AES 2008
San Francisco
These are quick notes, jotted down on-the-fly…
sorry ‘bout the typos.
125th
Audio Engineering Society conference
the
organization’s 60 year anniversary
Opening
Ceremonies, Awards, Keynote Speech
Opening
Remarks
• Executive Director Roger Furness
• President Bob Moses
• Convention Co-chairs John Strawn,
Valerie Tyler
Program
• AES Awards Presentation
• Introduction of Keynote Speaker
• Keynote Address by Chris Stone
Awards
Presentation
Please join us as the AES presents special awards
to those who have made outstanding contributions to the Society in such areas
of research, scholarship, and publications, as well as other accomplishments
that have contributed to the enhancement of our industry. The awardees are:
PUBLICATIONS AWARD: Roger S.
Grinnip III
BOARD OF GOVERNORS AWARD: Jim
Anderson, Peter Swarte
FELLOWSHIP AWARD: Jonathan Abel,
Angelo Farina, Rob Maher, Peter Mapp, Christoph Musialik, Neil Shaw, Julius
Smith, Gerald Stanley, Alexander Voishvillo, William Whitlock
SILVER MEDAL AWARD: Keith
Johnson
GOLD MEDAL AWARD: George Massenburg
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE MEDAL AWARD: Jay
McKnight
Keynote Speaker
Record Plant co-founder Chris Stone will explore
new trends and opportunities in the music industry and what it takes to succeed
in today's environment, including how to utilize networking and free services
to reduce risk when starting a new small business. Speaking from his strengths
as a business/marketing entrepreneur, Stone will focus on the artist’s need to
develop a sophisticated approach to operating their own business and also how
traditional engineers can remain relevant and play a meaningful role in the
ongoing evolution of the recording industry. Stone’s keynote address is
entitled: The Artist Owns the Industry.
Chris Stone, Record Plant founder
The Artist owns the industry! The Music Industry is alive and well. Problem is: only a few smart people seem to be aware of how to take commercial advantage of that fact with today’s new music business model.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow:
Who IS the artist? Musician, film director, game developer, music pastor…. They’re our target customer. Today the music artist has to be involved in everything… 360. Marketing, promotion, touring, song-writing. The CD used to be the major revenue stream. Today, the artist gives the CD away. It’s now the tour, merchandise. All this has led to a different way of marketing. It’s now very web-centric. Buy a ticket to see Metallica and get a voucher for a free CD. Also a free download of the concert you just bought a ticket to.
The Internet has changed everything! Napster, iTunes. Major labels stopped doing artist development.
Recording gear got a lot cheaper, so it’s now shifted to a home-based studio. DIY became the word of the day. They all have their own studios, and stay on the road 250 days a year. Must have an email list, and sells 10-30 CD’s out of the trunk. When this happens, that’s when an artist needs a manager.
Major Labels and Hi-End recording studios still remain very viable.
More of Today’s facts: Brick and Mortar record chains are dying wal-mart, target, best buy (just bought Napster) All use music sales as ‘loss leader.’
iTunes is #1 overall music retailer.
DRM is gone away My Space Music took its place.
CD sales have decreased 46% since downloading began. But it’s still 82.6% of the US market.
Ringtones are now a 7 billion dollar industry.
But How does the artist get above the noise?
Future of the Music Industry. Continuing reduction in CD sales, unrestricted downloading is a fact.
The PC, not the Mobile Phone, is key to Market. Only 9% of phones download music.
But, Digital downloading continues to grow.
The Music Industry continues to morph from 4 major labels to thousands of indie labels all over the world. Regional music distribution and promotion is returning as a method to publicize local artists.
Artists continue to gain more control of the music (vertical integration).
Downloading, Music Discovery (Pandora) and social networking are where the industry is going!
There are many new opportunities for music entrepreneurs:
Provide label startup and mktg and promo svcs for band and indie labels
Music publishing sales and admin to service growth to new industry users
Artist mgmt is now the band itself. The band has to be its own COO! It’s a business.
Booking agent for more genre related, regional venues
On-site merchandising services for touring artist.
