NEWS

The Immersive Audio Listening Experience

Presented by Sono Luminus, Auro Technologies, PMC Speakers, 2L and Pure Audio Blu-Ray Showcasing Music by Peter Gregson, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Ensemble Galilei, Cantus, and more

October 8, 2015

On Friday, October 30 from 6-9pm, The Immersive Audio Listening Experience, presented by Sono Luminus,Auro TechnologiesPMC Speakers2L, and Pure Audio Blu-Ray™ will showcase the 9.1 Auro-3D® listening environment during the 2015 AES Convention at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. This listening event will be held in the PMC Speakers “Masters of Audio Demo Room located on the 100 Level at the Jacob Javits Center in New York, and will include music samples curated and discussed by Grammy-nominated Sono Luminus engineer Dan Shores, 2L label founder and Grammy-nominated engineer Morten Lindberg, and Sono Luminus artist Peter Gregson, cellist and composer.

Wilfried Van Baelen first introduced his Auro-3D® concept at the AES Convention in 2006 followed by four years of intense development. The Auro-3D format was launched in 2010 in Tokyo and is set to become a new standard for true immersive 3D sound. The move from Stereo or two-dimensional Surround Sound formats (5.1/7.1) to Auro-3D is a breakthrough achieved by adding the missing third dimension of height in front and around the listener, revolutionizing audio by immersing the listener in 540° of sound. Auro-3D’s unique “vertical stereo field” around the listener creates a totally new level of immersion and marks a major leap in the evolution of natural sound reproduction. Thanks to the addition of height channels, natural acoustic reflections reach the listener as they would in real life, originating not only from around but also from above.

Auro-3D is the only sound system on the market that has both 5.1 Surround and Auro 9.1 in just one standard PCM delivery file with high resolution audio in each channel, making easy distribution on any system in the world possible. Mixes created in the Auro-3D format are released on Blu-ray. In addition, existing stereo and Surround Sound mixes of film and music can be rendered into an Auro-3D experience through the Auro-Matic® upmixing engine software. The Auro-3D format is or will soon be available in many consumer applications, with home cinema, mobile, automotive, and gaming versions all bringing the new immersive Auro-3D sound to the market.

Sono Luminus has recently released three new albums in Auro-3D on Pure Audio Blu-ray™, including Touch by cellist and composer Peter Gregson, who will discuss his process of composing for and recording in Auro-3D at the October 30 event. Touch comprises eight tracks for analogue synthesizer, cello, piano, and string orchestra. Upon release in August, Touch was featured by New York Public Radio’s Q2 Music as Album of the Week, which praised its “voluptuous orchestrations of intimate, ruminative melodies . . . delivered in vivid detail.”

Sono Luminus will also showcase In the Light of Air: ICE Performs Anna Thorvaldsdottír recorded by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and released in August. The New York Times described the album as, “infused with a balance of anxiety and luminescence that feels wholly contemporary.” The extraordinary Sono Luminus album From Whence We Came from Ensemble Galilei, an ensemble of players from both classical and Celtic backgrounds which infuses ancient music with a spirit of improvisation and liveliness, will also be presented.

2L releases to be featured during the listening session include Magnificat by Nidarosdomens jentekor and TrondheimSolistene featuring hauntingly beautiful music by Norwegian composers Kim André Arnesen and Ola Gjeilo and American composer Aaron Jay Kernis, and Spes by Cantus featuring ethereal music by Norwegian composer Frode Fjellheim. Under the direction of its conductor Tove Ramlo-Ystad, and in collaboration with composer and musician Frode Fjellheim, Cantus explores contemporary spiritual music with its roots in Sami music, the only indigenous people of Scandinavia.  

“We are so excited about the creative possibilities we now have thanks to working with Auro-3D’s immersive sound, that we truly want everyone to know about it,” says Sono Luminus CEO Collin Rae. “It is wonderful to be able to demonstrate the power of Auro-3D and the immersive listening experience that comes with it by using the world renowned PMC (The Professional Monitor Company)  QB1-XBD-A high resolution speakers. Together with Auro Technologies and Pure Audio, I feel we all have the common goal of helping the world hear this amazing sound experience.”

Morten Lindberg, founder and CEO of 2L, says, “I have recorded music in 5.1 Surround Sound since 2004. Then I met with Wilfried Van Baelen from Auro-3D at the Nordic Sound Symposium three years ago. He challenged me to explore the height dimension. Two weeks later we set out for a remote medieval church with TrondheimSolistene and recorded our first album in the 9.1 Auro-3D configuration. I believe that our album Souvenir was the first-ever commercial album produced in immersive audio. The development of the Pure Audio Blu-Ray screen-less navigation now makes it possible to reach out to a large home entertainment audience with our music recordings.”

About Auro Technologies: Auro Technologies is a spin-off of the privately owned Galaxy Studios Group, renowned worldwide for its state-of-the-art leadership in audio innovation for music and sound for film. After 150 years of evolution in sound recording and reproduction, Wilfried Van Baelen (CEO Auro Technologies and Galaxy Studios) revolutionized sound by bringing “Immersive Sound” (Sound in 3D) as an end-to-end solution for all markets with his Auro-3D® format. The addition of the missing and final dimension in sound (“Height”) combined with Auro-3D’s groundbreaking technologies provides a natural immersive sound experience unlike anything you’ve heard before, creating a totally new emotional level of entertainment in music, movies, games, events etc.. The Auro-3D® Technology Suite offers easy-to-use and unprecedented levels of sound reproduction capabilities to the broadcast, digital cinema, home cinema, mobile, gaming, and automotive markets. www.auro-3d.com

About Sono Luminus: As the first American record label to release audio projects on Pure Audio Blu-ray technology, Sono Luminus specializes in the highest caliber of audio quality. Sono Luminus owns and operates its own, state-of-the-art recording studio located in a nearly 100-year-old former Emmanuel Episcopal Chapel in rural Boyce, VA. Under label CEO Collin Rae, who came to Sono Luminus in fall 2014 after working in the recording industry for many years at Naxos of America and Universal, the label is now focused on creating a unique voice within the vast world of recorded sound, developing relationships with some of today’s most energizing classical music composers and performers. The label’s commitment is to the music, the people who create it, and to recording and releasing it in the most dynamic way possible. Sono Luminus has received the Audio Engineering Society’s Award of Excellence in High Resolution Audio (2007), nineteen Grammy nominations, one Grammy award for Best Engineered Classical Album in 2009, and one Latin Grammy award for Best Classical Album in 2012. www.sonoluminus.com

About 2L: The music captured by 2L features Norwegian composers and performers and an international repertoire reflected in the Nordic atmosphere. These recordings not only transform the entire listening experience, but also – more radically – these innovative recordings overturn some very basic concepts regarding how music is played and even composed. 2L emphasize Surround Sound and Immersive Audio with Pure Audio Blu-ray and HiRes file distribution, and have garnered no less than 20 American GRAMMY nominations since 2006. Thirteen of these in categories “Best Engineered Album,” “Best Surround Sound Album,” and “Producer of the Year.” www.2L.no

About PMC: PMC is a UK-based, world-leading manufacturer of loudspeaker systems, the tools of choice in all ultra-critical professional monitoring applications, and also for the discerning audiophile at home, where they provide a transparent window into the recording artist's original intentions. PMC products use the best available materials and design principles, including the company's proprietary Advanced Transmission Line (ATL™) bass-loading technology, cutting-edge amplification and advanced DSP techniques to create loudspeakers that present sound and music exactly as it was when first created, with the highest possible resolution, and without coloration or distortion. www.pmc-speakers.com