Chair: Kimio Hamasaki (Send E-mail) This committee (TC ARMS) works to collect and disseminate information on recording technologies and mastering systems, in particular for the purpose of music recording and mastering, and storage, and the interlinks that are necessary between different gear. In this sense, a link exists with the TC ARDL through storage for archival purposes.
It is specifically the intent of the committee to focus on new techologies, such as recording and mastering systems, distributed storage and new technologies, and to assess the merits of these new technologies in an objective way.
Areas of ConcentrationRecent/Planned Activities
- Recording system/ Mastering system/ Optical Recording / harddisk recording / tape recording/ distributed systems / work stations / interlink
Emerging Technology Trends
- 107th AES Convention - New York 1999 - Tutorial Workshop
- 117th AES Convention - San Francisco 2004 - Workshop on which storage medium for what purpose
- 123th AES Convention - New York 2007 - Workshop on Trends of storage technologies for audio recording and mastering
- 124th AES Convention - Amsterdam 2008 - Workshop on Trends of storage technologies for audio recording and mastering
This committee changed its name from Audio Recoding and Storage Systems” to Audio Recording and Mastering Systems. However, storage systems are still important issues in this TC. So, first, storage systems trends are described. Although various storage systems are available for audio recording, hard disk systems are widely used in audio productions due to their huge recording capacity and reliability. Among broadcasters, tape medium and optical medium for storage are still used. However, network and server storage systems are the major trends. Programs produced in the studio are recorded on the central hard disk server thorough the network, and program contents are transmitted directly from the server.
In postproduction, the digital audio workstation (DAW) is the principal tool for editing and mixing. DAWs also use hard disks for storage. Music recording studios and mastering studios also intend to use the server storage systems for recordings. Network attached storage (NAS) is widely used for audio recording.
While removable hard disks have been widely used for the audio recording, there is no international standardized removable hard disk drive. Japanese manufactures including Sanyo and Hitachi established a consortium for the standardization of removable medium. This consortium made “iVDR” (Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage) standard. The iVDR hard disk drive is currently available for consumer use. If this can be standardized for professional use, it would also be very useful for audio recording. Recording and mastering cannot be done without digital audio technology. In accordance with the innovation of digital audio technology, recording and mastering systems are still changing.
Some general trends are:
Most recoding systems can work with higher sampling rates such as 96 kHz, 192 kHz, and DSD.
DXD is the new trend for digital recording. A-to-D converters and D-to-A converters for DXD are available, and some DAW can record and edit DXD.
MADI has been gaining popularity in recording systems because multichannel sound recordings such as 5.1, 7.1, and more need many channels compared with 2-channel stereo recording. The stage boxes equipped with multichannel microphone preamps and A to D converters are now available with MADI out.
Use of digital microphones according to AES42 standard is gradually expanding in audio recording.
Mixing consoles and stage boxes equipped with AES 42 I/O are now available.
It is common to use DSP in recording and mastering systems.
A new trend can be seen in the use of FPGA instead of DSP. DAWs working on FPGA are already available. A remarkable trend in mastering system is the development of new plug-in software for audio processing for mixing and mastering. DAWs equipped with plug-in software for audio processing is widely used for audio production and can be purchased relatively inexpensively. The availability of such DAWs has been changing the scheme of music productions.
IP networking is very often for on recording and mastering. Growth of IP networking, especially the expansion of data transfer rates, is essential for the improvement of recording and mastering systems.
Meeting Report:These documents do not necessarily express the official position of the AES on the issues discussed at these meetings, and only represent the views of committee members participating in the discussion. Any unauthorized use of these publications is prohibited. Authorization must be obtained from the Executive Director of the AES: E-mail, Tel: +1 212 661 8528, Address: 60 East 42nd Street, Room 2520, New York, New York 10165-2520, USA.
10/05/2008 Meeting report TC ARMS AES 125 San Francisco
Description: Minutes of TC ARMS meeting, held during the 125th AES Convention in San Francisco10/02/2008 Meeting report TC ARMS AES 124 Amsterdam
Description: Minutes of TC ARMS meeting, held during the 124th AES convention in Amsterdam09/30/2004 Meeting report TC ARSS AES 116 Berlin
Description: Minutes of the TC ARSS meting, held during the 116th AES convention in Berlin09/29/2003 Meeting report TC ARSS Amsterdam
Description: Minutes of the meeting of the TC ARSS of the 114th convention, Amsterdam (March 2003)01/17/2003 Minutes TC_ARSS AES Los Angeles convention 2002
Description: Minutes TC_ARSS AES Los Angeles convention 2002
Other:10/04/2008 Agenda for TC-ARMS meeting
Description: Agenda for TC-ARMS meeting at 14:30-15:30 at Room 22009/30/2004 AES 117 workshop proposal
Description: Describes the proposal for a workshop, to be held in San Francisco, 117th AES convention.
Committee Members
Hiroaki Suzuki Kunimaro Tanaka Takeo Yamamoto Wieslaw Woszczyk Stanley Lipshitz John Oh Vicki R. Melchior Martin Woehr Malcolm Omar J Hawksford Dietrich Schuller Nicolas Hans Richard Ranft Harald Gericke Stefan Shibata Kimio Hamasaki David Ackerman Klaus Jaschke Lars Gaustad Piotr Kleczkowski
To request membership in this Technical Committee please e-mail the Chair by using the link above.
(C) 2008, Audio Engineering Society, Inc.
