Sofitel Victoria Hotel Warsaw, Poland · Chaired by Bozena Kostek and Umberto Zanghieri, the...

The Audio Engineering Society visited Warsaw from May 7th to10th for its first-ever convention in Poland. Held at the SofitelVictoria Hotel, near to the beautifully reconstructed historical

center, the event sported one of the largest technical programs inrecent years, along with an exhibition showing over 50 brands of thelatest audio technology. Chaired by Bozena Kostek and UmbertoZanghieri, the convention drew visitors from all over the world to meettheir colleagues, learn, and present their work.“The Warsaw convention exceeded our goals in many areas, and I’m

extremely grateful to everyone who came and made it happen,” saidBob Moses, AES Executive Director. “Attendance was higher than wedared hope for, considering it was our first international event inPoland, and we were following a very successful show in a thriving citylast year. The caliber of research and training sessions was excellent,and it was gratifying to see people in the hallways and loungesdiscussing the day’s topics late into the night.”

CONVENTION REPORT

602 J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 63, No. 7/8, 2015 July/August

CONVENTION REPORT

138TH

Sofitel Victoria HotelWarsaw, Poland

May 7–10, 2015

AES CONVENTION

CONVENTION REPORT

J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 63, No. 7/8, 2015 July/August 603

138th opening ceremonies

Bob Moses, AES executive director, welcomesdelegates to the 138th Convention.

OPENING CEREMONY IS STANDING ROOM ONLYLaunching a standing-room-only opening ceremony, BobMoses welcomed delegates toPoland’s capital, thanking allthe volunteers and staff whohad worked so hard to make ithappen. He encouraged thosepresent who were not alreadymembers to join the AES andbecome part of the community.Moses was followed onto thestage by Andres Mayo, AESpresident, who pronouncedhimself honored to be in hisposition as the first presidentfrom Latin America andthanked all those that hadhelped him reach this point. Asone of the chairs of the conven-tion, Bozena Kostek praised theeffort of the Polish AES Sec-tion, where the event had itsroots, and which had beenoperating for 25 years. Sheoffered warm thanks to hercommittee for all that they haddone leading up to and duringthe convention.

AWARDS FOR WORTHY RECIPIENTSFrank Wells announced awards for a number of deserving recipi-ents. He introduced Josh Reiss and Ville Pulkki, the convention’spapers chairs, who presented certificates for the best student paper,Florian Klein (and coauthor Stephan Werner), for “Auditory Adap-tation in Spatial Listening Tasks.” The best peer-reviewed paperaward was presented to Frank Schultz, Florian Straube, and Sascha

Spors for “Discussion of theWavefront Sculpture Technol-ogy Criteria for Straight LineArrays.” Board of GovernorsAwards are normally offered tothose that have chaired recentinternational conferences andconventions. On this occasionAndres Mayo presented awardsto Lauri Savioja, for chairingthe 55th Conference, and toSascha Spors and UmbertoZanghieri for chairing the136th Convention.

KEYNOTE IN CAMERERRelaxing in an armchair under a standard lamp, FlorianCamerer, noted audio expert from Austrian Television (ORF),delighted the audience with his insightful and entertainingkeynote address, “Zen and the Art of Listening.” He asked at theoutset, “What is the first sound you remember hearing?” Hear-ing is a sense that gets pushed back in the subconscious oncethe visual sense takes over, he suggested. Seeing, though, isalways selective, and one can decide to stop seeing very easily.Hearing is much harder to turn off, however, and we generally

CONVENTION REPORT


Andres Mayo, AES president

Umberto Zanghieri and BozenaKostek, convention cochairs

Frank Wells, awards chair

Florian Camerer gets his guitar out during the opening keynote.

From left, FlorianKlein (best student

paper winner), VillePulkki, Bozena Kostek

and Josh Reiss

From left, SaschaSpors and FrankSchutz (best peer-reviewed paper

authors), Ville Pulkki,Bozena Kostek, and

Josh Reiss

Board of GovernorsAwards:clockwise from topleft: Sascha Spors, LauriSavioja, and UmbertoZanghieri receivingcertificates from AndresMayo.

