AES News

— Preserving the Prince archives, bringing classic multitrack recordings to the classroom, new standards for high-resolution music delivery and much more to be covered at the AES’s 145th International Convention —

From archiving the musical legacy of Prince to making classic multitrack tapes available for educational purposes to establishing best practices for organizing modern production workflows, the 145th Audio Engineering Society International Convention’s Archiving and Restoration Track will dig deep into the preservation and perpetuation of the recorded heritage of music, the spoken word and sonic environments. Audio archiving and restoration presentations are part of the All Access Technical Program offered at AES New York 2018, October 17 – 20 at the Jacob Javits Center.

“More than one trillion songs are streamed every year, and countless others are locked away on hard drives, CDs, DATs, vinyl and obsolete playback formats. Preserving our audio history is more important than ever,” said Jessica Thompson, AES Audio Archiving and Restoration Track chair. “And in looking toward the future, the AES also continues to innovate and educate the industry on archiving today’s audio formats for tomorrow’s listeners.”

Audio archiving and restoration can often become its own adventure, with the need for inventive, new approaches to a given project. In “Preserving the Prince Archives,” Susan Rogers (Prince’s recording engineer from 1983 – 1988), Michael Howe (Prince Estate's official Vault Archivist), and engineer/producer Niko Bolas (Prince, Neil Young) will share their memories of working in the studio with Prince and discuss the formidable challenges of sorting through decades of analog and digital formats, and archiving, preserving and releasing Prince’s recorded legacy.

Hosted by presenters John Krivit, George Massenburg, Eric Schwartz and Toby Seay, “Preserving Classic Multi-Tracks for Use in the Classroom” will address the need to make classic multitrack recordings available for educational purposes, and the extra incentive that provides for archiving and restoration. A classroom use demonstration will feature tracks from Earth, Wind and Fire’s classic “September.”

The abundance of recording formats made possible by evolving technology complicates music production and archiving, which will be addressed in the seminar “Archiving and Best Practices for Modern Production Workflows.” Konrad Strauss (professor at Indiana University), Maureen Droney (Executive Director of the Producers & Engineers Wing of The Recording Academy) Chuck Ainlay (producer and engineer) and Michael Romanowski (mastering engineer) will present P&E Wing delivery and production recommended guidelines. The session “Austin City Limits’ Archive: Applying Software Development Methodologies to Audiovisual Archiving” will look at how data management, project management and other factors can be applied in similar ways to both software development and archiving.

The “Help! I have a Tape Machine!” panel will share knowledge about how to evaluate, maintain and even find analog tape machines as the medium heads towards its twilight. Mastering engineers as archivists is the subject of the session “Archive This! How Mastering Engineers Have Become Default Guardians of Audio Assets.” Rounding out the AES New York Archiving and Restoration Track are two related sessions: “An Overview of Optimizing Signal-to-Noise Ratio Primarily in Analog Audio Tape Recording” and “Recent Advances in Noise Reduction: From Multiband Gates to Machine Learning.”

All Access registration to AES New York 2018 provides four full days of Technical Program sessions, including the Audio Archiving and Restoration Track events, papers and posters, workshops and tutorials (October 17-20), while Exhibits-Plus passes give attendees three days of Exhibition Floor showcases and demos (October 17-19). If it’s about audio, it’s at AES – the ultimate opportunity for audio professionals of all specialties, and future audio pros, to listen, learn and connect!

Advance registration is open now at aesshow.com, offering the best possible pricing and options. All Access registration is the ticket to everything the Convention has to offer. AES Members enjoy substantial discounts on All Access registration, with even deeper discounts for Student Members. Registration at any level for AES New York 2018 includes access to the co-located NAB Show New York exhibition.