FLUX::Immersive, L-Acoustics and Radio France have joined in an initiative to standardize Open Sound Control as a streaming protocol for interoperability among immersive audio systems. The ITU BS.2076-2 Audio Definition Model (ADM) is a solution for the archiving and interoperability of immersive audio productions. ADM-OSC provides an implementation that follows the ITU standard, allowing to stream positioning information of audio objects in real-time using the Open Sound Control protocol. Led by use cases from Radio-France, FLUX::Immersive and L-Acoustics have joined forces to initiate a common language to ease system integration within the production process.

“Since 2018, Radio France has been experimenting with object-oriented audio productions of electronic music concerts,” said Hervé Déjardin, audio innovation project manager at Radio France. “These trials have highlighted the need for a common protocol between the different elements of the chain. The objective is to be able to address the metadata streams to different rendering engines without using translators.”

ADM-OSC offers a universal communication language among object-based audio software for live and post-production. A technical workgroup with industry peers has been created to advance on this proposal and collaborate on the parameters. This workgroup has received the support of multiple manufacturers, and the ADM-OSC language is currently implemented in some audio software.

“Few things are more of a roadblock than trying to build an integrated workflow that incorporates multiple manufacturers and getting stuck in a proprietary communication portal,” said Hugo Larin, FLUX:: Immersive business director. “We felt there was a need to adopt a common communication, a common grammar, between industry peers.”

FLUX::Immersive has also added ADM-OSC as a supported input or output OSC communication option within its SPAT Revolution platform.

“We clearly hear in the field the challenges of integrating multiple object editors and or renderers delivering for various stream formats in a production,” Larin said.” Allowing for the selected tools of choice to interoperate in the environment of the day or at different stages of a project is one of the things that this audio object language can brilliantly achieve.”

“As an industry, we need to nail down the immersive workflow to enable the next generation of productions,” said Guillaume Le Nost, L-Acoustics executive director, Creative Technologies. “I am really glad to see that many pro audio manufacturers have reacted positively to our initiative, from Digital Audio Workstations to Broadcast systems. I am really looking forward to providing a super-strong ecosystem, where users can easily use several audio renderers at the same time, or easily move into post-production with ADM files at the center of their workflow. It is still early days for ADM-OSC, but users and manufacturers can already try an initial ADM-OSC implementation in our L-ISA Controller software.”