"Audio Engineering Society- Your opinions?"

[Night Train]

Hi there guys,

I have been a Gearslutz member for quite some time now and I am enrolled in a "Broadcast Systems Technologies" course at SAIT in Calgary, AB.

I am doing a presentation on the AES (Audio Engineering Society) and thought it might be interesting to get some feedback from people in the industry and their take on the AES. Personally, I have only really thought of it as a conference for new gear!

Anyway, here are a few questions:

-What do you know about the AES?

-Are you a member/contributing member of the AES?

-How does the AES affect you personally in the audio world?

-Do you think the AES is effective? Does it address current trends in audio?

As well, if you can think of any other issues/items of interest in regards to this, I would be interested in hearing your responses.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to access the libraries at the AES, since you have to have a paid membership up front, so I don't have access to all the the AES has to offer, so it would be good to see what you guys get from it.

Thanks so much for any of your thoughts/opinions!

Shawn Johnsen
(I put it here because it mentioned "Music biz politics," which it may be a part of).

[big country]

-What do you know about the AES?

I know it can possibly be a powerfull tool for healthy music
and protecting gear manufatures .

-Are you a member/contributing member of the AES?

I bought a wind breaker for thirty bucks...
not a member though.
-

How does the AES affect you personally in the audio world?

not by much

-Do you think the AES is effective? Does it address current trends in audio?

I dont know , mabey they should have a mod for music.
I get knocked around for saying the word shit on these sites ,
who mods the lyrics to music .

recording should be a sacred practice . Id like to see ASE make that reality
for a healthy society.
music is a form of repition make it healthy before we sink to nothing

[jmarkham]

I think it depends on how much of a geek you are.
In my case, I'm a physics major and I understand the math
behind most of the articles.. if you're not grounded in the
science, then I don't think you'll get a whole lot out of
the AES. They do track current audio trends, but they do so
in a scientific manner.

If you're a "mixer", then magazines such as Mix or Tape-Op
may be better reads.

Has been an AES member enhanced my profession? ... not really.
I like reading the journals, and I learn stuff every once in a while
that comes in handy. But, a lot of the articles are very narrow
in scope and attach very specific issues in great depth. Few of
them are direct application ... e.g., "Modeling Boundaries as
Digital Impedance Filters" ... interesting .. but isn't going to help
me track something today ;-)

jeff

[John Willett]

Yes, I'm a member and have been for many years.

I have also given papers at a couple of the conferences in the UK.

For defining audio standards, it's the best there is and it's the best way to disseminate knowledge.

Never regretted joining.

[synthoid]

The AES is to audio what ANSI is to computing and ITU is to telecommunications. If we didn't have it, we wouldn't have standardized audio formats and signalling conventions, both analog and digital. We all benefit from it when we buy equipment that works properly together, even if we don't know what exactly the individual standards are about.

I've used a couple of the AES standards documents as materials in university courses before; they're clear, well-written, and thorough.

-synthoid

[manning1]

the one thing i would have liked the AES to have done years back would have been to issue a standard for complete project interchange tween different audio multitrack software.
this would have made things tons easier for musicians.
cos this didnt happen, each daw multitrack software has its own proprietary project format.
which has made life difficult.

[Paul Frindle]

Originally Posted by Night Train

Hi there guys,

I have been a Gearslutz member for quite some time now and I am enrolled in a "Broadcast Systems Technologies" course at SAIT in Calgary, AB.

I am doing a presentation on the AES (Audio Engineering Society) and thought it might be interesting to get some feedback from people in the industry and their take on the AES. Personally, I have only really thought of it as a conference for new gear!

Anyway, here are a few questions:

-What do you know about the AES?

-Are you a member/contributing member of the AES?

-How does the AES affect you personally in the audio world?

-Do you think the AES is effective? Does it address current trends in audio?

As well, if you can think of any other issues/items of interest in regards to this, I would be interested in hearing your responses.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to access the libraries at the AES, since you have to have a paid membership up front, so I don't have access to all the the AES has to offer, so it would be good to see what you guys get from it.

