Audio Engineering Society hosted AES Europe 2025 in Warsaw, Poland, from May 22 to 24 at ATM Studio. With over 130 sessions, the 158th convention brought together leading innovators and researchers in professional audio for three days of networking and immersion in the latest sound innovations.
The full program (including the Heyser Lecture abstracts and the keynote address, Dimensions of Immersive Audio Experiences by Hyunkook Lee), travel information, student competition details, and much more were available on the event website.
For audio professionals at any stage of their careers—or those just starting out—AES Europe 2025 offered something for everyone, with a real “who’s who” of audio professionals there to educate, enlighten, and inspire. The program and speaker list featured everything from the Enveloping Masterclass on immersive audio by Thomas Lund with Florian Camerer, Kimio Hamasaki, and Morten Lindberg to technological insights from experts like Richard King and Jamie Angus-Whiteoak. Attendees also got practical tips and guidance from educator Ian Corbett, who led a panel of top audio professionals in the session Ask us anything about starting your career, as well as leadership lessons from AES leaders Gary Gottlieb, Ewa Lukasik, Brecht De Man, and Leslie Gaston-Bird. Production knowledge was shared by respected professionals like Bob Lee in the session Best practices for wireless audio in live production, and studio perspectives from Tom Ammermann, David Bowles, Hyunkook Lee, and Marcela Rada.
The AES Europe 2025 Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture was delivered by Dr. Jürgen Herre, Professor of Audio Coding at the International Audio Laboratories Erlangen. Over his 36-year career, from his early days as a young DSP engineer at Fraunhofer IIS to becoming a pioneer of technologies like MP3, AAC, and AI-based audio coding, Dr. Herre pursued a fundamental truth: in audio, it all comes down to perception. Rather than relying solely on metrics like signal-to-noise ratio, frequency response, and linearity, Herre emphasized the importance of optimizing what we actually hear. In his Heyser Lecture, he shared how this guiding principle has shaped innovations in the world of media, virtual/augmented reality, and beyond.
AES Europe also offered a wide range of events and competitions aimed at students and audio educators. These included a student welcome event on Thursday, along with several specialized sessions focusing on audio education. The popular Student Recording Competition returned this year, with categories in Traditional Acoustic Recording, Traditional Studio Recording, Modern Studio Recording, Electronic Music, and Sound for Visual Media. In addition, the Student Project Expo gave participants the opportunity to showcase their latest innovations and research in areas such as software and hardware design, technological integration, and artistic uses of technology.
The convention was chaired by co-chairs Bożena Kostek, Magdalena Piotrowska, and Jan Zera. Among the additional organizers who brought their insights and institutional knowledge were workshop chairs Bartłomiej Chojański, Paweł Malecki, and Przemysław Płaskota; communications chairs Nils Peters, Alicja Wieczorkowska, and Sławomir Zieliński; facilities chairs Michał Mika and Marek Walaszek; technical tour chairs Paweł Górski and Radosław Smoliński; education chairs Ian Corbett and Angela Piva, working with student volunteer chairs Marta Gospodarek, Bartłomiej Mróz, and Agnieszka Paula Pietrzak; special events chair Andrzej Lipiński; and institutional relations chair Ewa Lukasik.
