Audio Engineering Society Standards Committee

May 2001 meeting of SC-03-12

[Last printing 2 October 2001] Report of the SC-03-12 Working Group on Forensic Audio of the SC-03 Subcommittee on the Preservation and Restoration of Audio Recording meeting, held in conjunction with the AES 110th Convention in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2001-05-12

The meeting was convened by vice-chair E. Brixen. The agenda and the report from the previous meeting were approved as written.

Current development projects

AES27-R Review of AES27-1996 AES recommended practice for forensic purposes -- Managing recorded audio materials intended for examination

No action was taken.

AES43-R Review of AES43-2000 AES standard for forensic audio -- Criteria for the authentication of analog audio tape recordings

No action was taken.

AES-X10 Guidelines for Forensic Analysis: Study of Requirements for Identification and Enhancement of Recorded Audio Information

No action was taken.

AES-X115 Forensic audio for video

No action was taken.

AES-X116 Forensic media

The project is assigned to task group SC-03-12-C. Its convenor, W. Dooley reported. This project was the major topic of a good and valuable discussion. Several technical aspects were brought up for consideration.

Dooley felt that the project scope is broad enough that the work of the group should be broken into smaller parts.

E. Achrin (Swedish Police) expressed the need for a document that provides practical guidelines for the usability of equipment considered for forensic recording.

W. Deutsch spoke of confusion about the use of different coding schemes, perceptual coding, lossy bit reduction vs. loss-less bit packing and so on, and the need for working on a practical categorization or the description of the hierarchy that provides an initial overview. As an example of the difficulties, he pointed out that speech-coding algorithms change even during the same telephone transmission. It is essential to provide an overview of speech coding in general and its influence on signals intended as evidence.

During the discussion, problems with voice activated recordings, audio in handheld cameras, and embedded audio were also brought up as topics for a document.

It was concluded that a title for a document produced by the project could be Recommendations on the usability of recordings intended to be used as evidence.

Others stated that such a document should be useful to all disciplines in the field. It should be readable by attorneys and others involved in legal business. A special vocabulary containing terms of interest could be included.

The primary message of the document should be the awareness of making good evidence and second the listing of formats.

The task group will prepare the required project initiation form and deliver a status report in 2001-09.

AES-X117 Forensic audio education

No action was taken.

New projects

No project requests were received or introduced.

New Business

There was no new business

The next meeting is scheduled to be held in conjunction with the AES 111th Convention in New York, New York, US.


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