"Immersive Audio in Automobiles" Moderated by Roger Shively

News Blog2021

Sep 15

"Immersive Audio in Automobiles"

September 15, 2021 | 12-2pm Eastern Standard Time

Expanding on a series of webinars to explore automotive audio design and applications, the **Audio Product Education Institute** (APEI), now known as the Audio Product Development Alliance (APDA), presents a session focused on Immersive Audio, exploring the different ways to translate actual immersive audio content and generate immersive experiences. Currently on the minds for both automotive brands and consumers, immersive audio reproduction results from a convergence of multiple technologies and concepts, from multichannel playback to acoustic auralization of perceived listening spaces, to DSP enhancement of sound reproduction.
Most consumers are familiar with the term “Immersive Audio” to describe what we might know as a height or channel-based, object-oriented process, which first appeared eleven years ago, and which was given some criteria standards by the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers (SMPTE) just a few years ago. With consumers now being offered immersive, 3D audio, and spatial audio experiences in all types of playback platforms, and with actual immersive audio formats, such as Dolby Atmos, becoming widely recognized, it’s only natural that automotive audio followed the trend, and naturally strives to take it a step further…
During this webinar, **Roger Shively** will discuss what we mean when we say “Immersive Audio,” how this is driving automotive audio speaker architectures, and how existing architectures are being used. The challenges of tuning and distributing sound for the intended experience, the role of cross-talk cancellation, content-based up-mixing vs context-based up-mixing, and how to tune the car for immersive sound formats, will also be explored. What approaches are relevant for entry, mid and highest tier systems?
To detail these topics and discuss the available technologies and solutions, Roger Shively, invited two key industry vendors, leading the space from different perspectives.
**Mathias Johansson**, the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Dirac Research, will discuss the nature of immersive content and the desired immersive experience and how to tune a car accordingly. Mathias will also cover other uses of immersive audio such as unconventional speaker layouts or Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS).
**Andreas Ehret**, Director, Automotive at Dolby, will discuss how Dolby Atmos extracts the spatial objects from music and reproduces them to reveal details that provide great spatial clarity and depth, and how that is applied to automotive audio.
More information about this online event and future APEI webinars can be found on their website here.
View this online webinar right now on demand here.
Find SAI’s live tweets of this online event here.

Behind the scenes photo of Roger preparing for the webinar in a new location (his son’s house)

The mission of the APEI Automotive Pillar is to explore and explain the practical approach and development of all the products that are conceived, planned, designed, and implemented in automotive car audio. They plan to hold an online session for Automotive Audio every month, so stay tuned for our upcoming sessions in 2021.