AWARDS PRESENTATION

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hear things from all around us without having to turn ourattention to the source.Camerer referred to Zen Buddhism when discussing the need for

simplicity, constraint, naturalness, composition, beauty, andharmony in sound. He thenmoved on from the idea of hear-ing to that of listening. Pullingout a guitar, Florian entertainedthe audience with various songsfrom his musical history,including a bit of Pink Floyd,pointing to the role of music asthe essence of good storytellingin media productions. Heconcluded with a showing of ashort and previously lost Polishfilm from 1968 by Jerzy Surder,The Retreat, to demonstrate thenarrative power of sound. Therewas no dialog, just music andsound effects. “The essence ofcommunication is makingsomeone care,” said Florian.“Tell a story and someone willlisten.”

SPONSORS ANDEXHIBITORS UPBEATThe exhibition area in the Sofitelwas busy from Thursday to Sat-urday with a throng of visitorsto the stands of the many audiocompanies that supported theconvention. A number of compa-nies had offered special sponsor-ship for the 138th, includingAuro Technologies, Genelec,Prism Media Products, and TCElectronic. “The exhibition wasthe largest we’ve had in Europein years,” said Executive Direc-tor, Bob Moses, “and theresponse from businesses wasoverwhelmingly positive, withmany asking how they can signup for 2016 and get more deeplyinvolved in AES activities.”

PROJECT STUDIO EXPOTRAINS USERS“For all its power and accessibil-ity, the technology used today isbroader than it has ever been and this puts particular demands onoperators. Successful audio engineers and producers combine micro-phone skills with DAW and plug-in aptitude, an in-depth knowledge ofanalog gear, and an understanding of monitoring and acoustic issues.Applying this knowledge to fashion a workflow that makes creativesense is every sound engineer’s goal.” This was explained in the intro-duction to the free two-day Project Studio Expo held at the 138th.“The Project Studio Expo is a unique opportunity for budding

and established audio engineers attending the AES convention inWarsaw to bring themselves up to date with work methods that will

add significant benefits to their productions,” said PSE programorganizer, Zenon Schoepe, executive editor of Resolution maga-zine. Resolution had prepared an informative and entertaining two-day schedule with presentations by professionals and experts that

focused on four key productionstages. The aim had been to givean essential insight into usingtechnology creatively, andsessions included “UsingHardware with your DAW,”presented by Marek Walaszek,and “Mixing Out of the Box,”with Jacek Gawłowski.

PAPERS SESSIONSSHOWCASE RESEARCHVille Pulkki and Josh Reiss, aspapers chairs, had selected acompelling series of presenta-tions for those attending thetechnical program at the 138th.Strong among the themes forsessions were spatial audio, per-ception, transducers, and signalprocessing. Education, roomacoustics, semantic audio,recording, production, andapplications also featuredprominently in the events line-up. Delegates had theopportunity to hear from thepresenters directly both in lec-ture sessions and also in theposter sessions that were heldin a convenient foyer outsideone of the lecture rooms.Christof Faller and his

colleagues presented an inter-esting paper on novel forms ofhead tracking. The goal, saidFaller, was to make head track-ing more usable for mobileapplications, where the soundimage does not need to have anabsolute position in space. Insuch a case relative head track-ing can be employed, usingonly a gyrometer, or an evenmore economical approach isto use what he called “pseudohead tracking,” which gener-ates small head movements

using a random process without input from a gyroscope. Bothprocesses appeared to help with the perception of spaciousness andfront/back differentiation.The winning student paper by Florian Klein and Stephan Werner,

on auditory adaptation in spatial listening tasks, looked into howlisteners can get used to artificial binaural signals that are differentfrom their own. In an audiovisual training task, nine out of elevenlisteners were found to have increased their elevation perceptionsignificantly, and two listeners performed better once trained with anartificial response than they did with their own measurements.

Exhibitors enjoy demonstrating the latest gear to convention visitors.

Donato Maschi explains how to address acoustic problems in the PSE.

