The Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) calls for contributions to the first Ambisonics Symposium. As many past audio and acoustics conferences have shown, there seems to exist a group of persistent spherical audio enthusiasts. We therefore decided to go ahead and organize the first symposium on this subject to improve and intensify the ongoing scientific discussion on spherical audio. The Ambisonics Symposium will be held 25-27 June 2009 at the IEM in Graz, AUSTRIA.

The symposium will be dedicated to discussing the various problems and solutions concerning spherical sound field analysis and re-synthesis (Higher Order Ambisonics). An additional topic area concerns strategies to exchange coded data and guidelines for potential standardisation.

SCOPE

Contributions on the following topics are highly desirable:
- New Ambisonics playback strategies for sound scene reproduction
- Spherical microphone arrays
- Analysis and capture of directional sound sources
- Synthesis of directional and focused sound sources
- Virtual acoustics via headphones
- Standardisation, exchange, implementation and hardware issues
- Theoretical considerations on comparative subjective and objective studies
- Generalisation and theory
- ...

IMPORTANT DATES
Abstracts / Online Registration: January 31st, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: February 27th, 2009
Registration of Participants: March 2nd until May 10th, 2009
Final Paper Submission: May 31st, 2009

Further details and registration form will be available at the Symposium Website:

http://ambisonics.iem.at/

ACCOMMODATION

The symposium office has booked a limited number of rooms available for participants at a special offer.

Presenters are encouraged to bring in their individual Ambisonics audio material. We are greatly looking forward to meeting you again and to welcoming you in Graz.

Best wishes,
Alois Sontacchi
Franz Zotter