Tech Tours: STMPD Recording Studios

May 26, 2021 4:15pm ‐ May 26, 2021 4:45pm

STMPD recording studios, owned by Dutch DJ Producer Martin Garrix, is Amsterdam’s largest recording studio facility. Designed as the ultimate playground for music and audio post-production. With its grand history, these studios have welcomed (inter)national artists and producers like Pharrell Williams, Lady Gaga, Snoop Dogg, The Black Eyed Peas, The Script, David Guetta, Giorgio Tuinfort, Big Sean, Akon and of course Martin Garrix himself.
After Martin Garrix B.V. acquired the famous FC Walvisch studio complex in April 2017, the facilities have been completely upgraded, giving the place new energy while maintaining the creative atmosphere, high service level and welcoming vibe. Besides music, the studio has a long history in post production, providing audio services like re-recording mixing, ADR, sound design and music composition. Their Dolby Atmos Mix Stage is among the very best in the world, being one out of only 9 awarded with the prestigious Atmos Premier Studio certification worldwide.


Tech Tours: Level Acoustics and Vibrations Lab

May 26, 2021 3:45pm ‐ May 26, 2021 4:30pm

The Level Acoustics & Vibrations Lab is an acoustical laboratory associated with the Eindhoven University of Technology. It houses several chair members of the faculty of Building Acoustics. At the lab they perform different kinds of research in fields like room acoustics, building acoustics and environmental acoustics. The laboratory has three connected sound transmission rooms where they can do sound insulation measurements. One of the rooms also serves as a reverberation chamber. Currently, they are investigating the possibilities of realtime acoustic simulation using virtual reality. Remy Wenmaekers, acoustic consultant and researcher at the Level Acoustics & Vibration company, will take you on a tour showing you the lab and the facilities.


*Keynote Address* A Peek Under the Hood of Perceptual Audio Coding: A review of the history and a look into the future

May 26, 2021 3:45pm ‐ May 26, 2021 4:45pm

Did you ever wonder how your audio files squeeze so much sound into such a small size? Or what is the difference between MP3 and AAC? Or which multichannel audio coding format is best for your application?

The development of perceptual audio coding technologies allowed portable music devices to be launched and “suddenly” these technologies became ubiquitous in our daily lives, residing within mobile devices, DVDs, broad/webcasting, electronic distribution of music, etc.. A natural question to ask is: what made all this possible and where is the technology going?

In her presentation, Dr. Bosi will examine major shifts in audio consumption and how they represented new challenges and opportunities in coding audio for entertainment, information, and other purposes. Based upon her deep experience with digital media coding research and standards, Dr. Bosi will offer unique insights into the widespread use of these technologies in applications ranging from production and distribution of sound to the broader consumer experience, providing the foundation for an informed view of the future of digital media.


Listening Test Data Analysis for Everyone: An A/B Test for Car Audio

May 26, 2021 3:00pm ‐ May 26, 2021 3:45pm

Listening evaluations are EVERYWHERE. Whether involved in the creative process, design of gear or selection of components, gear or suppliers, audio is being judged by humans! These evaluations might be informal, perhaps one of many taken on a given day. However, oftentimes, formal listening tests are performed to support business decisions: When the stakes are high, it is often prudent to gather scientific, valid data about the test scenario. In each instalment of the series, HARMAN's data analysis expert Dr. Darlene Williamson will take you through data analytic procedures for a specific type of test. Test design considerations will be covered, but the focus will be on valid data analytic strategies for formal listening tests. Students and professionals alike will benefit from Dr. Williamson’s careful and thorough explanations on the pitfalls to avoid and options to navigate when extracting the meaning from the data. The series begins with probably the most common type of listening test: the A/B Test, which aims to see which of two options are preferable. Analyses from real-world datasets will be showcased, using commonly available software tools. Everyone is invited to come along and give their stats skills a boost!


Audio Mythology, Human Bias, and How Not To Get Fooled

May 26, 2021 3:00pm ‐ May 26, 2021 3:45pm

As a spiritual successor to his infamous 2009 "Audio Myths Workshop" session, audio engineer, author and mythbuster Ethan Winer will be joined by Live Sound International technical editor Michael Lawrence to discuss what he has learned from a long career dedicated to investigating and debunking widely held audio-related misconceptions and mythology. Winer and Lawrence will touch on some common audio "truisms" that might not be as true as they seem, along with the perceptual biases that can skew our experiences as listeners, and talk about the "sandbox" approach to designing simple experimentations to test and investigate claims for oneself.


Modern Digital to Analogue Converters: HOW many bits!?

May 26, 2021 1:00pm ‐ May 26, 2021 2:00pm

Recently Digital to Analogue Converters (DACs) that claim to have resolutions of 32 bits have become available. How do they possibly achieve such exalted levels of performance? Almost all, modern Digital to Analogue convertors (DACs) use oversampled multi-bit convertors with noise-shaping to achieve their high performance. Oversampling and noise-shaping allow one to use a DAC with a small number of levels, which is easier to manufacture. Unfortunately traditional noise shaping does nothing to reduce the effect of component tolerances in the DAC, because the analogue output cannot be fed back to the input. However, modern DACs do manage to noise shape the output from the DAC without any feedback. This piece of audio alchemy is critical to the exceptional performance of modern Digital to Analogue convertors. This Tutorial will explain how this alchemy is achieved. It will review the problems of component tolerance in DACs and show how they compromise performance. Then noise-shaping, and how it can be applied, without magic, or knowing the actual converted output, to a practical DAC will be explained. It will conclude by discussing how system aspects may limit their performance and discuss how you might prepare audio signals to maximise converter performance.


