Saturday, May 20, 09:30 — 10:30 (Berlin-A)
Jonathan Wyner (Presenter)
Mastering as a discipline is entering a period of change. The disintermediation of delivery models and the arrival of assistive tools mean we have to re-think our practices and prepare for new techniques and workflows. This workshop will unpack what is changes now, how we are adapting to it, and what might be coming down the road.
Saturday, May 20, 10:45 — 11:45 (Berlin-A)
Jonathan Wyner (Chair), Eric Boulanger (Panelist), Marc Ebermann (Panelist), Mandy Parnell (Panelist), Michael Romanowski (Panelist)
There are various workflows that come into play in mastering audio that range from self-mastering-while-mixing to traditional mastering in a proper mastering facility. Other variations involve working inside the box entirely vs using outboard gear, or a combination of the two. This Master Class will represent various workflows in order to compare and contrast them, and highlight the strengths of each
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Recording Technology and Practices
Saturday, May 20, 14:45 — 16:15 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Mike Turner (Chair), David Griesinger (Panelist), Hans van Maanen (Panelist), Menno van der Veen (Panelist)
Time response and temporal resolution are controversial topics in sound reproduction. In this workshop a theoretical analysis will be accompanied by the results of listening experiences on the lower end of the audio range and at the higher end. The background is that the temporal relation between the different tones, which make up complex sounds like attacks, need to be conserved to create a viable reproduction of the original sound. Many systems do not preserve a correct time relation (e.g., cross-over filters in loudspeakers, base-reflex systems, and reconstruction filters in digital audio). The aim is to identify the audibility of such timing errors.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on High Resolution Audio
Saturday, May 20, 16:30 — 18:00 (Salon 4+5 London)
Paul Jessop (Chair), John Sarappo (Panelist), Julio Cesar Alvarez Fernandez (Panelist), Niels Rump (Panelist), Konstantin Vogel (Panelist)
The importance of getting accurate metadata out of the studio (whatever that means these days) and into the delivery chain (and numerous other places) has never been greater. As streaming becomes dominant, performers will rely more and more on performance royalties and that requires accurate performer information. As consumers get more sophisticated in using streaming services (and others) they demand accurate metadata for discovery. How do we deliver this? The workshop will cover initiatives in DDEX (the recording industry messaging standards body) and elsewhere to make this happen.
Sunday, May 21, 09:00 — 10:30 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Jonny McClintock (Chair)
Wireless connectivity, in particular Bluetooth, enabling smart device owners to now be untethered. This session is designed to explore how the smart device can also be used for the car and ensure the occupants enjoy high quality audio streaming to the Infotainment system. It will also look at the potential of low latency applications for Rear Seat Entertainment and interactive gaming applications. The overall content will be relevant to both the consumer experience and the overall benefits to the automotive manufacturers.
Sunday, May 21, 09:00 — 10:45 (Salon 4+5 London)
Nadja Schinkel-Bielefeld (Chair), Deborah Ebem (Panelist), Jan Holub (Panelist), Alexander Raake (Panelist), Qin Yili (Panelist)
Listening tests, i.e., for the standardization of new coding technologies, are performed all over the world with listeners of different cultures rating items in various languages, including some they do not understand. However, it is not well understood how cultural differences of the listeners may affect these test results. In this workshop we want to discuss cultural influences in listening tests including: (a) the perception and judgement of audio quality; (b) the influence of native or foreign language material or music typical or atypical for the listener’s culture; (c) how weighing of sound characteristics or artifacts correlates with cultural differences with respect to preference and audio quality; and (d) cultural dependencies of the use of scales and labels in listening tests.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Perception and Subjective Evaluation of Audio Signals
Sunday, May 21, 10:45 — 12:15 (Salon 4+5 London)
Brecht De Man (Chair), Jan Berg (Panelist), Todd Welti (Panelist)
Listening tests are a key component in a wide range of audio research and development, from loudspeaker construction over source separation algorithms to emotion in music. Digital interfaces, virtualization, and—more recently—online tests have helped make the once tedious and expensive practice of perceptual evaluation of audio more accessible and efficient. However, these developments each bring their own challenges, most notably a lower degree of control. Furthermore, while topics like audio codec design have an established set of practices, other types of evaluation are only slowly being standardized, if at all, or borrow from neighboring fields. In this workshop, some of the field's most prominent experts contribute different perspectives on advancements in the area of perceptual evaluation of audio, and offer their view on its future.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Perception and Subjective Evaluation of Audio Signals
Sunday, May 21, 11:30 — 12:30 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Daniel Shores (Presenter)
In this demonstration Dan Shores will discuss and demonstrate the recording and mixing techniques used to create 9.1 Auro-3D recordings of the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, ACME, Skylark, and others. The recordings discussed are all commercially available on Pure Audio Blu-ray. He will also demonstrate the mixing techniques used on the Auro-3D release of Platinum selling EDM Artist BT’s album “Electronic Opus” which integrates electronics, dance, and live orchestra.
