AES Student Blog

 1) Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?

My name is Fryderyk Hoang Dong. I am a graduate of Master's Programme in Sound Engineering in Frederic Chopin University of Music. Right now I relocated to Boston, MA and am pursuing further my education at Berklee College of Music.

2) What initiated your passion for audio? When did it start?

I started out as a musician first. I was always drawn into finding something more and at some point decided on studying the technical side of producing records. I was determined to learn how to work as an engineer and at the same time my passion for sound design started developping.

3) Tell us about production of your submission? What is the story behind it? What inspired it? How long did you work on it? Was it your first entry?

It was the second time I submitted my work for the competition. a year before I received Golden award for the work entitled "Tiny Tortures". This year I sent a video directed and animated by Tony Comley. Personally I really like pandas very much, so I knew right away that I am going to have a lot of fun composing and sound designing for that.

4) What/who made you join AES?

I have always known about AES as it's a great community to be in. You get to meet a lot of professionals and the conventions are really great in terms of networking and getting to know people who work in the industry,

5) Tell us about your favorite experiences at the 145th AES convention in New York!

I actually really enjoyed watching and listening the student competition panel. It is on such a high level every year. Not only you get to see great work done by students all over the world but you also hear very constructive opinion by highly respected people from the industry field.

 1) Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?

I'm originally from Atlanta, Georgia and now i am studying Audio Engineering Technology at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.

2) What initiated your passion for audio? When did it start?

I feel like it started for me like it started with most people. I started listening to good music. Originally I was actually a video guy until I started listening to some old classic rock records. After that I convinced my school's video teacher to buy some sound equipment and I started recording people at my high school. I've been working with audio ever since.

3) Tell us about production of your submission? What is the story behind it? What inspired it? How long did you work on it? Was it your first entry?

This was actually a project for one of the upper level audio classes at Belmont. Myself and my friend/co-engineer, Cameron Row, wanted to do a laid back song, so we both got to researching through spotify playlists. I eventually found "Bad Bad News" by Leon Bridges and knew that had to be the track. I started calling up musicians in the Belmont music program and got a really solid set of players. We were fortunate enough to track in Oceanway Nashville which has one of the nicest rooms imaginable. (That's why you'll find most of the drum mix is the room mics). Everyone that played had a really upbeat and fun vibe so we played the song a half step up and added some pretty interesting parts. We played a Fender Rhodes through a Leslie cabinet to close out the song and added little Moog synthesizer riffs throughout it. The results ended out being a really nice and vibey yet still energetic song. Once it was all tracked I handed the stems to Cameron Row to mix it. I gave him some minor production notes, and he finished it up nicely.

4) What/who made you join AES?

All of Belmont's professors highly encourage you to join AES. What finally pushed me to join was the student recording competition! Cameron Row mentioned it to me and suggested we submit "Bad Bad News". Once Belmont approved the song to go to New York, we both joined right up. One of the best choices I've made as an engineer so far. I cant wait to attend more conventions in the oncoming years!

5) Tell us about your favorite experiences at the 145th AES convention in New York!

I found all the panels incredibly interesting. I was worried it would be a whole bunch of old guys debating what your LUFS meter should read before you send your mix off to mastering, but it was all very entertaining and very educational stuff. Anything I felt I was missing from Belmont, I could learn about it at AES.

 From groundbreaking audio consoles to innovative video production systems, Solid State Logic has evolved to become the world’s leading manufacturer of analogue and digital audio consoles and provider of creative tools for film, audio, video and broadcast professionals. In conditions where sonic purity cannot be compromised against the inevitable demands of high workloads, and where dauntingly inflexible deadlines are accepted as the norm, SSL equipment is synonymous with reliability and excellence.

Black Saloon Studios is Mandy Parnell's mastering studio in London, England. She studied music and music technology through her school, college and university years, training and working in recording studios until landing an internship at a mastering studio.Mandy worked her way up through the ranks, eventually becoming a world renowned mastering engineer in her own right. She finally decided to launch her own facility, Black Saloon Studios. She has been nominated and won numerous awards, Grammy, Tech Awards, MPG and various others. She is also an active member of the AES, Grammys, APRS and MPG, and lectures on mastering and the music industry across the globe.

 1) Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?

 1) Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?

