AES UK Section - Personalized Audio for TV

Sep 8, 2023 1:00pm ‐ Sep 8, 2023 1:00pm


In this talk, Rupert Brun will explain what audio objects are and why we need them. His award-winning Wimbledon ‘NetMix’ experiment from 2011 led directly to a focus on accessibility as the key feature for Next Generation Audio. Rupert will cover the ways in which audio objects can be created for both live and post-produced content, and how they can be distributed to the consumer, calling on his experience delivering audio object content for a wide range of programmes, including Eurovision and the European Athletics Championship. His talk will be based on his personal experience with MPEG‑H, but other standards will be outlined including the Audio Definition Model (ADM) and the emerging serial version SADM.

Rupert has been a member of the AES for many decades and was previously a member of the UK Committee, with responsibility for sustaining members. He is also a member of the IET Media Executive Committee and a STEM Ambassador. He helps to run the Radio Technology Conference in the UK each year. Rupert spent 35 years with the BBC in a variety of roles including Senior Engineer, Maida Vale and Senior Engineer Radiophonic Workshop. He spent his last decade at the BBC as Head of Technology for Radio & Music TV, with responsibility for all of the technology across those areas including multi-million pound technology projects. Rupert left the BBC to set up Brun Audio Consulting Ltd in March 2015. His clients include broadcasters, technology companies, manufacturers, and systems integrators. He continues to work with Fraunhofer IIS to promote MPEG‑H Next Generation Audio for TV, with a focus on personalisation, especially accessibility.


AES LA Section - Inside Vinyl Mastering with Jeff Powell

Sep 8, 2023 8:00am ‐ Sep 8, 2023 8:00am

Mastering Engineer Jeff Powell has an incredible vinyl discography. Jeff will lead a step-by-step journey through the vinyl mastering process, review the basics for mastering to vinyl, then walk through a case study of a Made In Memphis STAX Records re-issue series cut from the original analog master tapes, covering both challenges and “buttercuts” seemingly made for vinyl.


Richard Heyser Memorial Lecture - The Ear is not a Fourier Transformer

Aug 23, 2023 4:00pm ‐ Aug 23, 2023 4:00pm

Richard Heyser was fascinated by the link between time and frequency, via the Fourier and Hilbert transforms. During his lifetime, performing the Fourier transform was a difficult thing to do, and he developed novel techniques to allow us to measure the time and frequency characteristics of audio systems and studios. Nowadays, it is simple to perform Fourier transforms in real-time on readily available computer hardware. Much of our processing of signals in the audio chain is now done via the Fourier transform, and versions of it form the basis of our audio coding systems for audio delivery.

We also know that the inner ear of a human listener converts a time domain acoustic signal into a frequency-based representation before it encodes it into neural impulses. However, the inner ear’s frequency representation is different to that obtained from a Fourier transform.

The talk, which should be accessible to people from all the different areas of endeavor within the AES, will first examine the operation of the ear, including its dynamic non-linear behavior. It will then examine the difference between the Fourier Transform and the human auditory system and highlight how they trade off time and frequency resolution differently.

We will then look at how processing in the Fourier domain can result in artifacts that can be perceived by the ear and discuss how one could mitigate these effects in Fourier-based processing systems.
Finally, we shall look at the unique ways the human auditory system allows us to hear the incredible complexity of the audio signal and how that might affect what we do in the future to improve audio, and perhaps move closer to some of Richard’s final words: “Perhaps more than any other discipline, audio engineering involves not only purely objective characterization but also subjective interpretations. It is the listening experience, that personal and most private sensation, which is the intended result of our labors in audio engineering. No technical measurement, however glorified with mathematics, can escape that fact.”


Inside the Black Box of AAA Game Audio

Dec 17, 2021 2:00pm ‐ Dec 17, 2021 4:00pm

We have a good understanding of the music recording industry and the processes involved in recording mixing and editing. We have a good grasp on what goes on in live touring audio. Mastering is not a mystery and the world of TV and film is not a secret… but what about AAA games?
A world of specialist techniques, coding and software not found anywhere else in the audio world – but also a world fiercely protected behind the wall of nondisclosure agreements. In this presentation AES Scotland has managed to persuade some elves to knock out a couple of bricks in the wall and let us join a conversation on the other side….
Created by the Glasgow School of Art: Games Audio and Sound for the Moving Image Departments


Importance of Loudness

May 28, 2021 5:30pm ‐ May 28, 2021 7:00pm

A discussion of Loudness for Broadcast and Streaming. We will have a summary of AES73, CTA 2075, and a preview of the Recommendations for Distribution Loudness of Internet Audio Streaming and On-Demand File Playback.


