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Plug into AES67 & ST2110 Markets Today with BACH Liberty from Ross Video
BACH Liberty is a drop-in replacement, pin-compatible module to Dante Brooklyn II, featuring a fully compliant AES67 and ST2110 implementation. With BACH Liberty, customers are able to plug into more markets. The open control technologies found on BACH empower manufacturers to bring innovative new workflows and user interfaces to the benefit of end users worldwide. BACH has the Liberty you've been waiting for.
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Gary Galo
AES New York 2018 Convention - A Few Highlights
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The Audio Engineering Society (AES) held its
145th convention in New York City
from October 17-20, 2018. The AES had a New York convention last year, so this was the first time since the mid-1980s that a New York convention was held two years in a row. The year 2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the AES, and convention organizers obviously wanted the celebration to take place on their home turf. Another New York convention is scheduled for October 2019 and, according to AES Director of Communications Frank Wells, no future West Coast conventions are currently slated. AES will continue to have a West Coast presence, however. In 2018, they held their inaugural AES@NAMM Pro Sound Symposium, a joint venture with the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), and they have an agreement to hold that event during the
Winter NAMM show (January 24-27, 2019)
through 2021. AES also is planning a Headphone Technology Conference in San Francisco, CA, scheduled for August 2019.
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| Participants at the Custom Gear Show, including Eddie Ciletti, Owen Curtin, Bob Katz, Joe Vezzetti, and Ethan Winer, exhibit their custom-built audio equipment at the 145th AES convention. |
This year the AES added a new track to their program, offering several sessions related to do-it-yourself (DIY) audio. Seasoned electrical engineers that I know sometimes complain that young engineers fresh out of school have never held a soldering iron. They know a great deal of theory but have no practical experience building or making electronic circuits work in the real world. This year's convention included a Custom Gear Show, with five participants exhibiting their custom-built audio equipment. The Boston section of the AES now sponsors an Audio Builders Workshop program, which was started by Owen Curtin in 2015 (
www.audiobuildersworkshop.com
). Their display at the Custom Gear Show featured two simple projects for the novice builder with soldering skills - an electronic metronome based on the 555 timer chip, and a low-pass filter based on a pair of LM358 IC op-amps (photo below). Information on purchasing PC boards and kits of parts can be found on their website under "Builds."
The Audio Builders Workshop also sponsored a two-hour session bearing their name to give novices an introduction to acting on schematic diagrams to produce working devices. Participants in this session built the metronome shown at the Custom Gear Show, but on a breadboard, so no soldering was needed. Kits for each participant were supplied by
Mouser Electronics
, including the breadboard and all parts needs to complete the project, including duplicate parts in case of mishaps.
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| The kits for each Audio Builders Workshop participant at AES New York 2018 were supplied by Mouser Electronic. |
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| I took a few photos of the Audio Builders Workshop participants getting started and returned shortly before the end of the session to see the results. Only a couple of builders had finished when I returned, including Taylor Fitzgerald of Palatine, IL, shown second from the left. The photo below shows her completed project. |
When I was a kid, there was a proliferation of companies making electronic kits of all types, including Heathkit, Allied Radio's Knight Kit, Eico, Lafayette, and Dynaco. Many builders, myself included, wound up working in the audio field while others pursued different careers. Kits were a great place to get a start building electronic equipment before moving on to equipment modifications and from-scratch projects. Hafler attempted to build on the Dynaco tradition, beginning in 1978, but its kit venture lasted less than a decade. By the 1990s, the kit business was essentially defunct, though in recent years there's been a bit of a comeback. Still, it's much more difficult for young people get a start building electronics projects than it was for those of us who grew up in 1950s and 1960s. The AES DIY programs are a welcome addition to their conventions and I hope they will continue with these workshops at future conventions. Kudos to the Boston AES and
Mouser Electronics
for their support of this venture.
Historical presentations and exhibits continue to be an important part of AES conventions. Thomas Fine gave an outstanding presentation titled "The Commercialization of Stereophony, 1955-1960." This presentation was a sequel to the one he gave last year on "The Roots of Stereophony," which covered the early development of stereophonic recording, including two-channel telephony in France and England in the late 19th century, experiments by Alan Blumlein and Bell Labs in the early 1930s, war-time stereo recordings made on the German Magnetophon tape recorders, and the staggered-head stereo tape recorders made by Magnecord in the early 1950s.
This year's presentation concentrated on the first commercially issued stereo recordings and, as with his previous presentations, it was accompanied by an extensive slide show and numerous recorded examples. Tom divided his presentation into five broad categories, beginning with "On the Horizon: Early Commercialization of Directional Sound." This segment included Bert Whyte's 1952 experiments with Magnecord's PT-6 staggered-head stereo tape recorder, and Emory Cook's commercial two-band stereo LP record (left side on the photos below).
