Psychoacoustics has been gradually making its way from lecture halls and academic papers to the everyday life of NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) and sound quality engineers worldwide. The competitive situation in the market calls for new products to not only function better, but to sound better too. In this tutorial I would like to present how sound quality analysis tools, such as subjective listening tests or objective analyses (including calculations of loudness, sharpness, modulation or tonality) are used during the product development process. The presented examples will link the intricacies of the human auditory system to different acoustic challenges that arise during the design phase. From toothbrushes, through espresso machines and vacuum cleaners up to cars and airplanes, if the thing makes a sound, there’s a big chance that someone used the psychoacoustic theory to evaluate and improve it.

As we ponder both the future of live music and digital streaming, a plethora of questions have arisen. Are the technologies converging? How can we make money going forward? Will live sound return as we know it? Can FOH engineers save money by mixing virtual concerts from their console and obviate the need for pricey broadcast trucks? What are the relevant technologies that currently exist or should be built for the future? This panel will also explore the monetization of concerts within gaming platforms such as Roblox, as well as the role of AI and animation. Is there a way to go not only from live streaming but from streaming or gaming to live? Join our panel of industry experts, including the engineer who recorded Beck's 3D/360 performance, one of the very first of its kind and Justin Bieber's current engineer, a seasoned live sound engineer, now organizing virtual streams during the pandemic. Other speakers will include a seasoned audio programmer for the Roblox gaming platform, which is providing a new framework for hosting concerts virtually. This panel will explore the future of live sound, along with the audio tools and platforms that are transforming the concert industry.

The presenters will go through the common pitfalls, issues, and considerations to watch out for when creating and distributing your recordings/music. Who owns what? Who owns the recording? Who owns the song (composition)? Who owns the rights to publicly perform? What can be contractually waived? What's a must have in your agreements and where can you get help? The basics about music copyright law in North America and Europe and the most important differences between the two will be discussed during this panel.

Rupert Neve lived life in pursuit of extended frequency response, low distortion, and low noise in service of sound quality. While measurements informed his work and quantified his achievements, his designs evolved because he listened — to sound and to sound engineers. His first ‘manufacturing’ effort began at the age of 13, building radios and amplifiers while with his missionary parents in Argentina. He moved on to England and built his first large format analog console, and the professional audio industry would never be the same — consoles, compressors, equalizers and amplifiers from Neve Electronics, Focusrite, and AMS Neve. The journey moved next to Texas where his ideas, motivations, and designs continue in the products of Rupert Neve Designs. Join us for this workshop in which we hear from a range of friends, customers and colleagues discussing the rich life and sonic legacy of the person whose name is unmistakably associated with the highest of audio quality.

In this panel a number of industry experts will join in a discussion on streaming technologies: the ways we stream video, audio and data in real-time, the latency, quality and scalability of each of those technologies, the applications those particular methods can be applied to, the financial costs and the effort cost, and the current and future developments of the streaming technology itself.

With the rise of the gig economy, increasingly more audio professionals find themselves operating as freelancers and/or running their own small businesses.

In order to do this effectively, they need not only to understand and master their craft but also the fundamental business concepts that lead to generating reliable income from these skills.

Our panel understands how intimidating it is to start your own business and how stressful it can be when things aren't working. That's why we have gotten together to discuss the underlying non-audio skills (networking, marketing, soft skills, etc.) that helped us to establish successful audio businesses.

Enjoy a wide-ranging talk and discover through the perspectives of our multi-faceted panel the key business concepts that are often the difference between success and failure for many audio freelancers and business owners.

The live industry is living a transition from traditional left-right, mostly dual mono, to immersive systems. In this workshop, specific challenges of immersive audio for live are presented and addressed. These challenges are mostly related to the scale and diversity of audiences and performance spaces, from pre-production, to touring, to post-production. They can be overcome adopting a full system approach. This approach combines specific tools and guidelines for the design of the loudspeaker system, object oriented mixing tools and specific 3D audio algorithms for loudspeakers and headphones.

Over the last century, the need for contemporary creative expression has pushed artists and technologists to the forefront of building new musical interfaces with electronics, from the Theremin, to the TR-808 drum machine, to a plethora of MIDI controllers today. These instruments not only facilitate revolutionary ways of making music, but offer increased access to production, composition, and performance. The possibilities are endless, so how might one even begin to navigate this evolving musical landscape, where change is the only constant? This performative presentation will survey the expanding field of live electronic music, providing an introduction to electronic performance techniques and examples of their implementation in various performance contexts. References will be made to Berklee College of Music’s Electronic Digital Instrument (EDI) program, the first of its kind at an undergraduate level in the United States, which allows students to choose live electronics as their principal instrument at the institution. We will explore a variety of prompts related to incorporating electronic musicians into existing communities, creating new musical opportunities virtually and in-person through live experience design, and offering new pedagogical approaches through the lens of music technology education. The presenter will also demonstrate how electronic musicians perform with their unique systems via a series of short live examples with multiple electronic instruments, notably Ableton Push, and will discuss considerations for getting started in live electronic music performance.

When a listener walks through a room the spatial-temporal pattern of the early reflections arriving at his ears changes alongside the relative direct sound. Not all of the physical details can be perceived by human listeners. An in-depth understanding on how a moving listener perceives the early reflections in a room will help to improve the efficiency of auditory AR/VR systems with six degrees-of-freedom. Motivated by the described goal this tutorial will review the literature as well as selected previous studies by the author. The perception of early reflections has been studied in a variety of fields like the precedence effect, speech intelligibility, spatial impression in concert halls, human echolocation, audible effects of distinct reflections in control rooms as well as the excitation of selected early reflections by directed sound sources like beamformers for a controlled shifting of the apparent source location. What can we learn from the results achieved in the different fields so far and how can this knowledge be used to create efficient VR/AR-systems? Small rooms like living-rooms, offices or seminar rooms are common environments for using AR/VR applications, but their acoustic behavior has not been studied as intensely as that of concert halls. Therefore the tutorial will focus on the perception of early reflections in small rooms.

Over the past 20 years, Picturae has built an international reputation as a leader in the field of digitization, and in preserving, managing and enriching culturally significant historical collections across the globe. Vulnerable audio collections are deteriorating more and more each day, and are becoming less accessible due to a lack of appropriate playback equipment and knowledge. Priceless recordings can no longer be played back without concerns of damage. Even modern digital formats such as CDs can be permanently lost. Digitization is key for preservation.

Picturae’s specialists love sound, and digitize audio of various formats. From tapes to CDs, and from delicate 1/4 inch tapes to cassette tapes, Picturae finds suitable solutions and is able to safely digitize these audio carriers. In addition, these recordings are enhanced with metadata.