AES 143rd Convention. Day 2 – Clockworks Signal Processing

Notes from Day 2 of the 143rd AES convention in New York City.

There were a lot of sessions/papers that focused on various aspects of capturing, creating, and playing back audio for binaural listening applications for AR/VR, as well as gaming related applications. Didn’t go to those as was more focused on just the multichannel areas. There were too many sessions at the same time to check out everything.

P06 Spatial Audio – Part 1

There was a full house for P06 Spatial Audio – Part 1 session. I was able to stay for the first two papers, Efficient Structures for Virtual Immersive Audio Processing and Robust 3D Sound Capturing with Planar Microphone Arrays Using Directional Audio Coding. Worthy of a read. The first was coauthored by DTS so some of that work will probably end up in some product(s). The second was to answer my curiosity how things can be captured for immersive audio. Really though it all goes back to the same problem that has confounded audio from day 1 (for music at least): Are “you there” or are the musician’s “here with you”. For movies and AR/VR I think we all (mostly all?) agree it’s for “you there.” There were a number of sessions on immersive audio for music but I only could make one of them on Friday.

Next up was PD04 – New Amplifier Requirements for Speaker Protection and Control. I find the topic of non-linear processing an interesting one, and I think the presentation and having some demonstrations made this one of the best sessions for me. Unfortunately there was no paper to go along with this one. A couple of screen shots below will give a sense of it. Presented by Joachim Schlechter from Klippel, there are numerous papers and training materials available from their website.

: 143rd AES Klippel

: 143rd AES Klippel

: 143rd AES Klippel

: 143rd AES Klippel

: 143rd AES Klippel

: Demo setup for speaker measurement with Klippel test gear

Lots of nice toys on the NAB side

Wandered the exhibits a bit.Lots of nice toys on the NAB side of the hall.

Not many component vendors come to the show.One interesting one was Top-up Industry. In addition to having actual catalogs (way easier to look for stuff when you don’t know what you’re looking for- yeah I’m old school) they have a range of User Interface parts that are way more useful than a touch screen is. No distribution in the US and limited elsewhere. Not sure exactly why they came if you can’t buy their stuff. Neutrik and Electro-Switch were there too but I didn’t make it back over to them.

The signage on Susumu for their special thin film RS series audio resistors caught my eye and had a brief talk with them. Post show I looked at the datasheet and it’s totally devoid of information to back up any performance claim. Going to ask them for that. Also I’m not sure how a change of resistors is going to make a headphone demo on a very noisy exhibit floor sound ‘better.’ If you think it did, well, you have other issues.

: Lots of nice toys on the NAB side

: Susumu resistor booth

Dolby soundbar

Next up was Spatial Audio: SA07 – Practical Immersive Audio at Home which had 4 presenters. Was a reasonable set of topics about how we got to where we are and what might be next. Though somewhat missing in that was the lunacy of having multiple competing standards to do the same thing, and the burden that places on consumers, content producers, and manufacturers. But such is the consumer electronics business. The Dolby discussion included a reference to soundbars being the most likely way a consumer would experience immersive audio. It was just a tad ironic to see the Dolby slide promoting that knowing the tortured and ultimately pointless effort that was killed off by lawyers. Such is life in the megabucks world of big companies.

At some point one of the presenters asked the room of 60 or so attendees how many had a 5.1 or better system as their primary listening setup for TV. At best 10 hands went up – and these are the people that really would be expected to have something better than the TV’s audio or a cheap stereo soundbar. I wonder if they had asked who had a Dolby or DTS capable 3D audio system if any hands would have gone up (beyond the one person I knew in the room who has a killer setup).

Last talk on Thursday: Networked Audio: NA04 – ST 2110 & AES67: The Audio Parts of ST 2110, a short 30 minute session. I wasn’t able to make other AES67 related presentations but wanted to get a sense of where things are going as AES67 transport is the clear winner for the low levels (sorry AVB…).