I am from Poland and my hometown is Bydgoszcz but currently I live in Cracow. I moved out to study Acoustic Engineering - the field of studies that in Poland is only at AGH University of Science and Technology. To be honest, I didn't know exactly what the field is related to but after some time I find it out and I got keen on acoustics. In the present, I am involved in a number of projects, bigger and smaller, and I really like it.

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?

I have made an application on FDTD simulation. The acronym stands for "finite-difference time-domain" and it's related to the simulation method I used. It enables watching computation results in real-time what isn't common in many methods. Also, it's relatively fast and, what I proved in my research, accurate enough to analyze audio problems. It's much improved version of my diploma thesis program and I presented it at the 145th AES Convention about year after my first lines of code were written. First serious software, first international conference and first big award of my own - the triple!

Of course I did! Maybe, in the plethora of own-made simulation programs, my proposition can be unnoticeable yet but I know very well that with a little support from someone I can turn my application into a useful reliable acoustic tool. I have many ideas. I have even started improving the software but there is a long way ahead of me. It would be a lot better, if my colleague Adam didn't take the Interfacio Award!

Many things happen around me in last few weeks. Firstly, I have to take care of some duties connected with the studies and other conferences but in fact nothing with the project. Thinking of next Saul Walker Student Design Competition in Dublin!

 1) Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from and what do you study?

I'm from Northern Poland, however I spend most of the time in Cracow right now. The reason is included in the second part of the question - I study Acoustic Engineering at the AGH University of Science and Technology, finishing my 2nd cycle studies soon. 

2) What initiated your passion for audio? When did it start?

I think the first time I thought about becoming a professional in acoustics or audio was in high school. In those times I was really interested in physics generally and after starting thinking about my future I found that sound is one of the most interesting phenomena for me. It spoke to me both scientifically as a purely physical process and emotionally as I've always loved listening to music and any other sounds produced by nature, which made me curious what's the real process behind that.

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 project is entitled "Spectral Contrast Based Feature Extraction Algorithm for Acoustic Event Classification". The goal of the project was to create an efficient algorithm, which would extract a proper representation of a signal for several acoustic event classes. This is one of the crucial parts of a machine learning pipeline, in which we're training models (for example Neural Networks or Gaussian Mixture Models) with some feature vectors. This way our system is learning to recognize some specific types of signals in which we're interested in. In this case I've created an algorithm for acoustic event classification, so I needed something possibly general, as acoustic events include a very wide range of acoustic signal types. Experiments showed really promising results, in which the new algorithm outperformed some other commonly used methods.

This thing is just a part of a wider research I started for my BSc thesis over a year ago. During my studies I've became specially interested in DSP algorithms and systems using machine learning methods. Doing some initial research I found that Acoustic Event Detection and Classification is a field still to be studied and improved and in my humble opinion it's one of the most promising audio topics to become fruitful in the future. It has many possible or already existing practical applications like surveillance systems, smart home decisions, acoustic scene analysis, cryminology or speech recognition enhancement. Naturally this conclusion altogether with my interests led me to step into this world and try to find my own place. So it's been over a year now as I'm doing a constant research in this field and I'm definitely going to continue it in the near future. Currently I'm reading a lot of papers and articles related with my MSc Thesis, in which I'm going to use deep neural networks. Pretty exciting. 

4) Did you considered commercializing your project? Are there any business or product possibilities?

Not so much. Unfortunately the topics I usually work on are not easily commercializable ones, as they require many years of research and hard work to get anything near a proper product. As a future professional I'm rather thinking about joining a team enabling a profitable co-operation which would lead us to some point where we have a working system, ready to sell. That would be a dream-come-true compromise between my scientific and business aspirations.

5) Do you know or consider any future steps? Will it be linked with the project you’ve presented?

As I mentioned before, I continue my studies on acoustic event classification. For now I'm focused on preparing my MSc thesis related to the use of deep learning in this context. However I'm pretty sure it will be just a next step and many other are waiting to come. This shall be a long journey.

 Thank you to Merging for their continued sponsorship and support of the AES Competitions!

Merging Technologies SA is a Swiss manufacturer with over 20 years of experience in developing groundbreaking, professional Audio and Video products for a wide range of entertainment and media industries. With a dedicated user base in the elite end of the music, film, television, mastering and performances industries, Merging is committed to developing product ranges with unrivalled quality and flexibility, no matter what the application. Merging builds tools for people who want more from their systems, have an inherent need to push boundaries, and believe that quality always comes first, every time.

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