Marketing is way more than just sales
Short music videos, website design, publicists are now regional
Project recording post studios, audio engineers and music producers (new niche to fill)
Music placement services krtipsheet.com
To finds these opportunities, join music industry associations:
AES, NAMM, NARAS, NARIP, SPARS
Social network with like-minded industry people (you gotta hang out)
Competitive Advantage: decide what it is you do better than other people… as a company or individual. First do a feasibility study. Download a free template from google. Target demographic, geographic, psychographic, competition.
Assess your SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Know you competition better than you know yourself.
BEFORE YOU PUT YOUR MONEY DOWN:
Create a business plan. Convince others.
Marketing 4P’s product, pricing, promo, place
Talk to the experts/winners in your specialty.
Score counseling www.score.org 10500 counselors 389 chapters, face to face and email since 1964. Affiliate of SBA.
Loudness Workshop
Moderator - John Chester - consultant
Speakers:
·
Thomas Lund - TC Electronics
·
Jeffery Riedmiller - Dolby
·
Andrew Mason - BBC
·
Marvin Caesar - Aphex
·
James D. Johnston - Neural Audio
·
Robert Orban - Orban/CRL
New challenges and opportunities await
broadcast engineers concerned about optimum sound quality in this contemporary
age of multichannel sound and digital broadcasting. The earliest studies in the
measurement of loudness levels were directed to telephony issues, with the
publication in 1933 of the equal-loudness contours of Fletcher and Munson, and
the Bell Labs tests of more than a half-million listeners at the 1938 New York
Worlds Fair demonstrating that age and gender are also important factors in
hearing response. A quarter of a century later, broadcasters began to take notice
of the often-conflicting requirements of controlling both modulation and
loudness levels. These are still concerns today as new technologies are being
adopted. This session will explore the current state of the art in the
measurement and control of loudness levels and look ahead to the next
generation of techniques that may be available to audio broadcasters.
John Chester
NYT or WSJ article 9-25-08 Thanks to latest Metallica release, people are complaining that everything’s getting too loud!
Marvin Caesar,
Aphex
Apologized for being complicit in loudness wars. Listener fatigue is an overlooked factor.
Metallica’s stuff actually sounds better on Guitar Hero than on the CD. Sounds like the mastering engineer is to blame. Ultimately, though, it’s probably the producer and artist to blame. Competition among artist and labels drives this race to the crush.
Loudnesss Wars: has leaked from broadcast world to the production world.
Processing to get maximum level may require clipping
Leveling, compression, limiting, clipping dynamic control should be done in this order.
Look Ahead processing simulates, but prevents clipping.
Be aware of the effect of Asymmetry has on limiter output. Male voice tends to be more asymmetrical.
Loss of harmonics (Gibbs Effect) increases amplitude
One of the causes of the Loudness War was the 75 Microsecond Pre-Emphasis curve. This curve has created an industry.
Salience and Listener Fatigue:
reduced amplitude changes
reduced frequency response changes
reduced transient response changes
The more difficult it is to discern salience, the faster and greater the fatigue.
James Johnston
(JJ), Neural Audio Corp.
Loudness
is not intensity. Loudness is the
internal, subjective experience of how loud a signal is.
The term Loudness dates back to the Fletcher-Munson curves.
Intensity is an objective measure of volume. Higher distortion = higher loudness.
Doubling of loudness is equivalent to a change of power of 10 to the 3.5
Loudness vs. dB
Db SPL is a measure of the intensity of a signal. dB does not measure loudness
A doubling of loudness is about 10dB or so, whereas doubling of volume occurs with every 3db.
Implications: single band weighting filters can’t get it right.
They can get it moderately right for wide band signals with similar spectrum, where spectrum is smoothed on a critical band basis. How to handle varying content that’s speech, music, effects.
Distortion especially in upper region 70-120hz region can throw off loudness measurement by a phenomenal amount.
Overall, loudness models for extended periods are still in development
We don’t know if loudness or annoyance, or something else, is what people adjust volume controls for
We need a system that can be adapted at the point of playback, NOT at the source. Then just maybe, we might get some dynamic range back.
JJ’s recommendation: Broadcast uncompressed program material (with digital transmission, there’s no reason to try and get above a noise floor), then give the listener two volume controls: one to determine the softest and the other to set the loudest. Leave it up to the listener.
