As a fresh member of the Audio Engineering Society and with the support of our college, my fellow students and I had the chance to visit the AES convention, which was held in Rome this year.
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| 4 days full of workshops and speeches |
There have been a lot of workshops often taking place at the same time, therefore I could not visit all the speeches that I was interested in. So this post can only be about a part of the convention.
First of all, the convention itself was smaller than I had expected and was held in the Fontana di Trevi Convention Centre. The level of the speeches varied considerably, but all the referees I saw have throughout been well prepared professionals able to answer the questions of the audience precisely.
Still, I was a bit disappointed about the amount of workshops with fundamental topics (like "Microphones") and the beginner level they had. The audience consisted solely of audio engineers - why tell them basics they already learned years ago and not use the time for advanced topics instead?
Still, I was a bit disappointed about the amount of workshops with fundamental topics (like "Microphones") and the beginner level they had. The audience consisted solely of audio engineers - why tell them basics they already learned years ago and not use the time for advanced topics instead?
But there were also workshops with a perfect level and topic, imho, that were enjoyable with previous knowledge where you could learn new things and get insights in other engineers workflows. That alone made the trip worth it for me.
And yes, there were also specific speeches that have been exciting and detailed, where I simply did not have the specialized knowledge to review them.
I'd like to name some of the workshops, that impressed me most:
# Professional Training Programm: Audio Power Amplifiers
-> Live Audio Design Workshop
-> referee: Anthony Waldron
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| Anthony Waldron |
# Tutorial: ELECTRIC GUITAR - what a recordist ought to know
-> referee: Alex Case
-> Alex also gave a presentation about CREATIVE DISTORTION, that was really interesting as well
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| Alex Case |
-> referee: Simon Franglen (Avatar, Spiderman, Titanic..)
-> there was a little live demonstration of Pro Tools 11 included as well
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| Simon Franglen |
The organization of the convention was throughout punctual and smooth without any appreciable complications.
In contrast to that, the insonification of the lecture halls was suboptimal. An audio engineer conference with a poor sounding and sometimes humming PA and presentations with 5.1 content that had to be presented on stereo systems - who else should have adequate sound system on their convention if not the AES?
In contrast to that, the insonification of the lecture halls was suboptimal. An audio engineer conference with a poor sounding and sometimes humming PA and presentations with 5.1 content that had to be presented on stereo systems - who else should have adequate sound system on their convention if not the AES?
The AES members I talked to where sympathetic, especially the jury that evaluated the competitions gave valuable feedback to the submissions. I missed my chance to submit myself, maybe next year. Two of my fellow students won the first and respectively second price in the category they submitted.
Interesting additional fact: some other student members and I were interviewed by Barry Marshall for his worldwide study about music consumption.
The vice-president of our college and Tonmeister Martin Steyer accompanied our journey. Here is a picture of him testing a new Physical Modeling Piano:
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| Martin Steyer |
Last but not least: 4 days with 9 hours of permanently listening to english workshops are a pretty good language-training.
Finally, notwithstanding all the above, I am glad that I was there and would go there again.
