The Indiana University AES chapter hosted a presentation from Shure Audio Engineer and IU Audio Engineering Program alumnus Adam Beck. He spoke to current students in the program about his career, gave advice on how to proceed with pursuing work after graduation, and demoed several pieces of equipment his company had either already developed or were currently in the later stages of testing.
When speaking about his career path, he emphasized the unpredictability of the industry and advised all to take all the work that is given to them. He started work out of school in New York with small recording studios. After moving from job to job for around 5 years, he was able to land a job at Shure as a QA tech. He was later promoted to work as Shure's lead Audio Engineer, and currently works in testing new equipment and mixing Shure recordings, as well as those at his own studio.
His career path did not go exactly how he predicted it, or necessarily wanted it to be, however it has led him to the great position he is in now which he genuinely enjoys. He gave himself as an example for the students as a product of the IU program, and stressed the amount of knowledge you can gain through it, as well as how that knowledge will definitely boost your portfolio when jumping into the industry.
He also brought along a few new pieces of tech from Shure he had been working on: a ceiling tile with an array of small microphones that can be used in conjunction with DSP to focus audio capture on any specific location in a room, a small M/S mic that can connect to an iPhone for easy use in vlogs and podcasts, and a dual diaphragm dynamic mic that nullifies proximity effect. He gave special attention to the tile mic array, as it showed an example of a product that is used in conference recording, a part of the industry that has been becoming increasingly more relevant (it was also extremely cool and functioned almost perfectly).
We thank Adam very much for taking time to come to give a wonderful talk and presentation to our students at IU. His valuable advice and information was a great resource for all who attended and we hope he enjoyed his time back at his alma mater.
