dissemination formats. Starting from room impulse responses derived from geometrical acoustic simulations and convolved with anechoic multichannel musical recordings using RoomZ, a dynamic room impulse response panner developed as part of the project, higher-order ambisonic renderings were generated through continuous interpolation along cinematically designed camera trajectories. The 360° dome version, premiered at the Planetarium of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, decoded these renderings to a 5.1+1 loudspeaker layout. This presentation complements that screening by examining the underlying HOA production chain and presenting selected scenes in third-order ambisonic reproduction, enabling direct perceptual comParison between the two output formats, though in a conventional frontal video projection context. Topics discussed include the design of spatially coherent auralisation trajectories, maintaining a coherent audio-visual narrative across successive historical reconstructions of the cathedral, and the trade-offs related to output format and deployment context, situated within a broader workflow designed to support wide public dissemination of immersive heritage experiences.