ENGINEERING BRIEFS EMPHASIZE PRACTICALRELEVANCEEngineering briefs havebecome a popular wayfor authors to presentwork without the needfor as formal a reviewprocess as for papers.These can be vehiclesfor informing peopleabout practical record-ing and engineeringtopics, and we heard aninteresting presentationof this type from WillHowie and Richard King of McGill University on exploratory micro-phone techniques for three-dimensional classical recording. Herethey had augmented conventional stereo techniques with addi-tional microphones to yield a 14-channel surround recording withseven discrete height channels. Microphone placement wasdesigned to prioritize listener envelopment and preliminary resultswere encouraging.Nuno Fonseca contributed an interesting exposition of his ideas

on immersive sound design using particle systems, in which tech-niques from computer graphics are applied to sound elementmanipulation. An advanced processing system has been developedthat can handle several million separate sound sources, and iscurrently being tested by several Hollywood studios for immersiveaudio production applications.

WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIALS EDUCATEThanks to the coordinating efforts of Natanya Ford, there was anexcellent line-up of workshops and tutorials for delegates to attend.

Eddy Brixen offered an interestingintroduction to audio forensics,together with Gordon Reid and others,showing that the most important everyday work of the audio foren-sic engineer is the cleaning and transcription of recordings. Thebasic concepts of listening tests were introduced by Jan Berg, whileJustin Paterson and Rob Toulson explained the basics of interactivemusic. The important and current topic of object-based broadcast-ing was tackled by Chris Baume of BBC R&D, during which he out-lined a number of public trials of the technology designed todemonstrate its potential for the future of broadcasting.In an interesting workshop chaired by Grzegorz Sikora of Bang

& Olufsen, the automotive audio community looked at the makingof OEM car sound systems, from idea to finished product. Expertsdiscussed things like car cabin acoustics, loudspeaker selection andplacement, and system tuning. On the Friday, Rob Toulson chaireda panel of well-known sound mixers and mastering engineers todiscuss the increasingly blurred boundary between mixing andmastering in today’s production chain. In some scenarios the twopractices are being merged into one, or mastering engineers arefinding themselves involved at earlier stages in the productionprocess than they were before. The challenges of these and otherissues were keenly debated. We also heard from Thomas Lundabout hearing loss and sound exposure from mobile devices, a topicthat is now the subject of European legislation and is expected tohave a big influence on audio delivery to mobile platforms.

SPATIAL AUDIO DEMOSRoom Saski had been given over to a series of spatial audio demon-strations for the duration of the convention. This gave delegates theopportunity to book a session to listen to some of the latest develop-ments in the field, when they were not busy doing other things.Among the offerings here were a number of presentations from TomAmmermann on 3D audio production tools for games and otherapplications, including headphone listening. The team from Fraun-hofer showed visitors the main features of the recently introducedMPEG-H standard for spatial audio coding, and Morten Lindbergwith Daniel Shores played examples of their 9.1-channel immersivemusic recordings. Lasse Nipkow showed how 3D 9.1 can be used to

CONVENTION REPORT


Vera Erbes with an enthusiastic questionerduring her Ebrief poster presentation.

Mixing Meets Mastering panel: from left Mandy Parnell, Ronald Prent,Darcy Proper, George Massenburg, and Rob Toulson.

Nadja Wallaszkovitsexplains aspects of audiorestoration.

From left, Helmut Wittek, Jürgen Breitlow,David Josephson, and Eddy Brixen discusswhether you can hear the specifications ofmicrophones.

Among the authorspresenting papers atthe 138thConvention were,clockwise from topleft, Mariana Lopez,Jon Francombe, andChristof Faller

PAPER PRESENTERS

CONVENTION REPORT


create in impressive movie sound, while Hyun Kook Lee introducedthe psychoacoustic principles of 3D recording. Finally, MalgorzataAlbinska-Frank described the making of 3D recordings for classicalmusic, considering both the technical and aesthetic aspects.

KEY TECHNOLOGY BRIEFINGSA series of technology briefings, offered by industry representativeson the PSE Stage, included a session on the use of fabrics andmembrane absorbers to enable flexible acoustics in multipurposevenues, offered by Jonas Schira of Gerriets. There was also aninformative talk by Roger Heiniger of Studer on challenges andsolutions in audio net-working, as well as anexplanation of the PolishNational Radio Sym-phony Orchestra’s newconcert hall in Katowice,from Piotr Kozłowski.Talks from Prism Soundand Roland, and a presen-tation on sound qualityin audio interfaces, com-pleted the picture.