Sunday, May 21, 12:45 — 14:15 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Stefan Bock (Chair), Tom Ammermann (Panelist), Artur House (Panelist), David Miles Huber (Panelist), Morten Lindberg (Panelist), Darcy Proper (Panelist), Daniel Shores (Panelist), Tobias Wendl (Panelist)
Immersive audio formats have been around for some years now. This workshop gives insights about the latest experiences with recording, mixing, and mastering in immersive audio formats. With a number of competing formats on the market today, the productions have to take multiple aspects into consideration: different speaker layouts, channel counts, as well as object based approaches. The workshop will discuss the challenges for the engineers and studios to deal with the different standards for immersive audio. New workflows had to be established to adapt to the new requirements, technically, as well as musically. And depending on the music genre, the approaches might be totally different. The workshop will also explain, how immersive recordings can be delivered in multiple immersive audio formats and how consumers homes can be reached.
Sunday, May 21, 13:00 — 14:30 (Salon 4+5 London)
Nadja Wallaszkovits (Chair), Klaus Blasquiz (Panelist), Stefano S. Cavaglieri (Panelist), Jean-Hugues Chenot (Panelist), Carl Haber (Panelist)
The workshop leads through the problem of transfer, digitization, and restoration of historical obsolete disc formats. Starting with the possibilities, advantages, and limitations of a conventional mechanical transfer, the discussion will outline some of the most proven and tested optical transfer methods and technologies and their special usability with broken/ delaminated/ damaged discs. The different approaches will be presented, including various audio examples.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Archiving, Restoration, and Digital Libraries
Sunday, May 21, 14:30 — 16:30 (Berlin-A)
Richard King (Chair), Michelle Desachy (Panelist), Phil Harding (Panelist), Rob Toulson (Panelist)
A panel of award-winning expert practitioners from varying backgrounds within the industry will spark interesting discussion and debate. Topics will include the process of mixing, techniques used, and proven methodologies that have yielded successful results over the years in a constantly changing industry. Focus will include the different ways to approach a mix, how to improve an existing mix, how to best interpret and address mix comments from the client. Balancing, use of processing, and listening levels will be addressed. Ample time will be reserved for a question period so that the audience will have a chance to solicit specific information from the panel members.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Recording Technology and Practices
Sunday, May 21, 16:30 — 18:00 (Berlin-A)
Ian Corbett (Chair), Andreas Lubich (Panelist), Mandy Parnell (Panelist), Magdalena Piotrowska (Panelist)
Whether you are a student, home studio or project studio user, or someone entering the professional industry, most of the music mixes you hear and try to emulate have been professionally mastered. Too many novices try to recreate a "mastered" sound in their mix. This is undesirable and limits what the mastering engineer can do. Join our panel of mastering engineers we continue the discussion from last year's events, presenting some "off-the-console" mixes, discuss desirable qualities of mixes submitted to them, their mastering processes, play the resulting master, and discuss common issues they see in some of the material sent to them to master.
Monday, May 22, 09:00 — 11:00 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Chris Pike (Chair), Nuno Fonseca (Panelist), Henney Oh (Panelist), Ferdinando Olivieri (Panelist), Mandy Parnell (Panelist), Jan Plogsties (Panelist)
In the recent past, several companies of various sizes have developed their own tools to meet the needs of VR-related audio production schemes. Even though we are still far from maturity in this field, it can now be seen how different approaches are becoming increasingly popular amongst the early adopters. This workshop intends to display the most up-to-date selection of tools with a detailed explanation of their workflows.
