Meeting Topic: AES 128th May London & 129th Convention Review
Moderator Name: Sy Potma
Speaker Name: John Vanderkooy - Professor Emeritus at University of Waterloo; Sy Potma - Audio Technologist at Fanshawe College; Jeff Bamford - Engineering Harmonics Inc. Designer/Project Manager; Bob Breen - OIART Career Development/Canadian Audio Distributors CEO
Other business or activities at the meeting:
Sy Potma opened the meeting.
The next meeting occurs Dec. 28th with the venue to be announced on the website.
The presenter will be Paul Bauman of Harmon.
Sy introduced John Vanderkooy and provided the audience with a brief background: Professor Emeritus University of Waterloo; member of audio research group and taught in the physics department; editor of the AES Journal; and has sat on various AES committees; also technical committees including advisory group on regulation, loudspeakers and headphones; and on signal processing. John's main interests are: acoustics, psycho-acoustics, hearing in the areas of measurement and instrumentation. He remains involved in research and development, and as an educator.
Meeting Location: Ryerson University RCC 204, Eaton Theatre, Rogers Communications Building; Toronto, Ontario, Candad
John Vanderkooy's annual review presents those who weren't able to attend the conventions with an excellent overview of papers presented.
Before beginning his mini-reviews of 40 selected papers, John asked for feedback about starting a new section of papers at conventions which would be applications papers — possible topic types including: a new amplifier one has built or a new recording studio one has outfitted, etc. These wouldn't appear in the journal, but on the website where comments could be posted.
The reasoning for this is based on finding out not many members read the journal or only skimmed through it because most are not involved in the research presented in the papers.
The hope was that over the course of time there would be hundreds of papers like that presented at conventions more like things were 30 years ago when things were 'simpler'. The topics would not have to be publishable as research, but reflect the writer's interest. Somewhat less high brow and more grass roots oriented.
This would have to be discussed in the publication policy committee.
At the start of his review he observed that people are using graphics processors to perform high level scientific computing, basically giving one the equivalent of a Cray on one's desktop.
One of the more unusual papers reviewed was entitled "Violence Prediction through Emotional Speech" the premise being before a person gets violent they get angry. The idea is that if there is an audio system monitoring conversations to detect that someone is going to go over the edge, we can get some warning.
On the subject of high sample rate recordings, comparison of 44.1 kHz and 88.2 kHz, John considered this the best experiment yet to test whether high resolution is needed. Although the abstract indicated there was discrimination, Dr. Vanderkooy felt the participants were just above "the edge of guessing", though he would've liked to have known what the digital filters were doing. He feels some may detect a difference, but whether it's significant and whether it's worth subjecting to the public in general is another thing.
Finally, a paper on the topic of Tinnitus prompted much audience participation. Some points covered included that while the ringing happens in the ear it also happens in the brain. One member asked whether tinnitus was ever recorded to which John replied in the affirmative. John spoke of the devices used to test hearing presence in an infants ears. An earlier section meeting was recalled where Marshall Chasins noted the phenomenon of an auto acoustic output of the ear. Though there are devices to measure it, audiologists decline any usefulness because they fail to make a connection between that and tinnitus. John added that research is ongoing. He recounted a story of two secretaries working side by side, where one without tinnitus could hear the other girl's ears ringing (or 'whistling' sound in this case) who obviously did have tinnitus.
After the break, Sy Potma discussed some of the workshops and displayed some photos.
A standing room only Workshop (W5 - How Does It Sound Now?) presented by people like Al Schmitt, Elliot Scheiner, Ed Cherney, & Mark Rubel discussed questions such as "Have our goals changed?"
Ed Cherney records as always - to make the best sounding product he can; Elliot strives to make the artist and label happy, then himself too; Al Schmitt - make it sound right in front of mic, record it well, commit to performances and get good players to play a performance, if they're not good, get them to rehearse.
This prompted a question if this workshop was based on a recent book of the same name Gary Gottlieb. Mr Gottlieb was of course the moderator.
