AES Section Meeting Reports

John "Beetle" Bailey; Toronto AES Section — April 29, 2020

Meeting Topic: Webcasting, Recording While Keeping Your Social Distance

Moderator Name: John "Beetle" Bailey - The Drive Shed Recording Studios, Owner/Operator; Earl McCluskie - Chestnut Hall Music, Audio and Video Producer/Engineer; Executive Committee Member Toronto AES.

Speaker Name: Mariana Hutten - MCHC Engineer/Owner; Michael Phillip Wojewoda - Music Producer; Jeff Wolpert — Desert Fish Studios Owner/Engineer; Rich Wattie -- Eastman School of Music, Professor; Frank Donato - CDNstudio/SpiderWebShowPerformance Producer; Chris Chafe - Director of Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics and co-developer of JackTrip; Guillermo Subauste - Stream Tuneup Owner/Engineer.

Other business or activities at the meeting: Toronto AES Chair Anthony Kuzub provided a background of the AES and in particular how the Toronto Section is adapting to the current situation. He reached out to guest viewers to join the AES and discussed some of the benefits of membership. Finally he acknowledged all the supporting sponsors, as well as the academic liaisons with the Toronto Section.

Meeting Location: Toronto, Canada - Virtual; Online

Summary

After a month of dealing with the impact of the shutdown of the global economy, there are tools out there (with many talented people finding ways to use them) to carry on creating and enabling musicians to reach their audiences.

This online event provided a summary of those ways and tools. This event was recorded and will posted on the Toronto AES' YouTube channel.

Anthony introduced Earl McCluskie. Earl went over the background and itinerary of this event. His first observation: it's not all doom and gloom. John Bailey briefly went over the problems with moving audio over the Internet.

During the course of the evening, Anthony and Earl engaged some of the presenter's in a brief Q&A.

The first presenter was Marianna Hutten. She uses Audiomovers for her clients to provide optimum audio quality. She discussed how the platform works and went over her procedure to make everything work smoothly, avoiding pitfalls as much as possible.

The next presenter, Michael Phillip Wojewoda, briefly elaborated on one of Miranna's points of making things easy for non-technical clients, before discussing Steinberg's VST Pro software and how he uses it with his clients. What's important for him is the real time interaction it allows with the people he works with.

Jeff Wolpert discussed the technological concerns currently faced by Music Educational Institutions.

Rich Wattie presented a video of a recent Eastman School Opera project (Bernstein's Candide) where participants worked remotely. Final Cut Pro was used to assemble the final production.

Frank Donato talked about CDNstudio. SpiderWebShowPerformances is a digital performance company and has been developing this software over the last five years where video feeds from separate performers are merged into a "single performance". An info video was part of the presentation.

Chris Chafe offered a slide presentation around JackTrip: its solutions, present limitations, and future developments.

After an extended free form disucssion led by Anthony, John Bailey continued his discussion on the problems of latency, Internet audio standards, and hinting at some upcoming solutions he and his colleagues were working on.

Guillermo Subauste discussed working remotely with performers by offering them premium sound for their webcasts. He discussed the various software options he uses with his clients.

Earl McCluskie closed the event by summarizing the evening and speculating briefly on the industry future. He also mentioned upcoming events being planned.

Written By: K. Machat

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