FXpertise: Expansion and Gating

May 28, 2021 5:30pm ‐ May 28, 2021 7:00pm

Compression stole the dynamic effects spotlight.  In this tutorial, we’re stealing it back.  Your mixes will benefit from creative applications of that ‘other’ dynamics processor:  the expander/gate.  While offering all the virtues of expanded dynamic range, it has the power to create a far wider variety of effects.  Expanders are a tool for altering timbre, reshaping sounds, synthesizing new ones, overcoming masking, and fabricating the impossible.  Parameters with names like attack, hold, release, decay, range, depth, slope, and side chain filters don’t exactly invite creative exploration.  This overview of effects strategies brings structure to the sonic possibilities of expansion and gating so that you can quickly find the parameter settings that let you achieve your production goals.


Audio for Social Justice

May 28, 2021 4:45pm ‐ May 28, 2021 5:30pm

In light of recent events in America, we have learned that audio is a powerful catalyst of social justice. As the world heard the last words of George Floyd and the shock spanned the globe, the tragedy of his death in the larger scope of police brutality in America was recognized. Today, high quality audio recording is available to anyone with a cellular telephone - we need to talk about how that is changing the world today and what our role as audio professionals could be.

We are living in a social media driven age where substance is often hidden by external appearances. As a songwriter who learned the craft in order to share my own message through music, I soon learned others had crucial information to share and started helping them to tell their stories through the use of professional audio techniques. Marches, conferences and direct action are taking place every day across the world, but may not be properly documented without quality audio. I worked on the wrongful conviction case of a woman named Kirstin Blaise Lobato where a single piece of audio was a crucial piece of evidence.

When setting out to help with audio for social justice, there are a number of challenges any audio professional may face:
Budget
Audio recorded improperly
Single channel audio
Static and mic noise
Audio overloaded by improper mic placement
Limited audio knowledge

Though editing tasks may be cumbersome and the availability of equipment onsite for events may be unpredictable, there are many gifts our community has to offer that could make the difference between a successful social media event and a failure for the visionaries who need it most. I will explore these topics in depth and will be happy to do a follow up presentation to expand on this.


Streaming as the Future of High Resolution Audio Distribution

May 28, 2021 4:00pm ‐ May 28, 2021 5:30pm

Streaming is now the dominant method of distributing audio, including high resolution audio (HRA), to consumers. Although HRA has been a small percent of the total, the major labels and the RIAA predicted from 2017 onward that high quality was of strong interest even to young listeners and should thrive given streaming's new affordability and portability. This workshop looks at current uptake and future directions in high quality audio streaming. Important to both sustainability and growth in this dynamic area are the evolving nature of music distribution infrastructure and the ability for all players in the area - major and indie labels, music streaming services, and designers of platform-spanning software and hardware - to address important issues. Those include growth models expanding to younger listeners, adequate remuneration of artists including indies while limiting costs, worldwide bandwidth constraints, differentiation from one another, and innovative provision for user requests like performance data, music discovery, radio, podcasts, etc. A very exciting new direction is live streaming, that for the first time permits HD video to be combined with HD audio.


The Boring Allpass Filter?

May 28, 2021 4:00pm ‐ May 28, 2021 4:45pm

When one thinks of filters, one thinks of classical filters in traditional engineering textbooks -- for example lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and bandstop filters.
In the field of audio, one encounters other filters as well.
In this tutorial we take a deeper look at allpass filters – where phase (instead of frequency shaping) is used as a manipulating tool.
We start with the basics of allpass filters and look at how they may be used for audio processing.
Then we look at how allpass filters may be used as building blocks for more complicated topologies to create even more interesting filters.


Tech Tours: Studio 150

May 28, 2021 3:30pm ‐ May 28, 2021 4:00pm

Studio 150 is a music production studio located in Amsterdam. They renovated an old monumental church building into a full-grown recording and mixing facility. The construction work took them almost four years, in which they tried to preserve the original atmosphere of the church as much as possible. The result is a very elegant, musical and versatile environment. Joeri, engineer at Studio 150 takes you on a tour to show you around their facility, sharing the studio’s passion for acoustics, analog equipment and vintage microphones!