JJ ended by saying
that “if you’re in radio, I no longer listen to you. I can’t stand loud all the time.”
Thomas Lund, TC
Electronic A/S Denmark
Dynamic Range Tolerance
Cinema, home theatre, living room, kitchen, bedroom, iPod, car, in-Flight entertainment
A loudness measure must be based on statistics. Not only dialog as reference.
Center of Gravity: indicates the overall loudness of a program or music track
Consistency, indicates intrinsic loudness changes inside a program or track 0 at top of scale
LM5D loudness meter v.1.1.2 tdm plugin made by tcElectronics.
Dialog Normalization easy to find examples where it doesn’t work
Universal Solution: reclaim land - analog transmission has room for emphasis which digital doesn’t need true peaks can go to -1dbfs in DTV
Metadata: universal solution works with linear audio AC3, AAC and other codecs.
If broadcast gets anchored only on dialog level, we are heading for consumer chaos w/extreme level jumps between programming, commercials and other home sources.
Therefore, don’t hang your hat too firmly on dialog.
Metallica The Day that Never Comes album is way loud.
Suggested delivery specs for int’l broadcast enabling quality audio for use w/linear audio or any codec.
Longterm loudness -20 LkFS
Tru peak -1dbFS
Dialog -26 to -22
Andrew Mason, BBC
Research
Loudness Measurement
People complain that things are too loud.
In UK, we use a PPM meter, it doesn’t measure loudness.
IRU-R BS.1770 Soulodre
Showed a cool loudness meter, BBC R&D.R1_7 2,4,10,30 sec needle segments, longer at bottom of needle, shortest at top.
Bob Orban / CRL
Compared the CBS and the ITU BS.1770 loudness meters
Short-term vs. Long-term loudness
Bob played a 3.5 minute montage thru Optimod 6300 then, turned on the loudness controller which used the CBS value as a controller. The ITU BS.1770 value seem to remain the same, but the CBS value was a good 5 or 6 db less.
free download of his loudness meter. www.orban.com/meter
Jeffery
Riedmiller, Dolby Laboratories
Broadcast Loudness: the Practical side of implementation
Audio Loudness and Dialnorm (DN) which is the AC3 metadata value representing the average dialogue loudness of a single program
Addresses INTER-pgm level differences only. Does not address INTRA-pgm level differences.
DRC Dynamic Range Control subsystem handles the INTRA-pgm level differences.
DN=-31 results in no boost, big problem at output decoder
Joint Dolby / MSO (multi system operators) Case Study
Schedules 250k ads per day. Each ad now has loudness and dialnorm metadata, and customer complaints have dropped.
Proper use of ac-3 metadata and dialnorm does improve listener/viewer satisfaction
The Art of Sound Effects
Sound effects: footsteps,
doors opening and closing, a bump in the night. These are the sounds that can
take the flat one-dimensional world of audio, television, and film and turn
them into realistic three-dimensional environments. From the early days of
radio to the sophisticated modern day High Def Surround Sound of contemporary
film; sound effects have been the final color on the director's palatte. Join
Sound Effects and Foley Artists Sue Zizza and David Shinn of SueMedia
Productions as they present a 90 minute session that explores the art of sound
effects; creating and performing manual effects; recording sound effects with a
variety of microphones; and using various primary sound effect elements for
audio, video and film projects.
·
Sue Zizza, sfx/foley artist
·
David Shinn,
her engineer
“I’m a Sound Effects artist – for radio or audio books, but a Foley artist – for TV or Film.”
Sound Effects add context, create location and spaces in which the characters live.
There are two types of SFX: Spots FX vs. Ambience FX
To make sfx ‘read’ it often helps to add length to the sound. Sue gave the example of just picking up or hanging up a prop telephone, vs. making it rattle around a bit in its cradle to make a longer SFX.
Check out the toy plastic Megaphone from Bed Bath and Beyond
Lots of in-studio SFX creation employ weird source toys, but it’s about fooling the listener.
Waling in Snow – squeezing box of corn-starch
Open a Rum bottle with cork stopper, dice going into a tumbler for ice sound, pouring water with distance to make sure it ‘prints’ in the listeners mind.