TECHNICAL TOURSTaduesz Fidecki and Andrew Lipinski had worked hard to arrange aprogram of technical tours covering a wide range of themes in andaround Warsaw. The majority of these were on Saturday and Sun-day, including one to Teatr Wielki, the National Opera House ofPoland. The theater has one of Europe’s largest stages, and thisgave rise to a number of problems with loudness and communica-tion, addressed by the installation of a Yamaha Active Field Controlsystem in 2014. A tour of Polish National Radio took visitorsaround the brand new facilities of this national broadcaster, led bythe acoustic designer Radosław Smolinski, while a visit to Dream-sound enabled visitors to see one of the leading film sound post-production facilities in Poland. On Friday, delegates had been ableto visit Telewizja Polska, the Polish National Television company,and on Sunday the World Hearing Center played host to a partyfrom the convention, the center having a major hearing implantprogram involving some 18,000 surgical procedures per year.

SPECIAL EVENTSAn interesting highlight of Thursday evening was a specialworkshop presented by Andrew Lipinksi and moderated by Wies-

law Woszczyk, in which a live performance of Chopin songs wascompared with an immersive audiovisual recording made of thesame material in Paris a few years ago. The Paris session hadbeen filmed in HD and published on Blu-ray disc using 96 kHz,24-bit, 8.0-channel surround, including three height channels.One of the ideas of the workshop was to stimulate discussionabout whether a live performance should be the reference forcreating a sonic illusion in recording, and although a conclusiveanswer might not have been reached during the session it wascertainly interesting to hear an excellent performance of rela-tively rarely heard repertoire by top international artists, EwaIzykowska and Wojciech Switala.Moving into a different type of acoustic environment entirely,

Friday’s organ concert by Francis Rumsey took place in theField Cathedral of the Polish Army, opposite the Heroes of theWarsaw Uprising Monument on Długa Street. The organ hadrecently been rebuilt with modern tracker action and a compre-hensive stop sequencer, making it a much sought after perform-ance instrument. Francis took the organ through its paces in arendition of Bach’s “St Anne” Prelude and Fugue, as well asmusic by Buxtehude, a Mendelssohn Sonata, and Duruflé’shaunting Méditation. A large and appreciative audience showedtheir enthusiasm.Saturday evening welcomed Ilpo Martikainen as the Heyser

Ewa Izykowska (soprano) and Wojciech Switala (piano) performChopin songs during a special event to discuss whether liveperformance should be the reference for recordings.

The audience wears headphones to experience some of the spatialaudio demos in Room Saski.

Francis Rumsey at the organ of the Polish Army Cathedral

Jonas Schira of Gerriets explains flexibleacoustics in his key technology briefing.

Memorial Lecturer, hosted by the Technical Council. Ilpo, chair-man and founder of Genelec loudspeakers in Finland, talked tothe large audience about the history and development of moni-toring loudspeakers, asking “can they be truthful quality controltools?” Over the decades, he said, this challenge has beenapproached with a variety of different means, and he illustratedhis talk with a fascinating archive of pictures of monitor loud-speakers of the past century.

STUDENT EVENTSPoland is home to anumber of coursesspecializing in aspectsof audio, and the stu-dent events in War-saw, organized byMagadalena Plewa,were popular and wellattended. The StudentDelegate Assemblyhad a booth through-out the convention,where people could goto find out about stu-

dent chapters around the world, as well as see postings aboutfinalists in the recording and design competitions. On theThursday evening a student party was held in Klub Harenda,down the road from the convention venue, which included liveperformances from David Miles Huber, MLDV, Marek Walaszek,and students from Berklee Valencia. On a number of occasions during the convention Ian Corbett

from Kansas City Kansas Community College moderated record-ing critique sessions, during which students could get feedbackon their work from experienced industry professionals. Therewere also a number of recording competition classes judged by apanel of pros, including Morten Lindberg, Florian Camerer,Mandy Parnell, Darcy Proper, and Ronald Prent, with prizesoffered by a large number of industry sponsors. Top winners ofthe classes were William Dahl and Synne Stenersen (traditionalacoustic recording), Sondre Forseiv (traditional studio record-ing), Fei Yu (modern studio recording and electronic music),and Anna Przegendza (sound for visual media). For all thestudent competitions, Theresa Leonard did an excellent job ofcoordinating the judges.There was also a student design exhibition, at which partici-

