AES Member Profile

Michael Turner

Job Title: Technical Director
Company: Nidec S R Drives Ltd

Status: Full Member
Member since: 2003
Technical Committee: Loudspeakers and Headphones
Section: British

Audio Fields:

• Product Design & Manufacturing - Transducers
• Product Design & Manufacturing - Hardware
• Product Design & Manufacturing - Research & Development
• Educational Institutions - Educator

Job Duties:

• Technical Director
• Consultant
• Designer
• Engineer
• Researcher
• Systems Designer

About

I began my career with the BBC in London, working on a wide range of projects in sound radio. I moved on after a couple of years with some regrets, although career development expediency mandated a change. My next post took me into industrial electronics, developing high performance industrial motor controls and servo systems with S.R. Drives Ltd - then a university spin-off.

I've remained with S.R. Drives through its acquisition by U.S. multi-national Emerson Electric and subsequently Nidec Corporation of Japan, and am now U.K. Technical Director with responsibility for engineering in both R&D and production. I'm privileged to work with a team of about 60 staff in the U.K. as well as many Nidec colleagues in the USA, Japan and world-wide.

Although I've formally been working outside of the audio industry for some years, I've retained my life-long passion for audio, and am able to indulge this with a well-equipped home lab. I've been researching active control of loudspeakers - a topic actually not so very far removed from my day-job (just a different kind of motor!) and received a PhD in 2010 as a result of this work. I also enjoy recording classical and acoustic live music.


For those who may want to know such things, I have an honours degree in electrical engineering and 19 patents in the fields of motors, electronics and controls. I've a diverse range of interests and design experience, from low noise analogue using both solid-state and vacuum tubes, through embedded digital control and DSP, to switched-mode power at hundreds of kilowatts. I'm a U.K. Chartered Engineer, a member of the IET, IEEE and AES, and have recently successfully completed a PhD at the University of Leeds, in the U.K., researching active control of loudspeaker motors.

AES Member Profiles

If you are an AES member and would like to create your own AES member profile like this one then click here.