"3SNtv: Live Spatial Audio Broadcasting" by Randall Packer
Zakros InterArts Underground Studio Bunker in Washington, DC
➡️ This presentation is part of IRCAM Forum Workshops Paris / Enghien-les-Bains March 2026
3SNtv (Third Space Network Television) is a research project of Zakros InterArts, conceived as a 24/7 artist‑television channel for live, spatial media. Until now, the performance of 3D audio has resided primarily in research labs, production studios, and specialized venues. We see the future as the online dissemination of immersive broadcasting from the studio to the home system: a seamless pipeline that delivers the performance of spatially composed networked music and video art to consumer playback systems. The project is built on Zakros’ Telematic Theater including SPAT Revolution—a Max‑based virtual mise-en-scène for 3D audio-visual online performance—designed to deliver object‑based immersive audio with remote performers and synchronized visuals to multichannel sound systems, head‑mounted displays, or binaural headphones. The Telematic Theater is current being developed in collaboration with Théophile Clet, Federico Foderaro, Mathew Ostrowski, and Julien Bayle.
3SNtv is a Zakros InterArts research initiative that treats broadcast as a compositional space: a channel where telematic performances, artist interviews, and research demonstrations circulate as one continuous, always-on stream. The aim is to move immersive audio beyond specialist contexts by delivering spatially composed, networked music from the studio to the home system—while preserving both the creative intent of the mix and the experience of liveness. Rather than relying on proprietary ecosystems, 3SNtv is being built around open, widely deployed standards—centered on MPEG‑H 3D Audio—and interoperable workflows that can be adopted and extended by artists and research partners.
At the IRCAM Forum Workshops 2026, we will present the project’s conceptual prototype and the validated end‑to‑end pipeline that underpins it. In the studio, SPAT Revolution renders third order ambisonic scenes and object‑based staging; these mixes are then authored for interactivity using Fraunhofer’s MPEG‑H Authoring Suite, where audio objects can be defined and streamed as metadata. Programs are encoded as 4K video with immersive audio and packaged for adaptive OTT (Over the Top) delivery (DASH/CMAF) to home theaters, including seamless switching between scheduled live events and archived programming. On the viewer side, a dedicated 3SNtv application for Google TV/Android TV supports MPEG‑H passthrough to consumer televisions and AVRs (receivers), with practical fallbacks (PCM, binaural, or stereo) where end‑to‑end support is not available. Low‑latency operation targets a few seconds of delay—small enough to support real‑time cues and companion social engagement layers without compromising stability.
3SNtv is conceived as social broadcasting: a federation of networked nodes—composers and artists' studios, universities, research labs, and arts organizations: that can host research, contribute repertoire, and co‑develop standards‑aware practices for truly live, interactive spatial media delivered to global audiences. Research for 3SNtv is a result of the 2025 3D Audio Dialogues series led by Randall Packer and spatial audio pioneer Jean‑Marc Jot, with contributions from leading scientists and practitioners of 3D audio including: Agnieszka Roginska, Paul Geluso, Thibaut Carpentier, Markus Noisternig, Olivier Warusfel, Ceri Thomas, Jani Huoponen, Dafna Naphtal, and Georg Hajdu. We would like to express our deepest thanks to the many artists, scientists, and engineers whose participation continues to shape both the Telematic Theater and 3SNtv.