Throw in a 7w nitelite bulb, glass-end first, into tumbler, followed immediately by dice for a richer ice into glass sound.
Toys and junk: Refrigerator latch, old electric screwdriver, tie-down strap ratchet, to simulate robot walking and turning head.
If actors were recorded Binaural, then you want to record SFX in Binaural. Or a 5.1 surround mic, etc.
Stereo vs. Mono Record SPOT EFX in mono (better for localization). Record AMBO EFX in stereo.
Resonating Box: creaking door, ship, getting it on below decks. [pix]
When doing a ‘period piece’ try to simulate the actual setting. eg. A 1964 Jack Kerouac dialog with his mother, recorded in an actual living room, with FX grabbed in mono and placed later with pan pots.
Campbell Scott trying to get himself and his dead buddy out of the desert. Talking turkey-vultures.
Built a facility to foley the entire scene. Bought 400 lbs of kitty litter, in a 4’x30’x4” walking lane. So that it could be a continuous walking effect. Director wanted nothing from the ‘can.’
Footsteps Foley: “a sfx artist can walk a mile in 2 ½ inches”
In film, footsteps are always recorded with a shotgun, for presence. A mono mic accentuates front to back movement, so you get perspective changes.
2’x4’x1” Plywood on 1x4 sticks, so it’s
off the floor (for more resonance):
natural on one side, linoleum on the other. Mic-ed with an x-y mic, so you get left-right
movement, or single cardioid orshotgun.
When you stop, always place a scuff. An while they’re standing there, maybe they should subtley scuff around or shift weight.
Heavy piece of granite 2’x4’x1” add a little Morton salt for grit. For beach, grind some kitty litter under feet. Sand on wood good for a beach.
Leather Bottom shoes give the best detail to the sound.
Gravel Bag (stage sand bag) filled with gravel you walk on that. Size of gravel, loose stone. Good for outdoor walking.
Alien Fish walking: cellulose sponge on feet, to get a squishing sound.
Breathing through the mouth, losing noisy clothing, jewelry.
“Yap (Yak?) Box” small blue synth generator.
Surround demo: Sonic Force needed a field recording of a helicopter
Cavalry soldiers yelling and running by mic.
DPA-5100 a 5.1 surround mic, from Denmark brand new
Wind wand rubber bands stretched over dowel, spin it
around didgeridoo sound-alike
Naked door lockset, add wood door (lid of wooden box)
A padded box with coconut halves, for horse, along with a block and tackle for harness sounds.
Material in box: fresh step kitty litter, but prefer unscented clay. Don’t want too much dust
2x4 built gate with hinge and latch
How do you decide between live created sounds vs. library
sounds?
Well, does the in-the-can sfx sound like it was recorded
in the space where the voices were recorded?
That’s what determines the answer.
Also, it can be quicker to foley sfx live than manually place canned.
Fabric sounds
recorded on a ribbon mic is warmer than on a condenser. Theree was
an Outdoor walla vs. Indoor walla discussion.
Scorsese adds animal sounds behind natural sounds in Raging Bull
Sue also mentioned a Nicholas Cage film where a match
strike had a jet engine layered under.
Analyzing, Recommending, and
Searching Audio Content—Commercial Applications of Music Information Retrieval
Chair:
Jay LeBoeuf, Imagine Research
Panelists:
Markus Cremer, Gracenote Director
of DSP Technology mcremer@gracenote.com 510-428-7217
Matthias Gruhne, Fraunhofer Institute for Digital
Media Technology
Tristan Jehan, The Echo Nest
Keyvan Mohajer, Melodis Corporation
Abstract:
This workshop will focus on the cutting-edge
applications of music information retrieval technology (MIR). MIR is a key
technology behind music startups recently featured in Wired and Popular
Science. Online music consumption is dramatically enhanced by automatic
music recommendation, customized playlisting, song identification via cell
phone, and rich metadata / digital fingerprinting technologies. Emerging
startups offer intelligent music recommender systems, lookup of songs via
humming the melody, and searching through large archives of audio. Recording
and music software now offer powerful new features, leveraging MIR techniques.
What’s out there and where is this all going? This workshop will inform AES
members of the practical developments and exciting opportunities within MIR,
particularly with the rich combination of commercial work in this area.
