AES Suspends Vienna Convention Registration

Vienna, Austria (March 13, 2020)—While the annual AES Convention is always a highlight of the year for the European pro-audio community, the 2020 edition, set to take place in Vienna, Austria on May 25-28, is in danger of being cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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The Austrian Government has banned indoor gatherings of more than 100 people for the time being. With that firmly in mind, the AES has issued a statement that doesn’t cancel the event, but which nonetheless acknowledges that possible outcome:

“The Audio Engineering Society is considering all options in relation to the global response to COVID-19 and its impact on the Society’s upcoming International Pro Audio Convention in Vienna, Austria. AES’s board of directors is working quickly to evaluate the options, especially in light of the Austrian Government’s recent decree banning indoor gatherings of more than 100 people. The safety of our members, attendees, participants, and staff is the highest priority.

“We will send an update to you as soon as decisions have been made. In the meantime, the Society has suspended all further registrations and suggests that attendees and prospective participants refrain from finalizing travel arrangements. We appreciate your patience and understanding.”

Set to be held at the Austria Center in Vienna, the event is set to highlight VR productions from the Abbey Road Spatial Audio Forum and examples of immersive music and game audio – presented with production insights from the engineers involved with them. Likewise, genre-shaping legacy productions will be examined, such as the music of Bruce Springsteen. Core audio topics and the technology of today and tomorrow will be explored, including audio for new distribution platforms like Magic Leap.

The aim of the AES Vienna convention is to help audio professionals build their skills and enhance their careers in a variety of specialties – recording and production, acoustics and psychoacoustics, sound reinforcement, archiving and preservation, networked audio, product development and audio education.

The dates for the convention would have coincided with the rescheduled dates of the annual ProLight+Sound convention in Frankfurt, which has now been cancelled. That event was initially set for late March, then pushed by organizers to late May before being scrapped altogether, as it faced a similar ban on large gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic.

AES Vienna • http://www.aes.org/events/148/