pants could show off their work to an audience of students,educators, and professionals. This included a competition, theGold prize of which was won appropriately by a Polish student,Tomasz Nowak, of Wroclaw University of Technology. The educa-tion and career fair subsequently proved a popular place forstudents to meet representatives from audio schools, collegesand universities, and companies searching for new talent. Thenat the final Student Delegate Assembly meeting the body electeda new vice chair for the Europe and International Regions: DaveMoffat from Queen Mary University of London.

TECHNICAL COUNCIL AND STANDARDSCOMMITTEE MEETINGSMeetings of the Technical Committees took place on all fourdays of the convention, culminating in the plenary meeting atlunchtime on the final day. Members of a number of these com-mittees had been active in planning international conferences,including recent ones on “The Future of Audio EntertainmentTechnology – Cinema, Television and the Internet” (Sound forDigital Cinema and TV), and audio for games. The most recentconferences on Music Induced Hearing Disorders, and SoundReinforcement Engineering and Technology, had also been thesubject of considerable input from two of the Society’s TechnicalCommittees—Hearing and Hearing Loss Prevention, andAcoustics and Sound Reinforcement.The AES Standards Committee is the organization responsible

CONVENTION REPORT


From left, Theresa Leonard, Mandy Parnell, three winners in thetraditional studio recording competition, Tristan Kuehn and SondreForsely and Johannes von Barsewisch, Magda Plewa, and Richard King

Ilpo Martikainen during his Heyser Lecture, with a backdrop of monitorloudspeakers through the ages.

A buzzing Education and Careers Fair draws students.

George Massenburg appreciates thedesign project of University of York studentsJack Hallybone, left, and Nick Upton, right.

for the AES Standards Program. Itpublishes a number of technical standards,information documents, and technicalreports and has over 65 working groupsand task groups with members from allover the world. During the 138thConvention a number of these groups metto move their work forward in areas suchas audio networking, file transfer andmeasurement, as well as electroacoustics,audio connectors and metadata.

AES MEETINGSThe Regions and Sections Forum providesa chance for AES section officers attendingthe convention to meet with regional vicepresidents and the chair of the Regionsand Sections Committee to share experi-ences of good practice and hear about theinnovative ways that worldwide sectionsare running their operations. Led by PeterCook, this dynamic event showed just howmuch good work is being undertaken byvolunteer committees in different parts ofthe world, to educate and inform localmembers about the latest in audio engineering.A number of other standing committee

meetings also took place during theWarsaw convention, including an informalgathering of the Board of Governors afterthe close of the convention on Sunday.

AND FINALLY…The Society’s first convention in Polandwas a great success, much enjoyed by themany audio engineers that took part. Itprovided an opportunity to renew oldfriendships, to network with fellow profes-sionals, catch up on the latest news, andabove all to learn. The AES is stronglydependent on the enthusiasm and willing-ness of its many dedicated members, aswell as that of many supportive profession-als, who give up their time and energy tomake these events a success. The Societythanks them and looks forward to theirsupport for many years to come. Particularthanks are due to those on the conventioncommittee, not yet mentioned above,including the following: Roger Furness,who coordinated the program; MarekWalaszek and Nadja Wallaszkovits, whosupported the facilities; Brian McCarty,Sound for Pictures Chair; Florian Camerer,Broadcast Chair ; Kuba Lopatka andKarolina Marciniuk, who coordinated thestudent volunteers.

CONVENTION REPORT


A busy standards meeting with Mark Yonge (right), Standards Manager

The Technical Council meets with Francis Rumsey (second from right) in the chair.

Publications Policy Committee with Bozena Kostek, editor (left) and Ville Pulkki,chair (second from left)

Peter Cook explains the AES online member profile to the Regions and Sections Forum.

AES MEETINGS

CONVENTION REPORT


Members of the AES Board of Governors and committee chairs after the final session of the138th Convention.

