Immersive Streaming Experience is GR STUDIO’s software for streaming a live performance as if you were in the hall: 360° video and a sound that keeps the direction of every instrument.

Viewers are not stuck with someone else’s framing. They look wherever they like and choose what to listen to: the listening beam narrows until it isolates a section, an instrument, a voice. It runs in a browser, on computers and phones; with a headset it feels even more natural.

What you can do

• Turn your gaze through 360°, dragging with the mouse or a finger.
• Choose an area of the scene to listen to: the focus narrows until it isolates a section, an instrument, a voice.
• Listen on headphones to binaural sound, computed for the two ears, which follows the direction of your gaze.

How it is built

The software is GR STUDIO’s own. It started from HOAST360, an open-source library by the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz for streaming 360° video with higher-order Ambisonics audio, and was developed until it became something else: listening narrows onto a section or a single instrument. It uses third-order Ambisonics audio and runs on the studio’s own Cloudflare space. The research behind it is done with the University of Georgia, the software’s research partner.

• HOAST360, the IEM Graz website
• HOAST360 on GitHub

From the site visit to the player, four steps. In Osaka we took all of them, on the other side of the world, with the audience in front.

1. 1The plan

   Where to put the camera and the microphones, how the network gets there, what the viewer will see. It is all decided beforehand, on the floor plan of the hall.

2. 2The recording

   A camera that films in 360° at 11K, the Insta360 Titan, and a microphone with a high number of capsules at the centre of the stage: it records the direction each sound comes from, so listening can be pointed afterwards.

3. 3The live stream

   360° streaming with immersive audio, on the venue’s own channel. The August concerts went out live on the YouTube channel of the Piacenza conservatory.

4. 4The player

   After the live stream the concert becomes an experience to reopen at any time: third-order Ambisonics, binaural listening on headphones, the beam for choosing what to listen to.

The software made its debut with Oriental, at the concerts of Italy’s conservatories at Expo 2025 Osaka. Oriental was the starting point; what came out of it is ready for other productions.

The project

OPEN Cultural, in full “Oriental Partnership for Educational Needs in Cultural”, is a project of Italy’s conservatories aimed at East Asia. The goal is an international learning environment: shared study paths, with joint degrees in view, and projects of research and artistic innovation.

The vehicle is the system of the National Orchestras of the Italian Conservatories: Symphonic, Baroque and Jazz. The moment of greatest visibility was Expo 2025 Osaka.

Lead institution

Conservatorio di Musica “Ottorino Respighi”, Latina

Partners

• Istituto Pantheon Design & Technology, Rome
• Conservatorio di Musica “Giuseppe Verdi”, Milan
• Conservatorio di Musica “Alessandro Scarlatti”, Palermo
• Conservatorio di Musica “Giuseppe Nicolini”, Piacenza

Countries it looks to

Japan, Vietnam, South Korea

The four phases

1. 1
   Prepare

   The conservatories, through their delegates, choose the areas of collaboration and research, plan the meetings with the academies of the three countries, and present methods and programmes for masterclasses and workshops.

2. 2
   Start

   Masterclasses, international research groups, mobility of students, researchers and teachers, artistic production.

3. 3
   At the centre

   Expo 2025 Osaka: the concerts of the National Orchestras and the productions of the international working groups.

4. 4
   Consolidate

   The results become the basis of an international postgraduate school of orchestral training, with a technology hub at the Latina conservatory.

• The project sheet on the website of the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PDF, in Italian)
• The project on the Nicolini Conservatory’s pages: documents (in Italian)
• The project on the Nicolini Conservatory’s pages, in English

Osaka, August and October 2025

On 20 and 21 August 2025, at 6 pm local time, the Orchestra Nazionale Jazz dei Conservatori Italiani, the national jazz orchestra of Italy’s conservatories, played at the Matsuri Arena of Expo 2025 Osaka, opening the concerts of Elisa and Achille Lauro. The programme, “Jazz in Italy | Italy in Jazz”, was conducted and arranged by Pino Jodice.

On stage, twenty musicians from thirteen conservatories: four voices, four trumpets, three trombones and a bass trombone, five saxophones, piano, electric bass, drums. Both concerts were streamed in 360° with immersive audio on the YouTube channel of the Piacenza conservatory.

On 11 October 2025, two days before Expo closed, it was the turn of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale dei Conservatori, the national symphony orchestra of Italy’s conservatories, conducted by Gianna Fratta in the National Day Hall. The programme: the theme from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “The Last Emperor”, orchestrated by P. Vivaldi and A. Sartini, Berlioz’s overture “Le Carnaval romain”, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 “Italian” and Tchaikovsky’s “Capriccio italien”.

On stage were sixty-nine musicians, fifty-nine of them from thirty-eight Italian conservatories and music institutes. For this project the orchestra comes under the Conservatorio “Ottorino Respighi” of Latina, the lead partner. This concert too was filmed in 360° with immersive audio: it is the one in the second player.

The Conservatorio di Musica “Giuseppe Nicolini” of Piacenza, a partner of the project, entrusted GR STUDIO SRL with the scientific responsibility for the project. The assignment is organised in four tasks.

1. Project direction
2. Coordination of live events
3. Production coordination
4. Research and test programme with the partners

What we brought home

• A 360° capture and streaming chain with immersive audio, tested on an open-air stage on the other side of the world, with the audience in front.
• Two published experiences that open in any browser, with no headset and nothing to install.
• A software with a name, Immersive Streaming Experience, which we now bring to other productions and to the other projects of the lab.

• The Four Turandot

  With The Four Turandot the software shares the lab, the tools and the underlying idea: to step inside the music, instead of watching it from outside. On its site you choose the four endings by pulling a thread.

  The Four Turandot website
• The story on the GR STUDIO site

  Oriental told among the studio’s other works.

  Oriental: a concert at Expo 2025 Osaka, to listen to from the inside

The photos and frames come from the recordings and the archive of the Osaka production; the holding screens are those of the live streams. Institutions are named in full, without logos. The Immersive Streaming Experience logo uses the Blanka typeface.