AES 153rd Convention
October 19-20, 2022
Gilbert Soulodre will present the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture during the 153rd Convention:
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Heyser Lecture - The Twists and Turns of a Career in Audio
Audio engineering is truly a multi-disciplinary field that combines aspects of room acoustics, psychoacoustics, spatial perception, analog and digital signal processing, mathematics, electromagnetics, computer modeling, psychology, musicality and artistry. Working in audio allows you to try your hand in completely different areas while still moving toward the same goal. For me, the AES has always served as the primary crossroads between these various fields, and is the unique place where diverse viewpoints from all disciplines can come together. In this talk, I will discuss some of the research and product development work that I have done over the years, including a look at subjective listening test methods, spatial perception and immersion, loudness perception and metering, and sound source separation. During the unexpected winding path that my career has taken, I have had the great privilege of meeting and working with some of the "big names" in the world of audio and acoustics. I will share anecdotes about some of these encounters and how they influenced my path forward, including a notable encounter with Richard Heyser early on in my career.
Biography
Dr. Gilbert Soulodre has many years of experience in the field of audio as a research scientist, a product developer, and a mixing engineer. He has written numerous scientific papers in the areas of concert hall acoustics, psychoacoustics and spatial perception, subjective testing, loudness metering, digital signal processing, and multi-channel audio. As the founder and CEO of Camden Labs, he has invented a variety of signal processing algorithms and has authored many patents. His product development work stretches across a wide range of areas including; automotive audio, mobile phones and tablets, consumer electronics, immersive cinema surround sound, virtual reality, microphone array processing, speech processing, the music recording industry, audio restoration, audio compression, hearing aids, business telecom, and military voice communications.
Dr. Soulodre was the head of the Audio Perception Lab at the Communications Research Center in Canada where he led a team of researchers studying a numerous topics in audio and acoustics. During that time he developed the subjective testing methods that are used in the ITU-R BS.1116 and BS.1534 (MUSHRA) standards. He was formerly a professor in the Sound Recording program at McGill University and in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University. He was a visiting scientist in the Acoustics Department of the National Research Council in Canada. Recently, Gil was a visiting lecturer at the Sound Engineering department of UNTREF university in Buenos Aires.
Dr. Soulodre is a Fellow of the AES and has received recognition and awards from the Acoustical Society of America, the American Institute of Physics, the IEEE, and the Canadian Government. In 2006, he received the AES Publications Award for his work on spatial perception in immersive sound environments. Gil developed a method for accurately measuring and predicting the perceived loudness of audio signals. This technology was adopted as an international standard (EBU R-128) and is now used extensively around the world. In 2012, Gil received a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for this work.