Starting Your Brand Like A Boss

May 26, 2021 12:00pm ‐ May 26, 2021 1:00pm

With more and more of our lives taking place in the digital world, particularly during the pandemic, it has never been more important to have a great brand presence online. Human-to-human connections can be a defining factor for your career, but how can you maintain them when more of our lives are becoming digital?

All these questions, and more, will be answered in “Starting Your Brand Like A Boss” which will take you from inspiration to creation to branding sensation!

Whether your profile is your website, your portfolio, or your social media activity, this jam-packed expert session will give you a stack of useful tips, tricks, and techniques to successfully manage your online brand like a boss.

Join our three experts for a download of branding awesomeness: daring branding maven Helga Osk Hlynsdottir from leading agency Serious Business, entrepreneur, educator, bass player, and founder of the Power Metal Quest Fest, Amie Chatterley, and journalist, podcaster, and award-winning marketer Oisin Lunny.

Topics covered will include:
• What is branding
• 10 top tips for branding
• The power of the collective
• From competition to collaboration
• How to create a personal brand
• Establishing and maintaining reputation
• The principles of networking
• How to network in a digital world
• The importance of social media
• LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WTF?

This session will be packed with great advice, handy checklists, hard-won career lessons, and even a few memes.


Next generation audio for advanced music creations and distributions

May 26, 2021 12:00pm ‐ May 26, 2021 1:30pm

Immersive audio, high-resolution audio, and high-definition audio have become available for recording, creations, and online delivery the music. While the lossy codec such as MPEG4-AAC was the key technologies to enable digital broadcasting and online-delivery, viewers and listeners of digital broadcasting and online-delivery have become noticed the difference of audio quality and musical emotion between the legacy 2ch stereo audio using lossy codec and immersive audio using high-quality audio codec. This workshop will introduce recent actual use cases of next generation audio such as immersive audio, high-resolution audio, and high-definition audio for the advanced music creations and online-delivery of music. Kimio Hamasaki will summarize the history and latest status of next-generation audio and introduce examples of his own researches and development as well as his musical recording works. Hideo Irimajiri will report on the live experiment of music online-delivery with high-resolution audio and immersive audio in Japan done by WOWOW last October and discuss the future prospects. Toru Kamekawa will report on music creations using next-generation audio at the Tokyo University of the Arts and introduce some actual examples and discuss the future prospects. Kazuya Nagae will report on the recent productions, distributions and education using immersive audio at Nagoya University of the Arts and discuss the future prospects. These panels will also discuss the advantages of the next-generation audio for advanced music creations and online-delivery and issues of those they encountered during the actual cases. And finally, they will discuss how to improve the quality and emotion of music recordings and deliveries in the future.


Loudspeaker Virtualization for Immersive

May 26, 2021 11:00am ‐ May 26, 2021 12:00pm

Immersive Sound offers consumers an extremely immersive listening experience for music through loudspeakers, which is not possible with standard 2CH stereo. Large loudspeaker setups such as Auro 3D 13.1 or Dolby Atmos 9.1.6 are not feasible for most consumers at home. It therefore makes sense to offer the content as headphone productions for the mass market. A large number of binauralization processors and consumer products have entered the headphone market in recent years. And streaming services have been offering Immersive Sound content for headphones since 2019. But how close does headphone reproduction come to reproduction via loudspeakers? And what needs to be done still to make headphone reproduction equal? In his video workshop, Lasse Nipkow explains the most important aspects of loudspeaker virtualization, which are necessary for a three-dimensional headphone reproduction. He uses video animations and sound samples to show where we are today on the way to this goal.


Bridging the Technical Divide: Techniques for effective communication with artists

May 26, 2021 11:00am ‐ May 26, 2021 12:00pm

In response to changes in the music industry it has become vital for audio professionals to have the communication skills to work collaboratively with artists while creating a supportive, creative environment.

This industry led workshop, aims to provide practical solutions for how producers and audio technicians can communicate effectively with artists in order to provide the best outcome for collaborative, live and studio work.

The workshop will be led by industry expert staff and tutors from The Academy of Contemporary Music (ACM) who have experience both working with artists on high profile tracks and live events and in training the next generation of producers and technicians to work collaboratively in all areas of the music industry. The panel represents experience in artist collaboration through electronic music, studio production, live sound, studio management and sound design for media.

The workshop will provide a discussion and effective, tested, solutions on how to communicate with artists so that you can collaboratively meet your artistic aims while creating a professional and supportive environment.
The session will cover:
Precision in communication - ensuring that everyone is communicating consistently in order to work towards success.
Techniques for communicating technical information in a way that can be understood and used by all team members, regardless of technical training.
Codes of ethics and how to build ethical practices into your collaborative workflow.
Inclusive communication techniques to ensure that all members of the technical and creative team are able to fully participate in conversations and feel supported to communicate.
How to build partnerships with artists and ensure that you are easy to work with.

All guidance for this workshop has been developed by industry professionals with technical knowledge of production and audio engineering, ensuring that approaches can be easily included in the modern producer and technician’s workflow.