Student Design Competition winner interview - Adam Szwajcowski
1) Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?
I'm from southern Poland, currently enjoying my last semester of MSc course of Acoustic Engineering at AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków.
2) What initiated your passion for audio? When did it start?
I've always been interested in sounds, particularly the musical ones. Getting into acoustics and then audio engineering was a natural next step of my technical progress, combining passion for music and science.
3) Tell us about production of your submission? What is the story behind it? How long did you work on it? Was it your first entry? What kind of problem can it solve or improve?
My entry was an extension of a research I carried out some time ago on using spherical harmonics for directivity pattern representation. I was curious if going one dimension higher than commonly used 3D functions can be beneficial and so far it turned out to do so. I only did simple tests before AES and there is a ton more to develop in this direction, however I believe that the way of dircetivity representation I came out with can solve some problems of spatial resolution and computational complexity in stuff like geometric method room acoustics simulations or immersivity in VR.
4) Did you considered commercializing your project? Are there any business or product possibilities?
No, not really. I'd rather keep the algorithm open and let everyone benefit from it for the better good. It's rather hard to commercialize a thing like this anyway, I guess.