Bozena Kostek and Umberto Zanghieri,convention cochairs

Tadeusz Fidecki and Andrew Lipinski,technical tours cochairs

Nadja Wallaszkovits and Marek Walaszek,facilities cochairs

Magdalena Plewa, student events chair

Roger Furness, programcoordinator, with Nadja Wallaszkovits

Theresa Leonard, judge coordinator

Natanya Ford, tutorialsand workshops chair

Josh Reiss and Ville Pulkki,papers cochairs

Kuba Lopatka andKarolina Marciniuk,student volunteerscoordinators

CONVENTION COMMITTEE AND BOARD OF GOVERNORS

138th Exhibitors & SponsorsWarsaw, Poland • 2015 May 7 – 9


ABLO Group sp. z o. o.www.ablogroup.com

*AKGHarman.com

Aplauz Sp. z o.o.www.aplauzaudio.pl

Audile Electroacoustics ABwww.audile.se

*Audio-Technicawww.konsbud-audio.pl

Audiostacjawww.audiostacja.pl

Audiotechwww.audiotechpro.pl

Auro Technologieswww.auro-3d.com

Auro-3Dwww.auro-3d.com

AVT – Audio VideoTechnologieswww.avt-nbg.de

Bettermakerwww.bettermaker.eu

Brystonwww.mjaudiolab.pl

*BSSharman.com

Charter Oakwww.audiotechpro.pl

Crane Song Ltd.cranesong.com

*Crown Audioharman.com

DAVEwww.dave.pl

Dave Hill Designswww.davehilldesigns.com

Delecwww.konsbud-audio.pl

DPA Microphoneswww.dpamicrophones.com

Elysiawww.audiotechpro.pl

ESS AUDIOwww.essaudio.pl

Estrada i Studiowww.eis.com.pl

EVE Audiowww.audiotechpro.pl

*Focal Press www.focalpress.com

*Focusritewww.audiotechpro.pl

Fryderyk Chopin University ofMusicwww.chopin.edu.pl/en/

Gdansk University of Technologywww.multimed.org

Genelec Oywww.genelec.com

Gerriets GmbHwww.gerriets.com

Gibson Pro Audio/KRKwww.audiotechpro.pl

Great River Electronics www.mjaudiolab.plwww.greweb.com

*Harman International Industries Ltd.harman.com

IMDEA – InternationalMaster’s Degree inElectroAcousticswww.imdeacoustics.com

It4you itforyou.pro

*JBL Harman.com

Josephson Engineering,Inc.www.josephson.com

Konsbud Audiowww.konsbud-audio.pl

Lawo AG www.lawo.com

*LexiconHarman.com

Lipinski Soundwww.lipinskisound.com

Looptrotter Audiowww.mjaudiolab.pl

MBSwww.mbspro.tv

Merserwiswww.merserwis.pl

Microtech Gefell GmbHwww.microtechgefell.de

MJ Audio LABwww.mjaudiolab.pl

Mojave Audiowww.mjaudiolab.plwww.mojaveaudio.com

Musictoolz www.musictoolz.pl

Mytek Digitalwww.mytekdigital.com

*Neutrikwww.konsbud-audio.pl

NewBay Media LLCwww.nbmedia.com

OPSODIS Limitedfacebook.com/OPSODIS.LTD

Orban Europewww.orban.com

Pelusowww.pelusomicrophonelab.com

Petralexitforyou.pro

*PMChttp://pmc-speakers.com

*PrismMedia Products Ltd.www.prismsound.com

Polish Academy of Sciences

Profiaudio Ltd.www.profiaudio.com.pl

PSPaudioware.com s.c.www.PSPaudioware.com

Purple Audiowww.mjaudiolab.pl

Resolutionwww.resolutionmag.com

RME www.rme-audio.de

Roland East Europe Kft.www.rolandee.hu

*Solid State Logicwww.audiotechpro.pl

Sontronicswww.audiotechpro.pl

*Soundcraft / Studerwww.studer.ch

Spoy Karaokeitforyou.pro

Stagetec www.konsbud-audio.pl

Sveda Audiowww.sveda-audio.com

TC Electronicwww.tcelectronic.com

Université du Mainewww.univ-lemans.fr/en/index.html

UrbanDenoiseritforyou.pro

Vicousticwww.vicoustic.com

*Sustaining Member of the AudioEngineering Society

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