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| "Home Stereo's First Foothold: 2-Track Tapes" covered the first commercial reel-to-reel tapes, released by RCA Victor in late 1954. Images courtesy of Thomas Fine. |
Other record companies followed suit, with tapes made in both staggered-head and in-line head formats. Although this was the first practical means of delivering stereophonic sound to the consumer, the tapes weren't cheap. Tom pointed out that the $14.95 US retail price of the RCA Victor tapes was the equivalent of about $140 of today's US dollars.
"Competing Designs: Finding a Stereo Disc Standard" included discussion of the systems proposed for cutting two channels into a single record groove. One was a hybrid system with one channel as lateral vibrations and the other as vertical. The Western Electric 45/45 system was eventually standardized, and the entire industry followed suit.
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| The Westrex "45/45" single-groove system for stereo two-channel records. Courtesy of Thomas Fine. |
"Stereo Goes Mainstream (sorta): The 2-channel LP" covered the first commercial stereo LP records, beginning with Sid Frey's stereo demonstration disc issued on his Audio Fidelity label in 1957. By 1958, most major labels began issuing stereo LPs cut with the Westrex 45/45 system including RCA Victor, British Decca, Mercury, and Capitol. Most of these labels had been making simultaneous stereophonic recordings during their monaural sessions, some as early as late 1953, giving them a library of material ready for release (American Columbia was an exception, and the launching of the stereo LP in 1958 forced a scramble, as they began remaking a lot of their monaural catalog in order to catch up).
In 1959, Enoch Light launched the Command label with his first Persuasive Percussion album, which became the first stereo gold record. It was engineered by Tom's father, C. Robert Fine, and was number one on the charts for 13 weeks and in the top 10 for 43 weeks. One cut Tom played from this album was "Miserlou," going back and forth between his own transfer of the original LP and the CD reissue. The bells featured on this cut had such incredible high-frequency energy that several cutter heads were burned out before a safe cutting level was found! With consumer acceptance of the stereo LP, other stereo formats were introduced, including stereo FM radio, the 8-track cartridge tape and cassette tapes. These were all covered in the segment "Stereo Becomes Ubiquitous," along with the Sony Walkman, Compact Disc, and portable music devices that play files rather than physical media. This was another superb presentation, and one hopes that Tom Fine will be a continued presence at AES conventions.
Tom operates an audio transfer and restoration studio in Brewster, NY.
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| The first commercial tube amplifier designed by Robert von Lieben in 1912 (Left). Also, in the Audio History Library exhibit was a Western Electric Mechanical Amplifier dating from around the turn of the 19th century. |
The New York City-based Audio History Library has been a regular exhibitor at AES conventions for many years. Under the capable and dedicated leadership of its director, Louis Manno, the Audio History Library is a non-profit educational charity, serving as the "world's only repository and resource for the technological history of acoustic and electronic products that have made possible the very existence of the radio, television, concert touring, film (other than silent), and recording industries." (
www.audiohistory.com
) Their ever-expanding collection consists of documents from more than 2,000 companies in 37 countries, including manufacturer product literature, owner and service manuals, equipment reviews, and photographs, plus a large collection of vintage audio equipment.
Robert von Lieben is not exactly a household name, even among devotees of audio history. However, the Austrian physicist, who died in 1913 at the age of 34, played an important role in the development of vacuum tube amplifiers. Von Lieben's work paralleled that of American Lee de Forest, and in 1910 von Lieben received a patent for a vacuum tube with a grid that allowed controlled amplification, something that de Forest had yet to achieve. Among the items on display in the Audio History Library booth was the first commercial tube amplifier, a von Lieben design manufactured by Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie in 1912 (Company for Wireless Telegraphy, a predecessor of Telefunken).
Quoting from the description in the display, written by Saul Walker, "This ingenious device makes use of a circa 1900 telephone receiver (earpiece) mechanically coupled to a carbon button capsule from a telephone microphone (mouthpiece) to amplify audio frequency electrical signals. A conventional telephone mouthpiece of that period contained an electrically conductive carbon capsule mechanically coupled to a diaphragm causing its electrical conduction to vary in proportion to sound waves striking the diaphragm. Since electrical current from a battery or other DC voltage source powered the device, it was capable of producing electrical signals with higher energy than the original source. That same principle was applied to this electromechanical amplifier in that the small amount of electrical energy required to operate the telephone earpiece causes pressure to be applied to the carbon capsule, which in turn produces larger audio frequency electrical signals from the current supplied by the battery."
Anyone who values our audio heritage should visit the Audio History Library website and consider making a donation
.
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