AES Student Blog

Manufacturer of professional monitors and High End Home speakers. APS was born from an encounter between a composer and sound engineer/producer, brilliant speaker designers and a group of highly motivated audiophiles and music lovers.

APS was established in 2006 as a project devoted to studio sound production technique. As we use professional project and measurement tools, we have total control over the final effect at each stage of the product creation. Ready-made projects are implemented into production with maximum attention paid to the quality of the final product. Our present offer includes active studio monitors.

 Merging Technologies is the world’s foremost manufacturer of high-resolution digital audio recording systems.  The list of customers reads like a who’s who in the recording industry and recordings made with Merging Technologies’ systems regularly receive the recording industry’s prestigious Grammy® Award. 

The company was founded in 1990 in Chexbres, Switzerland by Claude Cellier; an electronics graduate of the Institute of Technology in Lausanne.   Prior to this, Claude worked for the famous Swiss audio maker Nagra Kudelski for 10 years.  

Within a short time of its founding, Merging quickly established a reputation for their expertise in digital signal processing and associated hardware, and with their Pyramix Virtual Studio, was one of the first companies to produce a DSD recording system. The DXD format, (Digital eXtreme Definition) operating at 352.8kHz/24bit, was developed by Merging Technologies in collaboration with Philips, to overcome the challenges in editing and mastering DSD for SACD.

 Merging Technologies currently has over 20 employees with offices in Switzerland and the UK.

Meet Dave Hill one of our honorable judges of the Student Design Competition at AES138 in Warsaw.

Designer Dave Hill has always had an interest in electronics, and started designing and building devices at an early age. He was building analog synthesizers from scratch and started doing professional sound recording and equipment maintenance while still in high school. After high school Dave continued to pursue a career in electronics and enrolled in a local technical college. After his first year he was asked by the college to take over teaching duties in the program. He taught analog and digital electronics for 8 years while continuing his involvement in pro audio. 

Dave continues to do studio and film sound recording, as he has since 1972.  Early in the 1980's Dave was asked if he could design a tube compressor that would have the sound of vintage tube type devices.  The result of this request was the Summit Audio TLA-100.  Due to the success of that design Dave went on to design and set up the manufacture of all Summit Audio products until September of 1994.

Beginning in August of 1995, his new company Crane Song Ltd. was set up and started his first project for ATR Service Company.  A tube playback pre-amp for the ATR-102 tape machine called the HDV-2. This was manufactured for the ATR Service Company by Crane Song Ltd. Next Dave designed a two channel discrete class A compressor-limiter, called the STC-8 which was the launch of the Crane Song product line.

Today the Crane Song family of products has grown to nine hardware products and a Pro Tools plugin, they are; STC-8, Flamingo, Trakker, Ibis, Avocet, Egret, Spider, Falcon, Hedd-192, and Phoenix.

Dave Hill Designs was created as a way to do some different things and its two hardware products are Europa 1 and Titan which are both digital controlled analog devices. Dave Hill designs also has a ProTools plug-in called RA which allows the bending of linearity in the audio path and the creation of new sounds.

Some of the designs for other companies include Avid’s HEAT plug-in,  ATR Service Company’s variable speed control and the ARIA discrete record - play tape machine electronics.  In addition there is on-going design work for several other companies, both the US and the UK.  New designs for both Crane Song and Dave Hill Designs are always being worked on.  Plus research into clocking, jitter, digital control of analog audio and other areas.

Meet Umberto Zanghieri one of our honorable judges of the Student Design Competition at AES138 in Warsaw.

Umberto Zanghieri began his involvement in audio by servicing Hammond and Yamaha organs and other keyboard brands. Since 1991 he worked at the Research Centre of Bontempi-Farfisa group, focusing on DSP development for audio and musical applications. He obtained an Msc degree in Electronics Engineering in 1994 with a work on pitch detection algorithms for stringed instruments.  After a few years of consulting for STMicroelectronics on custom DSP design projects, in 1999 Umberto cofounded ZP Engineering, a design house devoted to hardware, embedded and DSP projects for audio and industrial applications. He has been involved in various roles within AES, as president of the Italian Section, VP for South Europe, Chair of TC-NAS and several audio networks related workshops, and co-Chair at a few european AES Conventions (Rome in 2013, Berlin in 2014, Warsaw in 2015).  Since 2014, ZP  is part of RCF Group, and Umberto now manages the development of new digital audio products for RCF.

In his career, he has been working in the fields of 3D spatial audio, digital audio networks, digital audio and voice signal processing, audio effects, embedded system design, musical instrument design, audio watermarking, product definition and development.

TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik strives for absolute perfection. By offering historic recreations of classic microphones alongside our own proprietary designs based around the distinctive tube mic sound, we have established a product line that perfectly blends vintage style and sound with the reliability of a modern-day microphone. Our commitment to both the sonic excellence and quality of all of our products is rivaled only by our dedication to provide the BEST possible service to each and every one of our customers.  

TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik are sponsoring the Student Recording Competition again, donating some of their amazing microphones as prizes for the SRC's winners! 