Thanks so much for any of your thoughts/opinions!

Shawn Johnsen
(I put it here because it mentioned "Music biz politics," which it may be a part of).

I was a member of the AES for many years, but a couple of years back I let my membership lapse - deliberately.

Basically the AES is a brilliant concept - and it does supply technical standards to the industry in some areas - although some of them occasionally seem barmy (as is often the case in audio) - LOL..

But to be honest the reason I let it lapse was mostly because I became a bit uncomfortable with the ingress of ever increasing commercial 'interference'. Of course this may be due to oversight and saturation rather than any lack of integrity, which is very difficult to maintain under such a barrage of change and pressure. But at the point where the AES starts to lose its impartiality because of commercialism infiltrating even 'under the radar' it ceases to be relevant to me personally.

During my membership I did present a few papers of my own and I had a massive interest in papers presented by other people - also there is no doubt that meeting people within our industry is a very good thing. However, funding for these kinds of excursions has become more and more difficult to justify in these austere times?

I still have great respect for the AES - but not sufficient to renew my membership at the moment.

[Night Train]

But to be honest the reason I let it lapse was mostly because I became a bit uncomfortable with the ingress of ever increasing commercial 'interference'. Of course this may be due to oversight and saturation rather than any lack of integrity, which is very difficult to maintain under such a barrage of change and pressure. But at the point where the AES starts to lose its impartiality because of commercialism infiltrating even 'under the radar' it ceases to be relevant to me personally.

Thanks for all the interesting replies so far. Much appreciated!

Paul, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I would be interested to hear a little more about this, if you would like to elaborate a little. What kind of specific examples do you see of this?

Thanks!

Shawn

[BruceTheProduce]

Originally Posted by manning1

the one thing i would have liked the AES to have done years back would have been to issue a standard for complete project interchange tween different audio multitrack software.
this would have made things tons easier for musicians.
cos this didnt happen, each daw multitrack software has its own proprietary project format.
which has made life difficult.

Well, there is OMF but we all know there is a cost involved when acquiring it most cases

[Jim Williams]

Another former member here. I lost interest in AES when the code writters took over. I left over the poor management and trade show practices.

I got more out of the journals from the 70's and 80's than I ever got after that.
Their Journal library on disc is their best effort, unfortunately it's all in the past.

I've seen little from them of real world application oriented research. Analog design is neglected over digital code theory.

The trade shows are not what they used to be, missing is the SMPTE section which wisely broke off and joined with NAB, a very large and interesting show.

Trade show booth rates are the highest around, not reflecting the traffic levels one might get at Namm or NAB.

When I visit the once ever 4 years show in Los Angeles (which used to show every 2 years) I feel like I see the broken remains of a once vibrant recording industry. I hear a lot of stories of survival, not success. That is found over at NAB.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[Paul Frindle]

Originally Posted by Night Train

Thanks for all the interesting replies so far. Much appreciated!

Paul, I don't want to put you on the spot, but I would be interested to hear a little more about this, if you would like to elaborate a little. What kind of specific examples do you see of this?

Thanks!

Shawn

Of course it would be really unfair to elaborate on specifics. Let's just say that I've been around a long time. I am certainly not accusing people in the AES of anything personally :-) Several of these people I count as friends and colleagues who I hold in the very highest esteem, and I know they have the best intentions at heart - I also know how much effort they put in :-)

[manning1]

BruceTheProduce
another area i wish standards had have been made by the AES is plug ins.
once again this area is a dogs breakfast imho.
open standards that apply across many platforms is a good thing imho.
and benefits consumers.

other areas the AES could have become involved in might have been a cross platform standardised OS, mebe a linux derivative for example. this might have been interesting.
so music software developers could have written daw apps for a specific audio oriented OS.
hopefully with an ultra low latency kernel. ie..a non bloated OS specifically for music studios.
instead today we have generalised OS's where audio is sorta an afterthought.
cos the OS's are trying to cover lots of different non audio application areas...thus their size.