What is IAMF?
IAMF (Immersive Audio Model & Format) is an audio container specification designed to revolutionize immersive audio experiences across a wide range of applications, including streaming, gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and traditional broadcasting. IAMF enables creators and platforms to deliver high-quality, immersive audio with efficient encoding and flexible rendering, adaptable to various playback environments such as headphones, multi-speaker setups, and VR systems. By being codec-agnostic, IAMF can carry information for playback time rendering algorithms and audio mixing, making it highly versatile for different use cases. IAMF’s open source reference software decoder, complete with test streams, is readily accessible on AOMedia’s GitHub.
IAMF provides means to signal rendering algorithms, such as EAR and BEAR, for playback in loudspeaker layouts and headphones. Thanks to existing open source plugins like the EAR Production Suite, which includes IAMF guidelines-compliant renderers for multi-speaker layouts and binaural monitoring, creators can dive into immersive audio content creation and sound mixing.