Behind the Mix
Peter Doell, Vance Powell
Vance Powell is a six-time Grammy award winning producer, engineer and mixer, whose impressive list of credits includes Chris Stapleton, Stray Cats, Elle King, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather, The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys and Wolfmother among many others. Powell recently won two Grammy awards in 2018 for mixing and engineering Chris Stapleton’s “From A Room: Volume 1” (Best Country Album), and mixing and engineering various songs on CeCe Winans’ “Let Them Fall In Love” (Best Gospel Album). He was also nominated for mixing Robert Randolph & The Family Band’s “Got Soul” (Best Contemporary Blues Album’. Vance will detail some of his most successful mixing and recording techniques with participation from the audience.

Black Music Roundtable
2020 has proven to be a landmark year in the struggle for social justice in America, though how that will affect the entertainment industry is yet to be determined. Black music has been central to the music, film, and TV industries for decades, but how does this current shift in cultural awareness impact opportunities for BIPOC artists and technicians? Moderated by Paul “Willie Green” Womack, this round table discussion will feature insight from industry veterans including:
Prince Charles Alexander (Grammy Award Winning Producer/Engineer, Professor – Berklee College of Music)
Leslie Gaston-Bird (Audio Engineer, Governor at Large – Audio Engineering Society)
Jeriel Johnson (Exec. Director – Recording Academy [Washington D.C. Chapter])
Carolyn Malachi (Grammy Nominated Artist/Songwriter, Professor – Howard University, Engineer).

DIY Home Studio Acoustics: Science and Craft of Tuning Your Room at Home
Chris Kincaid, Timothy Hsu, Sorgun Akkor
This workshop/presentation will cover a bit of both the science and craft of building diffusion panels at home. We will begin with an introduction to the topic of home studio room acoustics, followed by diagnosing a room, and finally a look at several solutions based on our measurements, skill level, and access to tools. We will cover common questions and scenarios from the community as well as a live Q&A afterward about both the science and craft of diffusion.

DIY Skills in the Job Market: How DIY Prepares You for Roles in Audio
EveAnna Manley, Laura Escude, Erika Earl, Angelica Tavella
How can DIY skills change your career trajectory? In this panel we will explore how DIY skills have helped to prepare a variety of professionals for their current, past, and future roles in the audio world. Panelists from a diverse career field including programming, mixing, design, support, education, and more will dig into topics related to how DIY helped them to get their start in their careers all the way to leading successful companies.

Evolution of Audio Products – Demystifying Innovation
Lisa Ferrante-Walsh
As innovative products and features come to market, do you find yourself wondering about the genesis of these novel ideas and how they evolved into marketable solutions? What process do companies go through to provide novel solutions to existing problems, or to problems that have no solution? How are these ideas iterated on until a viable solution emerges that provides the most customer value? What is the role of the user during product development? How do companies embrace risk and learn from failure while innovating? This 60-minute panel will leave you with concrete and actionable steps to apply in your organization. The panel consists of technologists from companies that employ these techniques and will be followed by Q&A.

Listening Test Design A to Z
Hyunkook Lee, Dale Johnson
This workshop will first provide a comprehensive overview of the theoretical principles of various types of listening test methods with practical examples in audio engineering context. It will cover classic psychometric methods used for auditory threshold measurement (e.g. mAFC, staircase procedure, ABX, etc.) as well as audio quality rating methods from ITU-R and ITU-T. Important factors to consider for a successful listening test design will be pointed out. Some common misconceptions observed in subjective studies will also be discussed. Furthermore, an open-access universal listening test design framework called HULTI-GEN will be introduced with practical demonstrations of its functionalities.

Music Technology in Live Performance
Paul Hunter
This session will examine some of the ways to incorporate music technology into a live context. It will assess the various aspects of using hardware and software to plan and deliver performance from the studio to stage. Technology has become ubiquitous with today’s modern performer through the use of live looping, triggering, manipulation of effects, and remixing on the fly. The tools are now available to enable the music producer to experimental with layers of sound and textures to create and perform within the live domain.

Post-COVID Recording Challenges
Peter Doell, Warren Huart
We will discuss whether Online Interaction, Live Streaming, and/or Apps, can truly replace all or any part of the Record Making process. Reduced budgets restricting travel mean we’ve been making music remotely for years – now, however, the ability to get together has been completely removed for most people. Some Studio Owners, Producers, Engineers and Mixers say the Pandemic has helped them streamline their process,. What are the pros and cons that you’ve experienced?

Research, Education, and Knowledge Transfer in Sound Reinforcement
Elena Shabalina, Finn Agerkvist, Manuel Melon, Martin Moller, Adam Hill, Etienne Corteel, Bob McCarthy
This panel will address the link between research and industry in the field of sound reinforcement. In many other fields both industry and research benefit from a close contact and collaboration. What can we learn from them? The panellists will address the topic from their unique perspectives and will try to identify what works well and what needs improvement. What are the ways for industry and research institutions and universities to work together? To name a few, there are Masters thesis, industrial PhD, collaboration agreements, industry-funded research, larger research projects with several parties. What are the obstacles on the way? What are the steps we all can take to improve the situation? Join us and help us find out!

The Day School Came Home
Ulrike Schwarz, Jim Anderson, Agnieszka Roginska, Alex Case, Alex Ruthmann
In this workshop educators Jim Anderson, Alex Case, Agnieszka Roginska and Alex Ruthmann will give a hands-on report on how their concepts of teaching audio theory, mixing, music performance, critical listening to immersive audio in class rooms changed to an online university approach within days in March 2020. Stories of teaching over different time zones with students scattered around the world (students in Australia, Korea and Europe being taught from a dining room in Brooklyn, NY) will be told and why going outside or a haircut are overrated. Instruments include twitch.tv, audiomovers.com, binaural audio encoding and how to choose the right Zoom license to avoid unwanted guests.

Time and Perception
Thomas Lund, Marina Bosi, Karlheinz Brandenburg
We summarize recent research on perception and active sensing from a pro audio perspective. Topics include overt and hidden reach-out features of listening, and how time may influence what we hear on a number of different scales. A new understanding of human perception would not only result in a revision of textbooks, and influence some types of subjective testing. Between-listener variation might also be investigated more systematically, and possibly help guide improvements in recording, distribution and reproduction.

Unlocking the Control Room: Equity Achievements in Audio
Amandine Pras, Grace Brooks, Kat Young, Daniel Fox, Mary Mazurek, Eliot Bates
An international survey in partnership with AES showed that women who work in the recording studio experience more microaggressions than those who work in STEM academia. While gender is the most significant predictor of social discrimination in audio, age, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, disability and migrant status also have an impact. In response to these statistics, this panel opens a dialogue based on the achievements of AES members who have applied their expertise to prompt actions towards equity. These contributions have promoted more diverse representation of presenters at AES events; the need for moderation of social media; communication strategies for conflict resolution; and the importance and effectiveness of access to role models, mentorship and placement opportunities for women and other minorities.

Women in Modular Synthesis
Some of the most important artist voices in modular synthesis come from women such as Suzanne Ciani, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, and Lisa Bella Donna. This session will be a round table discussion among some of these artists discussing their work and perspectives on making music with technology.