Fraunhofer IDMT present at TOA, Europe‘s leading interdisciplinary technology festival

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TOA (Tech Open Air) is a combination of a conference and a festival that cannot be found in a similar form elsewhere across Europe. From July 11th to 14th, round about 20,000 people from the international technology and startup scene will meet in Berlin to connect, grow and inspire the human spirit through interdisciplinary knowledge exchange and collaboration. Fraunhofer IDMT will contribute to this year’s TOA by offering its expertise in two events: the Music Hackday and the Music Tech Lab.

© Jeff Kater
More and more modern recording studios, such as the “High Tide Tonstudio” in Hennef (Germany), are working with the object-based SpatialSound Wave system for producing and replaying three-dimensional sound.

Music Tech Lab: The music scene meets SpatialSound Wave
 

The Music Tech Lab is a series of events involving participation of musicians, producers, and the music industry. In relation with the Music Tech Lab, Fraunhofer IDMT will be hosting two workshops (taking place July 12th/13th in Salon A) on state-of-the-art music production using SpatialSound Wave, Fraunhofer’s system for object based production and replay of true-to-life three-dimensional sound. The workshop will be directed by Tobias Clauß, a research assistant with Fraunhofer IDMT, who is looking forward to demonstrate the benefits of object based sound production to the participants: "We are sure the participants will be thrilled learning about the full range of sound design possibilities the system offers, and how much the music produced with SpatialSound Wave sounds different from everything they have heard so far".

SpatialSound Wave allows users to create audio objects and position these objects in any spatial arrangement. Each audio object is defined by an input signal (a singer or an instrument, for instance), the coordinates of its position, and other data describing it. From this information, the system computes the loudspeaker signals in real time and outputs the signals taking into account the selected speaker setup, providing an authentic three-dimensional sound. 

Music Hackday: Fraunhofer software meets “music tekkies”
 

For the Music Hackday, taking place in the Funkhaus Berlin and actually spanning two days (July 11th/12th), Fraunhofer IDMT will make its software components for music analysis available for music tekkies. In a hacking contest, interdisciplinary teams made up of technology enthusiastic musicians, producers, and designers will compete with each other in developing novel ideas and prototypes of producing and replaying music with the help of state-of-the-art software and hardware components made available by different providers. The results will be evaluated by an expert jury, and the best ideas will be awarded with a prize.

Steffen Holly, head of the business unit Media Management & Delivery at Fraunhofer IDMT, is looking forward to the 24-hour non-stop contest: "Making our software prototypes available to such highly creative and experienced users allows us to gain extremely valuable feedback on our products. For our research and development activities it is key to understand how our products are used and what we must do to keep improving them. The sheer number and the diversity of ideas developed during that contest is something that we at Fraunhofer are simply not able to come up with. So we will take a very close look at what these people do with our products". 

Are you interested in getting to know SpatialSound Wave, or witnessing how music tekkies use Fraunhofer software to develop new musical ideas? Then visit us at TOA, Funkhaus Berlin, Nalepastraße 18! For more information, please visit https://toa.berlin/conference/

 

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