Panelists will include industry thought-leaders: a blend of established
commercial companies and emerging start-ups.
MIR: Analyzing, recommending and searching audio
content – commercial applications of music information retrieval
Jay LeBoeuf, Imagine
Research
Markus Cremer, head
of small research group Gracenote Media
Database
CDDB database, over 2.0B searches / month GN acquired by Sony 2 months ago.
doesn’t make their own stuff, they buy it (unlike Melodis).
Genius from Apple has licensed access from GraceNote.
Text mining and collaborative filtering.
My Question: are any library music companies or Soundminer approaching you guys to utilize your search technology?
Markus Answer: some, but it’s not the most lucrative financial model for us, so it’s a low priority. Talk to Markus after the session to get names of which companies have approached him.
Matthias Gruhne,
Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology
Semantic Metadata Systems
Tristan Jehan, The
Echo Nest
Echo Nest is a music intelligence platform more meaningful connections between people and music
Combines cultural and musical context automatically
Free web API for developers @ developer.echonest.com
Keyvan Mohajer,
Melodis Corporation
Midomi mobile, an iPod app. Voice recognition, hum a few bars, or say name of artist or song, or hold phone up to a radio. www.midomi.com sounds like a better version of Shazam. Wrote all their own stuff.
Humming Engine built 4 yrs ago.
Sound Source separation to delineate melody. It’s a manual process. Goal is ‘all the music in the world.’ Currently at 10 mil songs in database. Users submit melodies, user generated, like Wikipedia.
3 providers: GraceNote, Midomi, Shazam. Shazam does not offer humming.
Multi-modal adaptive research is technique used.
When you hum or sing a melody into Midomi, you can upload your picture. Then when others get a hit on the song you uploaded, they see your picture and they can become your friend on MySpace. They also rate your performance.
MIR has been called subjective, but only the recommendation part is subject. The identification part is not subjective… it just works.
I asked the panelists if any consideration had been given to employing this new identification and recommendation technology to library music / needledrops. THEY LOOKED AT ME LIKE I WAS FROM MARS! No one had every heard of such a thing. One of them replied to me: “Do you mean, like, bootleg recordings?” when I mentioned ‘cleared music.’
YIKES!
AES has turned into a show of wanna-be rock-stars and bedroom guitar players.
I probably don’t need to come to this show again!
This no longer represents my industry.
Listening Tests on Existing and New
HDTV Surround Coding Systems
Moderator: Gerhard Stoll, IRT
Speakers:
·
Steve Lyman, Dolby Laboratories
·
Florian Camerer, ORF
·
Kimio Hamasaki, NHK Science
&Technical Research Laboratories
·
Andrew Mason, BBC R&D
·
Bosse Ternstrom, SR
With the advent of HDTV
services, the public is increasingly
being exposed to surround sound presentations using so-called home theater
environments. However, the restricted bandwidth available into the home,
whether by broadcast, or via broadband, means that there is an increasing
interest in the performance of low bit rate surround sound audio coding systems
for �emission� coding. The European
Broadcasting Union Project Group D/MAE (Multichannel Audio Evaluations)
conducted immense listening tests to asses the sound quality of multichannel
audio codecs for broadcast applications in a range from 64 kbit/s to 1.5
Mbit/s. Several laboratories in Europe have contributed to this work.
This Broadcast Session will provide profound information about these tests and
the results. Further information will be provided, how the professional
industry, i.e. codec proponents and decoder manufacturers, is taking further
steps to develop new products for multichannel sound in HDTV.
Gerhard Stoll, IRT
Listening tests of hi-end codecs: Dolby Digital +, HiEfficiencey AAC, ProLogic
SACD, DVD A, Linear PCM, lossless coding
Discrete 5.1 MCA coding
Bit-rate is still very important. 448kbps and above is best
Old MCA codecs are still verby good when operated t appropriate bir-rates
Low bit-rate codecs can produce hi qual in many, but not all source material.
