The Alliance for Open Media’s (AOMedia) latest royalty-free container specification, Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF), looks to promote uptake of immersive audio, which has not enjoyed quite the same hype inflation as immersive video. This is largely a bottleneck issue. Immersive audio formats like Dolby Atmos make for hefty files, often only running on expensive hardware and premium content platforms. In the case of mixed reality (XR) offerings, spherical audio – which reacts to a user’s movements to place them at the center of an audio environment – offers the most realistic experience, but the same bottleneck applies. IMAF allows immersive audio formats to be easily combined, compressed, and then played on practically any end-user device or content platform.…