Monday, May 22, 09:30 — 11:00 (Berlin-A)
Rob Toulson (Chair), Phil Harding (Panelist), Mandy Parnell (Panelist), Ken Scott (Panelist), Paul Thompson (Panelist)
Collaboration takes many forms in contemporary music production. Building effective professional relationships can be the secret to success in modern music production, even in a world where autonomous working is more possible than ever. For example, we see engineers collaborate and co-produce with artists, electronic producers working remotely with session musicians, and self-producing artists nurturing their product through the recording mixing and mastering chain. In this workshop we explore the contemporary practices of collaboration in music production, particularly reflecting on modern technologies and tools that have enabled new frameworks for communication and co-working. We will look at methods of the past that have perhaps been lost owing to new technologies and working methods, and evaluate the education needs to enable new artists and producers to be successful in their careers.
Monday, May 22, 11:30 — 13:00 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Gregor Zielinsky (Chair), Malgorzata Albinska-Frank (Panelist), Stephan Thyssen (Panelist)
This workshop will have two parts: musical aspects of 3D recording and 3D recording techniques in different situations.
The history of recording has produced great results—no matter at which time of history recordings had been done. Even some old Caruso recordings, played through original Grammophones produce great musical results. However, two dimensional recordings have big problems in transmitting all the magic, detail, and music impact of the music itself. The presentation will show several examples and comparisons between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional recordings. Beethoven, Mahler, as well as Holst examples will be played and discussed. Also, aspects of upmixing from Stereo to 3D will be discussed and presented by audio examples.
Different situations need different answers. The presentation takes you through different places and different music or sport situations. 3D setups for large orchestra including digital mics are shown. Also, some jazz recordings, chamber music, and even Premier league recordings will be played and explained. Finally a live recording with stars like Joe Walsh, Alice Cooper, and Abe Laboriel will be played and explained.
Monday, May 22, 13:00 — 14:00 (Salon 4+5 London)
Nicolas Sturmel (Chair), Bruce Olson (Panelist), Greg Shay (Panelist), Peter Stevens (Panelist)
In order to assess the state of implementation of the AES67 Standard on High performance Streaming Audio-over-IP, the AES has organized a series of Interoperability testings (Plug Fests) in Munich (IRT, 2014), Washington (NPR, 2015), and London (BBC, 2017). This session will present the results as well as the progression in the overall interoperability between the plug fests. Specific issues that appeared during those event will also be highlighted: network setup, PTP, usual bugs and standard interpretation errors.
Monday, May 22, 13:00 — 15:00 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Hyunkook Lee (Chair), Enda Bates (Panelist), Gavin Kearney (Panelist), Henrik Oppermann (Panelist), Tom Parnell (Panelist), Ulli Scuda (Panelist)
The rapid rise of VR is increasing the need for 360-deg binaural audio as well as video in order to provide users with a fully immersive and realistic experience. Although the theory and workflow for binaural object rendering is relatively well understood now, optimal microphone techniques for capturing acoustic sound for VR have not been fully discussed yet. This workshop invites recording experts from the industry and academia to discuss the theories and practices of various microphone techniques for capturing 360-deg VR audio, including First-Order Ambisonics (FOA), Higher-Order Ambisonics (HOA), Equal Segment Microphone Array (ESMA), and some of the currently available proprietary techniques. The panels will discuss the pros and cons of each technique and its suitability for different applications. The session will also provide practical examples of binaural recordings made using the techniques to be discussed.
Monday, May 22, 14:30 — 15:30 (Salon 4+5 London)
Myoung woo Nam (Presenter)
Humans talk. birds sing. and electronic devices all around us generate sound. The user experience on today’s mobile devices provides feedback for action, delivering a message, requesting attention, or confirming an action. it is typically expressed by short beeps or melodies - auditory icons, or earcons. As devices grow more capable, they might sometimes borrow human language directly, providing detailed information such as; "power on", "power off". But the Auditory icon must provide a basic level of communication(power on/off, volume up/down, and etc.), that everybody can understand, regardless of their language, race, gender, and age. In this tutorial, we will show how the sound design process for Auditory Interaction utilizes musical language, tonal cliche, and real-metaphor to deliver an appropriate message to the user. Examples are quoted from the author’s latest work on the newest Samsung Gear, Galaxy smartphone, Digital Appliances, and apply to any mobile device where the sound is an essential part of the user experience.
