(registered 2020-06-16, last updated 2020-06-16) Name: Piotr Majdak Email: piotr.majdak&oeaw.ac.at Media type name: audio Media subtype name: sofa Required parameters: N/A Optional parameters: N/A Encoding considerations: binary. Audio/sofa follows specifications of AES69/SOFA. The binary format is represented by the specifications of HDF5. Security considerations: AES69/SOFA is a tagged data format, and some tags are available for private use. As such, while arbitrary material could potentially be transferred in the audio/sofa object, the AES69/SOFA specifications do not describe any active or executive material. An audio/sofa object is used by an application to parameterize audio-related signal processing algorithms. These algorithms must be tested to safely work with any parameters, regardless of the content of an audio/sofa object because it can provide parameters being outside the AES69/SOFA specifications. Thus applications must take care of not causing buffer overflows, stack overflows, or out-of-memory errors. Audio/sofa objects are not signed or encrypted internally. The payload contains compressed data which is decompressed by the library HDF5. HDF5 is specified in [https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/H5.format.html] and its mime type is "application/x-hdf". Thus, the security considerations applicable to "application/x-hdf" are the basis of security conditions for AES69/SOFA. No external confidentiality and integrity protection services are required. Interoperability considerations: Audio/sofa objects are based on HDF5, thus all considerations of HDF5 apply to audio/sofa. HDF5 and thus audio/sofa has proven to be widely interoperable across computer platforms. Published specification: http://www.aes.org/publications/standards/search.cfm?docID=99 Applications which use this media: AES69/SOFA is device-, platform- and vendor-neutral and is supported by a wide range of applications. Fragment identifier considerations: N/A Restrictions on usage: N/A Provisional registration? (standards tree only): N/A Additional information: 1. Deprecated alias names for this type: N/A 2. Magic number(s): 89 48 44 46 0d 0a 1a 0a (hex), as with HDF5 3. File extension(s): sofa 4. Macintosh file type code: unknown 5. Object Identifiers: unknown Intended usage: Common. Use for providing spatially oriented data in the field of acoustics. Typical usage is the description of filters for 3D loudspeaker-based audio rendering or spatialization for 3D spatial headphone-based reproduction. General Comments: Specifications of audio/sofa are described by AES69, a standard of the Audio Engineering Society (551 Fifth Ave., Suite 1225, New York, NY 10176, USA, http://www.aes.org). The AES69 is described at http://www.aes.org/publications/standards/search.cfm?docID=99. The AES69 is widely known as SOFA (spatially oriented format for acoustics), thus in the context of this document, we refer to AES69/SOFA. A narrative description of AES69/SOFA and collections of files and applications can be found at https://www.sofaconventions.org/. An introduction to SOFA applicable for more general audience is provided at https://www.hdfgroup.org/2017/04/hdf5-under-the-sofa-hdf5-on-embedded-and-mobile-devices/. A widely used library implementing read access to audio/sofa is available at https://github.com/hoene/libmysofa. Person to contact for further information: 1. Name: Piotr Majdak 2. Email: piotr.majdak&oeaw.ac.at Author/Change controller: Piotr Majdak, on behalf of the AES. Piotr Majdak is member of the AES standard committee and co-chairing the task group working on the AES69/SOFA.