THE INVISIBLE DIMENSION OF XR
HOW IMMERSIVE AUDIO CREATES PRESENCE, EMOTION AND BELIEVABLE WORLDS

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Wed November 11, 2026 12:00 pm CET

What makes a virtual world feel real – even before we consciously notice why?

Sound is one of the most powerful yet often overlooked dimensions of immersive experiences. Whether in virtual worlds or physical spaces, spatial audio can give environments scale and depth, direct our attention, trigger emotion and create the subtle acoustic cues that make a place feel believable.

Larry Chang, Audio Director at Larrisim Studio, joins Daniel Deboy and Markus Auer of DELTA Soundworks to explore immersive audio from different perspectives and practices. Guided by Stephanie Bagehorn, they compare approaches rooted in sound design and interactive storytelling with those of spatial audio, acoustics and psychoacoustics – exploring what virtual and real-world spatial audio can learn from each other.

How do you design the sound of a space that exists only virtually? And conversely, how can virtual environments be used to simulate, experience and test the acoustics of physical spaces before they even exist? From interactive sound and music to virtual acoustics and perception, the conversation reveals how differently immersive sound can be approached – and where these disciplines begin to converge.

Format

Panel Discussion + World Hop

App

Arrival.Space

Location

IMMERSIVE X Hub 2026

Duration

45 min

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Presenter

Larry Chang
Audio Director at Larrisim Studio

Larry Chang is an immersive audio specialist, composer, and audio director exploring the intersection of music, technology, and storytelling. He creates interactive and immersive audio for XR, video games, immersive theater, and location-based entertainment. As the founder of Larrisim Studio, he has worked on projects including Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience, Refinery29’s 29Rooms, The Price of Freedom, and more. His practice explores how sound can transform physical and digital spaces, deepen narrative, and create new forms of audience interaction.

Daniel Deboy
Co-Founder & Partner at DELTA Soundworks
© Aljoscha Haupt

Daniel Deboy is a partner and co-founder of DELTA Soundworks, based in Heidelberg, Germany. DELTA develops sonic worlds for location based entertainment: branded experiences, theme parks, fulldome cinema, and digital worlds. Daniel handles the technical side of that work, from system design and loudspeaker layout to signal processing, content production, and on site tuning. He studied audio engineering in a joint program between the music conservatory and technical university in Graz, then worked at CERN in Geneva before moving back to Germany to focus on sound full time.

Markus Auer
Partner & Technical Director at DELTA Soundworks

Sound engineer by day, tech nerd by night. Markus has been fascinated by technology since childhood, from exploring his parents’ office PC in the mid-90s to a lifelong habit of teaching himself programming. He moved quickly from making music to sound engineering and studied film sound and sound design at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Markus worked as a sound engineer for film and television. As Technical Director at DELTA Soundworks, he leads research and development and heads interactive audio. Here, day and night have finally become one.

Moderator

Stephanie Bagehorn
Brand Manager at vm-people
© privat

As a brand manager at vm-people GmbH, Stephanie advises brand leaders on immersive brand building. After her training as a marketing communications specialist and subsequent studies in business communications, she always focuses on the question of “How?”. How do companies communicate with their target audience? How do customers become enthusiastic fans? How does a brand become an experience?

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