The first meeting of AES Aural Student Section new board was held on March 20th. Given the known conditions of quarantine in the country due to COVID-19 pandemic, but with the intentions of keeping up our work, a meeting was held though Skype. There were several topics treated:
Enhancement of the section
We found that in order to disseminate the works we are currently doing, we needed to use social networks. We defined the content to be published according to the different networks to be used and who will be in charge of editing the content and keeping it updated.
Contact and proposal of collective work with other student sections
Different proposals for collective work involving the co-participation of other student sections related to the projects that are being treated in this one began to be proposed. To this end we discussed the possibility of contacting other local and international sections where we can nurture everyone's work and research.
Organization of the different departments
The main topic of the meeting was to coordinate the work that will be carried out this year. With so many projects and interests of the multiple members, it had been agreed to organize the projects by internal departments. Finally, three departments were created: Acoustics and auditory perception, Audio and electroacoustics, 3D Audio and soundscapes.
As for the organization of these departments, with at least one member of the board in charge of each, we agreed to organize a workflow diagram for each department for the current year that will be talked and approved (once it has been sketched) by the members of each department. In addition, it was established that to keep the work in progress, a meeting will be organized minimally per month per department.
Specifically, the Acoustics and Electroacoustics department will continue to work with the development of the tunable capacitive microphone and the first-order ambisonics microphone. The team also incorporates the restoration of an open tape machine and the development of a mobile multiple speakers system.
The Acoustics and auditory perception department will continue to experiment by following the ongoing study on back / forward confusion in binaural systems. In addition, the study of the acoustic treatment of the school is added with experiments to improve it.
Based on what was learnt through experimentation the previous year, the 3D Audio and soundscapes department begins to work this year with the construction of soundscapes following a script that will be defined shortly. While the final script is finished, each member will begin to work on a short duration soundscape of their own creation that allows them to continue experimenting and advancing with conclusions in this regard. In addition, the team will begin writing a project that will contain everything investigated last year in order to generate material to publish in the future.
General projects
Finally we talked about general projects that include all departments. Among them is a possible visit to the LAL (Laboratorio de Acústica y Luminotecnia) in the city of La Plata; and the events of Expo AES Argentina 2020 and Audio Expertos AES Aural 2020.
