Introducing Eclipsa Audio: immersive audio for everyone

In the real world, we hear sounds from all around us. Some sounds are ahead of us, some are to our sides, some are behind us, and - yes - some are above or below us. Spatial audio technology brings an immersive audio experience that goes beyond traditional stereo sound. It creates a 3D soundscape, making you feel like sounds are coming from all around you, not just from the left and right speakers.

Spatial audio technologies were first developed over 50 years ago, and playback has been available to consumers for over a decade, but creating spatial audio has been mostly limited to professionals in the movie or music industries. That’s why Google and Samsung are releasing Eclipsa Audio, an open source spatial audio format for everyone.

From Creation to Distribution to Experience

Eclipsa Audio is based on Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF), an audio format developed by Google, Samsung, and other key contributors within the Alliance for Open Media (AOM), and released under the AOM royalty-free license. Because IAMF is open source, Eclipsa Audio files can be created by anyone using freely available audio tools, which support a wide variety of workflows:

An open source reference renderer ^[1] is freely available for standalone spatial audio playback, or you can test your Eclipsa Audio files right in your browser at the Binaural Web Demo Application.

Starting in 2025, creators will be able to upload videos with Eclipsa Audio tracks to YouTube. As the first in the industry to adopt Eclipsa Audio, Samsung is integrating the technology across its 2025 TV lineup — from the Crystal UHD series to the premium flagship Neo QLED 8K models — to ensure that consumers who want to experience this advanced technology can choose from a wide range of options. Google and Samsung will be launching a certification and brand licensing program in 2025 to provide quality assurance to manufacturers and consumers for products that support Eclipsa Audio.

Next Steps

To simplify the creation of Eclipsa Audio files, later this spring we will release a free Eclipsa Audio plugin for AVID Pro Tools Digital Audio Workstation. We also plan to bring native Eclipsa Audio playback to the Google Chrome browser as well as to TVs and Soundbars from multiple manufacturers later in 2025. Eclipsa Audio support will also arrive in an upcoming Android AOSP release; stay tuned for more information.

We believe that Eclipsa Audio has the potential to change the way we experience sound. We are excited to see how it is used to create new and innovative audio experiences.

By Matt Frost, Jani Huoponen, Jan Skoglund, Roshan Baliga – the Open Audio team

^[1]Special thanks to Arm for providing high performance optimizations to the IAMF reference software.

Google Summer of Code 2025 is here!

Level up your coding skills in Google Summer of Code 2025

Get ready for the 2025 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program! We started this adventure in 2005 and over the past 20 years we have welcomed over 21,000 new contributors to open source through the program under the guidance of 20,000+ mentors from over 1,000 open source organizations. Check out the video below to learn more about the impact GSoC has made over the last two decades.

Our mission since day one has been to foster the next generation of open source contributors. Participants are immersed in a supportive environment where they spend 3+ months collaborating on real-world projects alongside experienced mentors. This deep dive into open source not only builds valuable coding skills, but cultivates a strong understanding of community dynamics and best practices, empowering them to become impactful contributors.

2024 was a milestone year with 1,127 GSoC contributors completing their projects with 195 open source organizations. We hope to surpass these numbers in 2025!

Be a GSoC 2025 mentoring organization

Application period: January 27 – Feb 11

Interested organizations can learn more by visiting our website; there you’ll find supportive materials to get started.

An invaluable resource is our Mentor Guide, which is a quick way to familiarize yourself with the GSoC program. You’ll find tips on how to engage your community, suggestions on how to present achievable project ideas, and guidance on applying these to your communities.

We are happy to welcome organizations new to GSoC each year. Typically, 20-30 organizations join us for the first time, and we encourage you to apply. In 2025, we're particularly excited to expand our reach in the Security and Machine Learning domains.

Learn more about being a GSoC mentoring organization

Join us in our first information session of the year:

• Organization Applications Tips on Tuesday, January 22 17:00 UTC

  Join the talk here: meet.google.com/gse-thow-xmc

Be a GSoC 2025 contributor

Application period: March 24 - April 8

If you are a beginner to open source development or a student interested in learning about open source, this is your chance to get involved and gain experience on real-world software development projects. Follow these quick steps to set yourself up for success:

• Learn more about GSoC on our official website.
• Watch our Introduction to GSoC video for a quick overview of the program.
• Review the Contributor Guide to get insightful ideas from past students and mentors for your program success.
• Read the GSoC Program rules to understand how GSoC works.

Learn more about being a GSoC contributor

Join one of our upcoming information sessions:

• Contributor Talk #1 on Wednesday, February 19, 16:00 UTC

  Join the talk here: meet.google.com/oct-wgna-paa

• Contributor Talk #2 on Tuesday, February 25, 2:00 UTC

  Join the talk here: meet.google.com/zau-gtwk-tif

• Contributor Talk #3 on Thursday, March 6, 16:00 UTC

 Join the talk here: meet.google.com/gyq-mcuz-wey

Please help us spread the word about GSoC 2025 to your peers, family members, colleagues, universities and anyone interested in making a difference in the open source community. Join us and help shape the future of open source!

By Stephanie Taylor, Mary Radomile, and Lucila Ortiz

Kubernetes 1.32 is now available on GKE

Kubernetes 1.32 is now available in the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Rapid Channel, just one week after the OSS release! For more information about the content of Kubernetes 1.32, read the official Kubernetes 1.32 Release Notes and the specific GKE 1.32 Release Notes.

This release consists of 44 enhancements. Of those enhancements, 13 have graduated to Stable, 12 are entering Beta, and 19 have graduated to Alpha.

Kubernetes 1.32: Key Features

Dynamic Resource Allocation graduated to beta

• Dynamic Resource Allocation graduated to beta, enabling advanced selection, configuration, scheduling and sharing of accelerators and other devices. As a beta API, using it in GKE clusters requires opt-in. You must also deploy a DRA-compatible kubelet plugin for your devices and use the DRA API instead of the traditional extended resource API used for the existing Device Plugin.

Support for more efficient API streaming

• The Streaming lists operation has graduated to beta and is enabled by default; the new operation supplies the initial list needed by the list + watch data access pattern over a watch stream and improves kube-apiserver stability and resource usage by enabling informers to receive a continuous data stream. See k8s blog for more information.

Recovery from volume expansion failure

• Support for recovery from volume expansion failure graduated to beta and is enabled by default. If a user initiates an invalid volume resize, for example by specifying a new size that is too big to be satisfied by the underlying storage system, expansion of PVC will continuously be retried and fail. With this new feature, such a PVC can now be edited to request a smaller size to unblock the PVC. The PVC can be monitored by watching .status.allocatedResourceStatuses and events on the PVC.

Job API for management by external controllers

• Support in the Job API for the managed-by mechanism graduated to beta and is enabled by default. This enables integration with external controllers like MultiKueue.

Improved scheduling performance

• The Kubernetes QueueingHint feature enhances scheduling throughput by preventing unnecessary scheduling retries. It’s achieved by allowing scheduler plugins to provide per-plugin callback functions that make efficient requeuing decisions.

Acknowledgements

As always, we want to thank all the Googlers that provide their time, passion, talent and leadership to keep making Kubernetes the best container orchestration platform. We would like to mention especially Googlers who helped drive the features mentioned in this blog [John Belamaric, Wojciech Tyczyński, Michelle Au, Matthew Cary, Aldo Culquicondor, Tim Hockin Maciej Skoczeń Michał Woźniak] and the Googlers who helped bring 1.32 to GKE in record time.

By Federico Bongiovanni, Benjamin Elder, and Sen Lu – Google Kubernetes Engine