A workshop on master (W8) with panellists Michael Romanowski, Gavin Lurssen, Andrew Mendleson, & Joe Palmacio was discussed next.
Some interesting points: No consumer ever took a record back because it wasn't loud enough. More engineers are talking to clients in advance, getting mixes to get preview and consult with. Most clients are adjusting to loudness wars and leaving more dynamics in the music!
Some points from workshop B8 (Listener Fatigue and Retention): heavily processed signals have distortion; longer listening periods are disappearing; recognition that long periods of loudness cause listeners go elsewhere. Research points from Marvin Caesar
included: drugs impede hearing so we do damage to our hearing because our ability to hear isn't optimized. In response to an audience question: caffeine was not one of those drugs.
Good music promotes healing, lowered blood pressure. This also prompted comments from an audience member that this was 'confirmed' in a recent radio documentary on this very subject.
Sean Olive's tests at Harman showed that young/new listeners preferred the sound of CD's over 128k mp3's. Also, speaker quality matters; even young listeners preferred better speakers which made Sy feel good!
When discussing Bag End's E-trap which is a tunable electronic bass trap, designed to cancel low frequency room resonances, Dr. Vanderkooy commented that since the unit uses its own microphone it tends to go unstable quite easily. He suggested having another subwoofer drive it from a delayed cancelled version of the signal.
In response to an audience question, this unit does not have to be at the listener position
to be optimized because you want to eliminate the resonance where it is.
AVID Pro Tools 9 Release was mentioned.
A power cable which will give you more bass extension, clarity and resolution, midrange sweetness, extended treble elicited much speculative chuckles from the audience.
Sy showed photos of some new products. A system that could remove reverb after the fact provoked comments that "it sounds too good to be true"!
Jeff Bamford discussed surround sound seminars. He passed on a joke made during Russ Berger's seminar: "sound is what you hear when you mow your lawn, noise is what you hear when your neighbour mows his lawn, music is what you hear when your neighbour mows your lawn"! The workshop's main point was there's no substitute for acoustics, there is no electronic fix.
The subject of up mixing and down mixing in relation to surround sound brought mention of the movie Psycho being redone in 7.1. Mr. Bamford mentioned clips of other movies that were remixed and felt overall they were enhanced and the end results were better than colourization techniques attempted years ago.
Briefly, a scalable codec was mentioned; product development for audio video bridging; and audio network control protocols - a means to standardize control over IP for various audio devices.
Regarding the AES regions and sections meeting, Facebook was discussed for half an hour!
Bob Breen was the last speaker. Bob thanked everyone who voted for him for Eastern Region VP.
Bob's impression was that the mood was happy. The show was smaller but attendance was 'packed' every day. The quality was high in terms of questions and preparedness of attendees.
When discussing a new meter, in response to an audience question, Bob confirmed it was the TC Electronic LM2 — a dialnorm type meter that measures average loudness using ITU standard.
When discussing the revamped Pro Tools, an audience member asked if AVID's CEO talked with George Massenburg, to which Mr. Breen responded 'probably'!
Bob mentioned an ancillary product to go with PT from Neyrinck having an iPad application, the light version of which, is a multi touch console which gets into PT through HUI. A question was asked if one can use multiple versions of this to replace an entire control surface, and Bob replied he hadn't asked but suggested to Google Neyrinck.
Great sound seemed to be making a 'renaissance' as Bob mentioned the platinum engineer's panel — "whenever mp3 was mentioned there was 'booing', which was 'interesting since the man who invented mp3 was being honoured". This brought some laughter from the Toronto audience.
He noted vinyl was making a comeback when discussing another mastering panel with Bob Ludwig and Doug Sax.
More laughter was elicited when discussing Dave Tough's paper #8304 Educational Competencies which had a survey list of top 160 things people should know working in the industry. The only technical skills that made the top 20 were 'some knowledge of eq and compression' and 'signal flow'! The main things were personality and being a good listener.
Sy Potma thanked everyone who attended the meeting.
Written By: Karl Machat
