Europe's Ninth Student 3D Audio Production Competition and Finals are held Nov. 2025

We happily announce the call for Europe's Ninth Student 3D Audio Production Competition, and vdt (German tonmeisters) will host the event in cooperation with IEM Graz and present the final ranks of the finalists in a public ceremony around at Tonmeistertagung in Düsseldorf (Nov. 12th to 15th) live and via internet live stream, complemented by on-demand browser playback via Cat3DA.

IEM calls for students' works to be submitted to Europe's Ninth 3D Audio Production Competition that is going to be hosted at IEM in Graz, with vdt, ORF musikprotokoll, and Sounding Future as partners. The call is issued for the three production/composition categories:

(1) contemporary / computer music

(2) audio drama / documentary / soundscapes

(3) music recording / studio production.

The required format to deliver is a 5th order Ambisonic track as multi-channel file in .WAV or .CAF that comply with the AmbiX format (SN3D, full 3D, ACN channel ordering). We also encourage submissions that were originally produced in channel- or object-based formats (e.g. ADM, Atmos). To convert such productions to Ambisonics, decode them first to a virtual high-density loudspeaker setup (e.g. 9.1.6, 22.2) and encode the virtual loudspeaker signals at their positions to Ambisonics using e.g. the IEM MultiEncoder. Below you find a Reaper template project, which already has all the necessary settings and routings to create content for the competition.

Note that while the submission length is still max. 4min for categories (2) and (3), in the contemporary category (1) submission lengths of up to 11min will be accepted that fit common contemporary composition formats.

Please also note that it is important for us to be given a CC-by license by you to enable the competition, its awards, and the virtual appearance of the nominated finalists on https://tonmeister.org. We are working on the opportunities to present these finalist works prior to the awards ceremony  at ORF musikprotokoll  for category (1)  in Austrian contemporary/classic radio program (ORF OE1) around the finals.

Eligibility: participants should active students currently, or recent students who finished studying less than a year ago, so after June 2024. 



The submission deadline will be June 30th 2025.

The link to the submission portal is https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=s3dapc2025

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us via email: s3dapc@iem.at


Navigate to easychair, create a login, and submit title, download link and abstract, as well as documentation pdf of your work! Good luck!