Meeting Topic: Review of Papers, Workshops and Exhibits, 143rd International Convention
Moderator Name: Alan Clayton
Speaker Name: John Vanderkooy — Professor Emeritus; Ron Lynch -- Technicolor; Jeff Bamford — Engineering Harmonics; Anthony Kuzub -- Ward Beck
Other business or activities at the meeting: Alan thanked everyone for attending. He thanked the sponsors and welcomed new members. He noted members can list a second city as their second section. He called out for more ExCom members including those in video post; and announced some of the upcoming meetings.
Meeting Location: Ryerson University RCC 244, Eaton Lecture Theatre, Rogers Communications Building; Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Alan welcomed everyone and gave a brief intro covering his experience at the Convention.
John Vanderkooy gave spoke about some of the papers which caught his attention, including:
9810 - Enhancement of Voice Intelligibility in noisy environments
9825 - Fast Loudspeaker measurement in non-anechoic environments
9836 - Theory of Constant Directivity Circular Arc Line Arrays
9837 - Theory of Constant Directivity Dipole Arrays9859 - Class D Amplifier Pulse Density Modulation
9874 - Membraneless Speakers: Micro-machining of Piezo Elements
9879 - Comparisons of Rating Scales; and
9882 - Bandwidth of Human Perception for Pro Audio
He then went on to discuss three of the papers he presented at the convention.
The first dealt with using a cone speaker as a microphone for Infrasound frequencies, which became a useful tool in his following papers covering the soundfield found in most automobiles.
The next paper covered the presence of Infrasound in Vehicles, which he found to be at a much higher level than other more highly publicized sources of vibration and noise, such as wind turbines used for the generation of electricity.
His final paper dealt with the noise and pressure levels encountered when automobile air-bags are set off.
We then took a break.
Ron Lynch of Technicolor was quite impressed by the scope and size of the Convention, which this year teamed up with N.A.B New York. He said it was probably the largest Exhibition Floor of any convention since 2010. It was handy to have the NAB show right next door, but as he was only there for two of the three days, he missed his chance to take a good look. Next year the Convention will once again be held in New York City (and not the west coast as is normal practice) and will once again team up with NAB NYC.
He then went on to talk about items which caught his attention, including some Tools to enhance Audio Immersion, including products from Sound Particles.com. He gave a brief overview of the state of the ATSC 3.0 Standard which is slated to be adopted in the USA next year. This will be a game changer for the entire broadcast industry, as it provides means whereby productions can be made scaleable, so that they can be played back from everything from a full scale home theatre environment with multi-channel immersive sound and 4K video, all the way down to phones and personal listening devices with stereo audio. The A342 sub-section of ATSC 3.0 deals with audio specifically and will incorporate both AC-4 (which will be adopted as the primary standard for North America) and MPEG-H (which will be used in S. Korea and other parts of Asia) standards.
Ron took in some of the demonstrations of immersive sound given by JBL and Dolby, and was once again highly impressed with the JBL 7 Series of small loudspeakers. He was quite impressed with some of the products produced by Neyrinck, including the "Spill" plugin, which provides enhanced control over surround channels in Pro Tools, and the "Beats Bot", an App for iOS which provides an Ableton-type interface for a drum machine which can be run on a phone.
Jeff Bamford, in a series of what he called "Random Thoughts", spoke of his impressions of the Broadcast 01 presentation covering the design of Performance Spaces for various Radio stations; and the Sound Reinforcement 03 presentation which detailed the upcoming changes to Radio Frequency Spectrum management, which will have an impact on wireless microphone use, as the 600 MHz band is being re-allocated to cell-phone use throughout North America next year.
Jeff went on to speak of Alex Case's "After the Loudness Wars" presentation where he spoke of the effects of aural masking and the opportunities for making things audible once again through the use of panning in a surround environment. He attended the Regions & Sections meeting, noting that the Central North America V.P. mentioned that there were three new Sections established in the Northwest Territories, that the Los Angeles section's website now provides links to all the area's Student Sections, that Corporate Sponsorship for individual Student Memberships is now something that can be easily arranged. He closed with a brief mention of Bob McCarthy's presentation on Loudspeaker tuning and the effects of level on the dispersion pattern, and his impressions of the NAB show, which he also missed due to it only lasting two days.
The final presenter was Anthony Kuzub, a self-described "Audio-holic" who spent a lot of time investigating the current state of the AES 67 (Audio over IP Networking) and AES 70 (Audio Control Data over Networked Systems) Standards and protocols, which are slated for adoption next year.
This meeting was streamed live to Facebook Video:
https://www.facebook.com/TorontoAES/videos/1736806419664852/
Written By: Frank Lockwood
