L to R: John Vanderkooy; Bob Breen; Jeff Wolpert; Anthony Faust; Jeff Bamford; Ron Lynch — Toronto AES Section -- November 26 2013
The Toronto AES held its annual convention review.
Blair Francey introduced the evening's moderator Sy Potma. Sy noted the record high attendance and large number of presentation papers at the 135th convention.
Sy introduced the first presenter Bob Breen. Bob had numerous photos to accompany his presentation. He discussed the opening ceremony awards and keynote address. Mentioning the education fair, Bob noted "that recording schools are indeed the growth business in our industry"; there were over 60 recording schools represented! He discussed the AES/SPARS student party, the Phil Ramone tribute, and the Bruce Sweiden presentation. The exhibit floor had smaller booths to hold more manufacturers. In Bob's closing words "the convention was a great success".
Sy next introduced John Vanderkooy and provided his background. John gave his annual overview of papers that interested him. Four were from the Rome 134th convention. He noted the the AES focus in recent years has been towards education and tutorials, reinforcing Bob Breen's point about schools.
The fourth (Rome) paper by Dimitar Dimitrov entitled "Single Permanent Magnet Co-Axial Loudspeakers" elicited an audience question regarding the advantages. John replied "primarily it makes it cheaper", noting the author was in the industry so such an idea would have been well considered.
John's presentation included engineering briefs as well as papers.
One paper entitled "Consistently Stable Loudspeaker Measurements using a Tetrahedral Enclosure" prompted a question as to why the shape was chosen. John offered the author's (Geoff Hill) comments saying: "it generates the least spuriei (random reflections) from the enclosure itself". John added it was a stable environment.
John closed his talk by noting there were about 89 papers with "a lot of strange topics like soft acoustics", but he felt they were interesting.
At this point Sy suggested taking a break.
Jeff Bamford presented first after the break. Sy began by giving his background. Mr. Bamford discussed the workshops and tutorial sessions he attended, reading from a summary of his notes. Among the workshops he spoke about included those by Bill Whitlock and Bill Olsen; 3D Audio workshop including 3D microphones; networks ("It's easier to teach an audio guy about networking than to teach a networking guy about audio!"); a session entitled '7 Layers of Ethernet'; Lee Minnick AVB; and a session on line arrays. Jeff noted the tutorials were at a very high level and relatively easy to understand.
Mr. Bamford also attended a presentation by the National Recording Preservation. "There are over one hundred million hours of recorded sound". Discussing archiving, Jeff Wolpert (who presented later on in the evening) interjected with some insights stating he was archiving by putting the entire drives in the vault, as well as players of the stored medium ie: CD's and CD players; tape and tape players.
Sy introduced Anthony Faust who's presentation included a video featuring James May highlighting pirate radio and audio networking.
Ron Lynch presented next. He discussed workshops, technical tours, and exhibits. In his overall summary: "There was a lot going on". He gave his overviews of "television loudness and metadata"; and the loudness wars by Bob Katz ("the debilitating loudness war has been won"). This was due to iTunes v 11 1.1 Sound Check algorithm. Ron also stated that George Massenburg and Bob Ludwig both spoke afterwards, and praised it as well because "it was being done correctly!"
About 'Immersive Sound' he said "It's really cool!" He had a chance to audition it calling it a "eureka moment". Other mentions included the "Principles of Channel-based and Object-based audio"; DTV audio group forum and the Technical Tour of NBC Studio 6A during "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". Exhibits included Avid S6 console, Magma Roben 3TM, Slate Raven, and Telefunken Elektroakustik.
Sy introduced the final presenter Jeff Wolpert. Mr. Wolpert attended many workshops and reviewed "new and interesting" items including JoeCo's BlackBox BBR1MP 24 track recorder for live shows controllable via iPad using 'JoeCoRemote'; Blue Cat Audio MB7 (a 7 band audio plugin that allows inserting 4 VST plugins per band within itself); Tronical Tune which automatically tunes guitars and holds up to 18 alternate tunings, impressive because "the demo actually worked". Other exhibits included a speaker stand from Ardan distributed by Island Audio in Canada; Rednet by Focusrite; mic stands from Triad-Orbit; new 'lowered-priced' monitors from PMC; a laptop direct box from Radial Engineering, as well as their Voco-Loco microphone preamp which included an insert loop.
Sy thanked the presenters. They were given Toronto AES Certificates of Appreciation and AES coffee mugs.
