Technical, Scientific, and Engineering Awards: A Recognition to the Audio Industry

I would like to thank the Academy! It's award season and following the CES and TEC Awards, It's time to highlight all the well-deserved scientific, technical and engineering Emmy's, Grammy's and Oscars awarded to the audio industry. This article was originally published for The Audio Voice newsletter #313, distributed February 4, 2021.

The Recording Academy announced its annual 2021 Special Merit Awards Honorees that include artists Selena, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Talking Heads, Lionel Hampton, Marilyn Horne, Salt-N-Pepa and more, and also names Daniel Weiss, the founder of Weiss Engineering as this year's Technical Grammy Award recipient. Daniel Weiss, will be recognized at the 2021 Grammys ceremony, scheduled to be streamed in March.

The DSP501 / DSP502 are two new state of the art Digital Signal Processors from Swiss company Weiss Engineering, founded in 1985 by Daniel Weiss. The two new processors, featuring exclusive algorithms developed by the company, that the company describes as "the essence of our experiences." The implementation in the two new hardware units intends to "enhance or adapt the audio signal to the room acoustics or speakers at hand," and combines some rather unique features.

This is a dream project that’s been on the works for some time, and is now close to becoming a commercial reality. Combining all the possibilities of modern digital processing technology and electroacoustic design, Swiss companies Weiss and PSI Audio are promoting a fully working demonstration of the LiveBox fully-integrated Crosstalk Cancellation speaker, which allows both convincing stereo and binaural experiences from a single source, designed to be like “a piece of furniture.”

Daniel Weiss founded Weiss Engineering in 1985. The company designs and manufactures digital audio equipment for mastering studios. Daniel graduated in 1979 with a BSEE from the HTL Rapperswil. Joined the Studer Revox company in 1979 as an Electronics Engineer. There he worked on analog anti-aliasing filters, test signal generators, sampling frequency converters and digital audio processing for a two channel DASH recorder. He left Studer in 1984 to start Weiss Engineering. Daniel is a Fellow of the AES and a Member of the IEEE.