Since the birth of Nebula in the summer of 2005, a dynamic collaboration was born between forward thinking developers, beta testers, audio engineers and equipment samplers from around the world. The research and development has gone through many stages and possesses innovative processes and technologies as of yet unheard of in other products or devices.

The company's goal is to provide the most authentic reproduction of sampled vintage gear and other high end hardware devices, using the revolutionary technology "V.V.K.T." (Vectorial Volterra Kernels Technology) without the negative artifacts created by current convolution technology.

After years of continous work, this creative forward thinking group has developed to a team of experts in knowing what it takes to serve the best "of both worlds" (digital & analog).

Acustica Audio are sponsoring the Student Recording Competition again, donating many of their fantastic plugins as prizes for the SRC's winners! 

Acustica Audio website

Meet Jonas Rutström one of our honorable judges of the Student Design Competition at AES138 in Warsaw.

Jonas has been with MathWorks since 2009. He holds a M.Sc. in information technology and a Technical licentiate in signal processing from Uppsala University. Since joining MathWorks Jonas has worked as a technical expert in the area of signal processing and communication, embedded design and FPGA implementation.

Before joining Mathworks Jonas co-founded the Swedish company Dirac Research AB in 2001 where he held different positions in R&D until 2008 when he became the Brand Manager of the company. Dirac Research develop, market and license quality improving products for audio reproduction systems.

Founded in 1974, Jensen Transformers, Inc. is a manufacturer and  developer of high performance audio transformers. Tens of thousands of Jensen transformers are in use today throughout the world, and maintain a flawless reputation for superior quality and reliability.

Jensen is pleased to sponsor the AES138 student competition with prizing of the JIK-DB1 Iso-Kit™, a Jensen transformer equipped direct box that comes in an easy-to-assemble kit form, developed specifically for recording schools and other higher education facilities that teach professional audio as part of their curriculum. It includes the same Jensen JT-DB-EPC transformer that is employed in many of the world's most popular direct boxes and on stages and in studios around the world.  The kit enables students to learn how to solder while building a product that he or she will value and use for the rest of their life.

Meet David Josephson one of our honorable judges of the Student Design Competition at AES138 in Warsaw.

David Josephson studied electrical engineering at the University of  California, Berkeley, and joined the AES in 1979. After ten years working in geophysical instrumentation he founded Josephson Engineering, in Santa Cruz, California, now in its 27th year of design and manufacturing studio and stage microphones. He holds four patents with others pending. He is a member of the IEEE, the Acoustical Society of America and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. David has presented many papers, workshops and tutorials on microphones and related technologies at AES conventions and section meetings, and continues research in advanced microphone technology and sound perception. In 1996 he started and now chairs the AES Standards Committee working group on microphone characterization, and is chair of the AES Standards Committee on Acoustics. He started the AES Technical Committee on Microphones and Acoustics and now serves as its vice chair. He has served as Section member and vice chair, and as an AES Governor.

David’s standards work is an attempt to make it possible for the audio community to make informed comparisons among different brands and models of microphones, through the use of uniform performance measurements and data presentation. Some of the group’s work results in AES standards and information documents, such as the widely used AES42 standard for digital microphones. David has also been AES’s liaison with IEC on the maintenance of international standards on microphones, most recently resulting in a complete revision of the IEC microphone measurement and audio interface standards. It is a continuing effort, showing some progress over the years in developing a consensus among leading microphone manufacturers and users.

Meet Liz Teutsch, one of our honorable judges of Category 4: Audio for Visual Media of the Student Recording Competition at AES138 in Warsaw.

Hailing from the Midwestern United States, Liz Teutsch grew up in a home saturated with music, from her parents’ Beatles records to her multi-instrumentalist grandmother’s square-dance fiddling.  This early exposure led her through studies in violin, piano, cello, percussion, drum set, bass and guitar, and eventually led her to Berklee College of Music’s Boston campus where she majored in Music Production and Engineering.  Her studies in Boston led to a plethora of collaborative, creative ventures in music production, sound for visual media, and of course, teaching.

Liz feels extremely fortunate that she is now able to fuse two of her passions – music and education – at Berklee’s campus in Valencia, Spain, where she has worked and taught since 2013.   In the classroom, Teutsch works to make music technology accessible to all, recognizing that these tools can also lead to unexpected creative breakthroughs.  “There are some facets of technology that all students – soon to be professionals – must understand.  However, these technology tools can also be used creatively, and it is our students’ explorations and experimentations with them that will continue to propel the music industry forward for many years to come.”

An Associate Professor and the Assistant Director of Academic Technology, Teutsch teaches courses in music production and technology, oversees the Music Technology Minor, and advises students in the Music Production, Technology and Innovation Master's Program.  

Formerly the Director of Audio Production at Boston University's Center for Digital Imaging Arts, Liz was based in Boston for over 10 years where she worked as an educator, technician, and tracking and mix engineer for music and multimedia.

Liz is an active member of the Audio Engineering Society and is the faculty advisor of the Berklee Valencia AES Student Section.  She is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Berklee College of Music.