Last year’s 143rd AES International Convention, also held at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York had more than 15,590 attendees (24% higher than the 2016 Los Angeles AES Convention), more than 200 paper sessions, and more than 250 exhibitors, and this year’s convention should be no different. This will be again the event where all the audio industry convenes.
For those of you attending, the AES New York 2018 Technical Program — the highlight of the AES’s 70th anniversary year —offers the ultimate audio experience, spanning all audio specialties and topics, and digging as deep as it is wide. The AES has posted online its detailed, interactive AES New York 2018 calendar of events for attendees to explore when planning their AES convention experience. The more than 330 presentations and workshops — offering an inside look at nearly every facet of the audio engineering industry — is available only with All Access registration. There’s no better opportunity to listen learn, and connect with audio engineers from around the world than the AES New York 145th International Convention.
The comprehensive Technical Program content, brought together by the organizing team led by Co-Chairs Paul Gallo, Valerie Tyler, and Jonathan Wyner, includes leading-edge topics such as audio for virtual, augmented and extended reality; networked audio; spatial and immersive audio; and game audio, along with core topics including broadcast & online delivery; sound reinforcement; recording & production; audio for cinema; and archiving and restoration. A dedicated track covers product development on the professional level within the product development track, while DIYers can learn and even construct hardware and write code in the new Audio Builders Workshop minitrack. In this new track, AES will offer insight and instruction on planning, design and construction of audio hardware and DSP. Hands-on demonstrations will offer attendees the chance to learn more about DIY audio device design and construction, following the tradition of do-it-yourself innovation and promoting the understanding of audio technology.
In the exhibition floor and throughout the convention’s demo room areas there are showcases and demos from leading names in professional audio manufacturing and services, along with the popular Project Studio Expo, Live Sound Expo, and other specialized events, all free-to-attend. Additionally, AES Student and Career activities will include recording and design competitions, a new MATLAB plugin design competition, the annual education and career fair and other ways to network with students and professionals from around the world.
KCK Media, the publishers of Voice Coil, audioXpress, and The Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook will also be attending the AES convention in New York. Stop by Booth 452 to meet the staff and possibly one or two of our contributing authors, to grab a copy of the latest issues, and sign up for a subscription and our weekly newsletter The Audio Voice.
Keynotes and Special Events
Thomas Dolby will deliver the keynote address during the Opening Ceremonies of the AES New York 2018 International Convention. With the title “The Conscious Sound Byte,” Thomas Dolby’s AES Keynote address will focus on next-generation sound technologies, in particular adaptive/nonlinear music and audio for games, VR/AR, “hearables” and other new media platforms.
As part of the Audio for Cinema Track, “Modern Scoring Workflows: Mixing Multi-Stem Score in the Box – A Master Class Featuring Alan Meyerson” will feature the legendary film scoring mixer, who has more than 200 major credits including Wonder Woman, the Pirates of the Caribbean series and other blockbusters. GRAMMY-award winner Meyerson will explain his approach to mixing multi-stemmed scores “in the box” (on computer) using AVID Pro Tools.
Emmy and Oscar winner Tom Fleischman has worked with a who’s who of TV and film directors. In the “Best Practices in Re-Recording Mixing: Focus on Episodic” session Fleischman will reprise some of his master class from last year’s AES New York Convention, but with an added emphasis on the particular challenges associated with episodic television and TV series. Fleischman will talk about approaching a project from beginning to end, crafting an audio mix to enhance storytelling, assuring continuity between episodes and more – including dealing with the lightning pace of mixing for a TV series.
More and more film scoring and post-production now involves remote recording. In “Collaboration at a Distance: Real-Time Remote Recording Tools for Scoring and Post Audio,” Robert Marshall, founder of real-time audio-over-IP company Source Elements, will examine the ways market forces, new technologies, the internet and budgetary factors have greatly altered the worlds of film scoring and audio post. Marshall will discuss the new tools available for remotely collaborating on recording sessions, and provide examples of how remote recording is being used in scoring and other disciplines.
And we highly recommend also the Archiving and Restoration Track. From archiving the musical legacy of Prince to making classic multitrack tapes available for educational purposes to establishing best practices for organizing modern production workflows, the 145th Audio Engineering Society International Convention’s Archiving and Restoration Track will dig deep into the preservation and perpetuation of the recorded heritage of music, the spoken word and sonic environments.
“More than one trillion songs are streamed every year, and countless others are locked away on hard drives, CDs, DATs, vinyl and obsolete playback formats. Preserving our audio history is more important than ever,” said Jessica Thompson, AES Audio Archiving and Restoration Track chair. “And in looking toward the future, the AES also continues to innovate and educate the industry on archiving today’s audio formats for tomorrow’s listeners.”
And, as with virtually all previous AES Conventions, this one promises to have a lot of information for the loudspeaker industry (there are four transducer sessions this year). With the workshops, engineering briefs, tutorials, and paper presentations, there will be an enormous amount of information available to the loudspeaker engineering community. Presentations of particular interest to the speaker industry at this year’s convention include "An Acoustic Model of the Tapped Horn Loudspeaker"; "A Survey and Analysis of Consumer Headphones Based on Their Subjective and Objective Sound Quality"; "Characterization of Nonlinear Port Parameters in Loudspeaker Modeling". Audio Precision will present a paper on how to measure audio when clocks differ and will conduct demonstration on open-loop testing in Demo Suite #1E01.
Sound reinforcement pioneer and innovator John Meyer will deliver the AES New York 2018 Convention’s Heyser Memorial Lecture on Friday, October 19, at 6:30 PM. Speaking on the topic “Taking the Room Out of the Loudspeaker: New Tools for Transparent Reproduction,” Meyer will share his expertise on loudspeaker design and applications from his 50-plus years as one of the most lauded names in the industry.
AES New York 2018 will be co-located with the independent NAB Show New York 2018 event. In an adjacent exhibition hall, NAB Show New York exhibitors will be on hand with the latest video and distribution hardware and related sessions. NAB Show New York is a two-day event being held from October 17–18. Exhibits-Plus or All Access AES New York registration includes access to both exhibition halls.
All Access registration to AES New York 2018 provides four full days of Technical Program sessions, including the Audio for Cinema Track events, papers and posters, workshops and tutorials (October 17-20), while Exhibits-Plus passes give attendees three days of Exhibition Floor showcases and demos (October 17-19).
Complimentary Exhibits-Plus badges are available to AES Members or by using VIP promo code AES18NOW with online registration though the full convention experience, including the Audio Builders Workshop are only available with All Access registration. AES Members and Student Members receive substantial discounts. Visit aesshow.com for the latest information.October 17-20, 2018
AES New York 2018 145th International Convention
Program: October 17-20
Exhibition: 17-19
Javits Center, New York, NY, USA
www.aes.org/events/145/