Steve Lyman, Dolby
Labs
Codecs provide excellent audio quality:
DD ac2 @ 448kb/s
DD+ E-AC3 @ 448
AAC @ 320 kb/s
HE-AAC @ 192 or 160
MetaData: opens up delivery possibilities to listeners
Consistent loudness
Control of dynamic range
Program to speaker configuration
Downmixing as necessare
Addl. Svcs video descriptive, emergency, svcs for hearing impaired)
A good mixer will place the average level at an anchor point, say -20dbfs, which allows ample headroom, or DialNorm value Then, a variety of styles: action movie, drama, sports, symphony, rock, news can be controlled in your living room. Means dropping that -20 to -31, then dialing around attenuation based upon material category.
Dynamic Range control little vs. big (full theatre system)
WorldWide: Evolution of terrestrial specs (Europe)
Needs all-in-one decoder / transcoder
Bavaria new Dolby products allows stream mixing in the receiver ATSC Service Types
Main Services
Complete Main
Music and Effects
Associated Svcs
Visually impaired
Hearing impaired
Dialogue
Etc.
Andrew Mason, BBC
Research
Leading to… 5.1 Surround
BS-775 listening position of speaker placement. Rears are real wide, like at my place.
Bit-Rate reduction: bandwidth costs money. Cable compresses video 100:1. But for HD, audio winds up for 5.1 384kb/s
BBC has bundled surround with HDTV broadcasts – TWC could take a lesson.
DVB-2, DAB+
Bossert , Swedish Radio
Hi-Quality Multi-Channel in Radio
Proponent of higher bit-rates in audio 448 should be a minimum. But he really prefers 640kb/s.
Lower bit-rates result in artifacts when gaining up center channel, for example. He also advocates 96x24.
Florrian Camera,
European TV from Austria ORF
Works in multichannel audio
Live: Dolby E
Post: wav files Poly-WAV or Dolby E
Quality -> PCM is goal, Dolby E is an intermediate solution
EBU: >320 kb/s
Austrian HDTV data rates:
Video 12 mb/s 448 kb/s
Challenge: applause is the toughest lo-bit rate sounds like French fries
Goal: Audio free of artifacts
Kimio Hamasaki, NHK
Science eand Tech Research Labs
Do we need audio lossy coding for future of HD broadcasting?
In Japan, ISDB-Tsb
Archiving
and Preservation for Audio Engineers
Chair:
Konrad Strauss
Panelists:
Chuck Ainlay
George Massenburg
John Spencer
Abstract:
The art of audio recording is 130 years old. Recordings
from the late 1890s to the present day have been preserved thanks to the
longevity of analog media, but can the same be said for today's digital
recordings? Digital storage technology is transient in nature, making lifespan
and obsolescence a significant concern. Additionally, digital recordings are
usually platform specific; relying on the existence of unique software and
hardware platforms, and the practice of nondestructive recording creates a
staggering amount of data much of which is redundant or unneeded. This workshop
will address the subject of best practices for storage and preservation of
digital audio recordings and outline current thinking and archiving strategies
from the home studio to the large production facility.
Konrad Strauss,
Indiana University, Jacobs School of Music, Bloomington
Backup: ensure against catastrophic data loss
Archiving: ensure that data is preserved (long-term storage)
Analog Recordings:
once recorded, master becomes archival format. Generally accepted conventions for linear tape and accompanying documentation
Problems
Gradual degradation: deterioration of medium, degradation thru migration,
Limited lifespan of media
Digital Recordings:
Lack of generally accepted conventions
Short life of formats: can a format be read in 5 yrs?
Short life of hdwe: will hdwe be supported in 5 yrs?
Short life of media: Exabyte anyone?
Digital Advantage
Unlimited migration: infinite copies w/no degradation
IT data mgmt techniques: planned migration to new formats, preserve the data, not the media
Digital Recordings:
Active mgmt required: ongoing funding, regular migration for eternity
Archiving Paradigm:
Eternal file, not eternal carrier
NARAS DAW guidelines for preserving media (stanrdardization of deliverables) download and circulate to Corey
Save copy as ensures that you don’t wind up with missing audio files.
Daily backup plan to ensure against data loss
Archiving: risk mitigation on multiple formats, multiple copies, geographical separation (off-site), regular migration.
Validation: integrity checks, checksums
Year-Month-Day, IEC standard, is a good way to start filename.
George Massenburg
Larry Blake, SMPTE naming conventions addresses OMF issues on SMPTE site