Queen’s University Belfast

The requirements of a spatial interchange format for electroacoustic music are examined with a focus on the interrelationship between the authoring of spatial content and its interpretation in audio reproduction. 1. AUTHORING AND INTERPRETATION In context of electroacoustic music, the role of a spatial audio interchange format is to be a bridge between the processes of authoring and interpreting spatial content (Fig. 1). It must enable the author to represent spatial content in a way that anticipates the means of reproduction in practical way. It must also represent the author’s spatial content in a way that enables the interpreter to adapt it to a wide variety of reproduction settings. In scene-based multimedia, this interpretation is intended to be automated and to respond to user actions, but in electroacoustic music, the complexity of the interpretation is so great that one can hardly imagine how this could be accomplished except as an act of artistic judgment as happens in live diffusion. Because authoring and interpretation are so closely linked, the interchange format itself should include a description of the interpretation schemes that adapt content to the means of reproduction, even supporting alternative strategies. This is important to the author as well as the interpreter because they essentially participate in a process of artistic co-creation