AES Section Meeting Reports

L to R: Donny Chow, Alan Clayton — Toronto AES Section -- October 24, 2017

Meeting Topic: 48 kHz vs. 96 kHz

Moderator Name: Anthony Kuzub and Alan Clayton

Speaker Name: Michael Nunan - Bellmedia Post Sound Supervisor and Senior Manager for Broadcast Audio Operations; part-time faculty at Seneca College (Toronto, ON); Adjunct Faculty at the Ontario Institute for Audio Recording Technology (OIART) (London, ON); Donny Chow - President and Chief Engineer of Xilica Audio

Other business or activities at the meeting: Anthony Kuzub thanked everyone for attending. He asked for a moment of silence in honour of Gord Downie. Some other business occurred after the break: Alan Clayton thanked the sponsors for tonight's meeting among them including Contact Distribution Ltd. He noted members can choose a second city. He thanked Jim Boutillier for organizing this meeting. He called out for more ExCom volunteers and announced some of the upcoming meetings.

Meeting Location: Revolution Studios; 36 Laing S.; Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Summary

This was a well attended meeting, due in large part to holding it at Revolution Recording, which is a world class facility with exceptional tools; and to the behind-the scenes efforts of the members in the Toronto chapter and their associates.

After the audience was introduced to, and heard his background, Mike Nunan did the introductory talk for the first half of the evening which included some history of television and broadcast quality levels. The talk was a pragmatic look at the practicalities of working with high sample rates. Currently the biggest concern in this discussion is interoperability.

After the break, Donny Chow did a presentation on the math involved and then presented a comprehensive listening opportunity to compare various sample rates, word lengths etc. using pre-recorded tracks to illustrate the audibility of these parameters. This was a great demonstration of how volume changes, and DSP manipulation sound in real-world applications.

A Q&A session followed each presentation.

At the close, Alan Clayton presented Donny with an Toronto AES Certificate of Appreciation and Coffee Mug.

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