KIKK Live Industries

Beyond Stereo: The Rise of Immersive Sound

Name: Beyond Stereo: The Rise of Immersive Sound
Location: KIKK Live Industries

About the panel

For decades, live music has largely been built around the same idea: a stage in front of an audience, with sound projected towards them. Spatial audio is beginning to challenge that model.

Immersive stages are appearing at festivals, clubs are being designed around 360° sound systems, dedicated listening rooms are turning album playback into a collective experience, and artists and sound designers are increasingly treating sound as a space audiences can physically enter.

Rather than simply coming from the stage, music can now move above, behind and around the listener, transforming sound into a powerful tool for storytelling, emotion, presence and experience design.

But what does this shift mean for the future of live entertainment? How does spatial sound change the relationship between artists and audiences? What new creative possibilities emerge when musicians, venues, engineers and experience designers start thinking beyond stereo from the very beginning? And can immersive sound move from spectacular one-off experiences to become a new standard for live music and entertainment?

Bringing together perspectives from Polygon Productions, Club Wintercircus, AREAL Technologies and Delacroix Studio, alongside audio research, this panel explores the rapidly evolving ecosystem of immersive sound, from festivals and clubs to listening spaces, experiential installations, new technologies and entirely new ways of experiencing music.

Moderator

Brecht De Man

Head of Research / President — PXL-Music / Audio Engineering Society

Brecht De Man is an audio researcher, educator and engineer working at the intersection of music, technology and sound. As Head of Research at PXL-Music and President of the international Audio Engineering Society, he brings together research, industry and creative practice to explore what new audio technologies mean for artists, venues and audiences.

Speakers

Nico Elliott

Co-founder & CEO — Polygon Productions

Nico Elliott is co-founder and CEO of Polygon Productions, the team behind Polygon Live and Polygon Portal in London. Polygon creates music experiences built around 360° spatial audio, from large-scale festival environments to intimate listening spaces where audiences are placed inside the music.

Wouter Vanhaelemeesch

Music promotor & festival curator — Club Wintercircus

Wouter Vanhaelemeesch is part of the team behind Club Wintercircus, the underground music venue inside Ghent’s spectacular Wintercircus. Designed as a 360° environment for concerts, nightlife and audiovisual experimentation, the club explores new formats for spatial audio concerts, immersive listening sessions and live audiovisual experiences.

Kristof Jeuris

Commercial Director — AREAL Technologies

Kristof Jeuris is Commercial Director at AREAL Technologies, a company developing innovative spatial audio solutions for live entertainment, music venues and immersive experiences. Working at the intersection of audio technology and the live industry, he helps bring immersive sound into real-world environments, including Club Wintercircus in Ghent. His perspective focuses on how spatial audio technologies can become accessible, scalable tools for creating new ways of experiencing music and live entertainment.

Laurent Dupuy

Co-founder & CTO — Delacroix Studio

Laurent Dupuy is a Grammy Award-winning mixing engineer and co-founder and CTO of Delacroix Studio, an immersive audio agency creating spatial sound experiences across culture, entertainment and experiential design. His work explores how immersive audio can move beyond technology to become a creative medium for storytelling, emotion and audience engagement.