AES

Notes from Day 1 of the 143rd AES convention in NYC.

For as long as the AES leaves the program around, here’s what was going on: http://www.aes.org/events/143/calendar/calendar.cfm  Just some notes I happened to make, probably this is about half of what I did there.

Starting out with the first presentation on Spatial Audio, I thought it was a decent introduction for anyone that might be new to the subject. Room was pretty full so there’s interest in the topic.

Audio for Immersive Cinema session: Interesting to see where the research is headed. I think the work of Sound Particles was the most interesting part of the presentation. Good crowd so clearly the topic is of interest.

Loudness poster – convention paper 9818

Wandered among the poster session. This one ( /conv/143/9818.pdf) led to some discussion about managing bass redirect in high channel count (i.e. ATMOS, X, etc) systems to maintain perceived loudness.

 

 

 

 

Design of Loudspeaker Crossovers using Genetic Algorithm

I need to go read more about this next one, available as e-brief 355 from the AES. While genetic algorithms can sometimes provide unique solutions that nobody would think of I’m not sure if what’s been achieved here shows much promise against what a designer would do. OTOH maybe this could be the first step in a designing an entire speaker (transducers and enclosures). I wonder that would look like, given what GA can come up with for a radio antenna.

The next poster session my picture was borked.  Microphone Array Impulse Response (MAIR) Library for Spatial Audio Research. I was more curious about how they did this than the results of it. Applied Acoustics Lab at University of Huddersfield: https://research.hud.ac.uk/institutes-centres/mtprg/projects/apl/

https://github.com/APL-Huddersfield for the files associated with the paper.

What’s up with $3.50 for a cup of coffee at the Javits?  Yeah it was StarBucks but still…  Anyway now feeling a bit more awake so on to more sessions.

Sat in on Transducers Part 1. Optimal Modulator with Loudspeaker Parameter Inclusion was an interesting take on improving system performance for class D amplifiers.

Stopped in to the Dolby/JBL ATMOS demo.  I sat mid left during the demo, which was set up as 7.2.4 with doubled surrounds. I forgot to ask what was being used for decode. ATMOS content was the 2016 demo disc so no surprises there. Before the ATMOS demo JBL did 2.0 and 2.1 demo of various speakers. All sounded reasonable within the expectations of the various systems. With ATMOS the LTF speaker seemed out of balance – while I was closest to it it seemed to easy to localize sound to it that shouldn’t have been (when I compare to my office setup). The Intonato 24 was interesting – looks like a decent controller for this type of situation.

 

 

AES Boston/Audio Builder Workshop event at Kickstarter HQ in Brooklyn.

This was a great event. Got to talk to a lot of people doing all sorts of interesting stuff. See my ABW post for some pictures.

While there was a lot of great stuff to see, a live demo by Pat of moforte’s model based guitar synth (GeoShred) was fantastic. Check out their videos.  It was developed in FAUST. If only I owned Apple products…and had any musical talent at all.

 

About the accommodations in NYC: When I got around to booking anywhere in Manhattan was big $.  However the Sheraton 4 Points in Queens was a relative bargain. Subway ride on the 7 was a little over 15 minutes to the Hudson Yards (Javits) stop. About 30 minutes door-to-door.  Awesome view from the roof top bar:

Great hotel staff there too.  Close to the subway. Got coffee and a muffin before getting on the 7 at the Commissary Market on the station level at Queensboro plaza. Despite other yelpers comments I didn’t have an issue…would definitely do this again. But you have to want to experience NYC not like a tourist.

Read on here for Day 2.