Kurt Heiden
Track: Digital Audio
Date: Wednesday, October 27
Time: 5:05pm - 5:50pm
Location: Magnolia
TrackBack
Surround sound is dominant in the entertainment world through movie
theaters, television broadcasts, DVDs, DVD-Audio and PC gaming, yet
the vast majority of listeners using OS X have only two-speaker
playback systems. This session will talk about this phenomenon and
introduce programmers to the concepts and options for how to best
optimize audio for surround sound to a largely two-channel target
platform. Topics covered will include an introduction to the OpenAL
API for 3D positional audio in games, simulating room acoustics in
OpenAL, stereo spatialization/widening, surround
virtualization/HRTFs, streaming surround sound over the Web, and
differences between matrix and discrete surround, and will conclude
with an overview of software and hardware tools available for
helping to deliver 3D positional, discrete, matrixed and virtualized
surround sound under OS X. Demonstrations of technology will be
performed as permitted by the conference environment.
Attendees should have a basic understanding of mono and stereo
sound, as well as an interest in learning more about different types
of surround and how to deliver surround sound under OS X. The focus
will be general and based on concepts and standards currently used
in the industry. There will not be sample code or specific
programming tips for those already programming sound under OS X.