Monday, May 22, 16:30 — 18:00 (Salon 4+5 London)
Jürgen Herre (Chair), Sascha Dick (Panelist), Andreas Niedermeier (Panelist), Heiko Purnhagen (Panelist)
During the past one and a half decades, recent audio coding schemes have significantly overcome traditional limits for compression efficiency by adopting techniques for semi-parametric (hybrid) coding of audio signals. By doing so, full-bandwidth stereo reproduction can today be achieved even at very low bitrates, such as 12kbit/s. The keys to this breakthrough achievement were two types of semi-parametric coding extensions: Firstly, methods for bandwidth extension (BWE) allow full reproduced audio bandwidth even at low rates. Secondly, methods for parametric stereo (or multi-channel) coding enable good reproduction of spatial sound under similar circumstances. The workshop will present the current state of development in these active areas, describe relevant technology and illustrate its performance by sound examples.
Tuesday, May 23, 09:00 — 10:30 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Jamie Laundon (Chair), Fredrik Bergholtz (Panelist), Martin Dutasta (Panelist), Chris Roberts (Panelist)
Audio networking allows new virtualization use-cases in broadcast operations reducing costs and allowing new workflows for content contribution and distribution in radio. This workshop will present 3 virtual radio projects at Swedish Radio, BBC, and Digigram, all enabled by the use of Virtualization, IT infrastructures and software based systems.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Network Audio Systems
Tuesday, May 23, 10:45 — 12:15 (Berlin-A)
Chris Pike (Chair), Philip J. B. Jackson (Panelist), Paul Morgan (Panelist), Michael Weitnauer (Panelist), Dave de Roure (Panelist)
After many years of discussion in the AES about object-based audio, we are now seeing these concepts being adopted into mainstream industry standards and services, including the next generation of digital television systems within DVB and ATSC. Developments in IP-based production technology also allow broadcasters to take advantage of the benefits of object-based audio in the production environment. This workshop will give the audience an insight into the opportunities and challenges faced by broadcasters when implementing object-based end-to-end systems. It will also discuss the potential developments of object-based audio systems beyond this current generation, with presentations from two large-scale collaborative research projects investigating the future of object-based audio, as applied to spatial audio and music.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Broadcast and Online Delivery
Tuesday, May 23, 13:00 — 14:30 (Salon 4+5 London)
Helmut Wittek (Chair), Jürgen Breitlow (Panelist), Hans Riekehof-Böhmer (Panelist), Martin Schneider (Panelist)
There are lots and lots of microphones available to the audio engineer. The final choice is often made on the basis of experience or perhaps just habits. (Sometimes the mic is chosen because of the Looks...). Nevertheless, there is valuable information in the microphone specifications. This tutorial demystify the most important microphone specs and provide the attendee with up-to-date information on how these specs are obtained and understood and how the numbers relate to the perceived sound. It takes a critical look on how specs are presented to the user, what to look and listen for, and what to expect.
This session is presented in association with the AES Technical Committee on Microphones and Applications
Tuesday, May 23, 14:45 — 15:45 (Salon 7 Vienna)
Cristian Stefanescu (Chair), Alex Koller (Panelist)
Probably the first musical album mixed and presented to the audience in a Dolby Atmos-equipped cinema hall. A listening session without any accompanying visuals, images or lights. Music has become a soundtrack to mundane daily activities and it lost its place as an art form and a form of reflection, of enjoyment or of entertainment. Listeners do not care too much about the quality of the sound and we definitely lost the idea of listening. Friends meeting around a turntable, excitedly getting out a record and playing it back is a thing of the past. I've challenged my audience to forget about their smart phones for 50 minutes, forget about drinks and conversations and enjoy the music in an immersive, emotional way.