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Industry & Product News
Covestro and TactoTek Integrate Controls, Electronics, and Displays into Injection-Molded 3D Structures
Covestro returns to CES in 2022 to showcase the endless possibilities of sustainable materials and smart surfaces, including a new demonstration device jointly developed with TactoTek. The polymer materials experts at Covestro have been working with the pioneer of in-mold structural electronics (IMSE) solutions, to create the Nighthawk demonstrator with integrated display, which utilizes Makrolon resin and Makrofol films from Covestro. Read More
iSEMcon Introduces Li.LAC Microphone Disinfector
Disinfecting microphones is increasingly important and the new Li.LAC Microphone Disinfector from iSEMcon makes microphone disinfecting fast, simple, and effective. Houses of worship, conference centers, corporate and government meeting rooms, schools and universities, production studios, live entertainment venues, and touring sound companies all face the same question, “How can we effectively disinfect our microphones after an event?” The Li.LAC Microphone Disinfector answers that question with controlled exposure to ultraviolet light (UV-C). Read More
Solid State Logic Launches BiG SiX Mixer and USB Interface
The ideal gift for any musician, music producer, and home or project studio owner just arrived. An SSL console and recording interface for $2,999! Solid State Logic (SSL) just launched its latest desktop mixing console, BiG SiX. It's a larger version of the SSL SiX Desktop Mixer but it's also exactly what many have wished the original design to be. A real 16-channel studio grade mixer and hybrid production tool, with comprehensive AD/DA conversion, advanced monitoring and routing, enhanced SSL EQ, and much more. Read More
New Line of THX Certified Dominus Reference Subwoofers by M&K Sound
M&K Sound, the subwoofer pioneers recognized globally in the film mixing studios and home theater markets, announced the availability of three new THX Certified subwoofers, the X15+, the X12+, and the X10+. The new subwoofer series, which includes the company’s first THX Certified Dominus 15” X15+ model, offers increased power output and new drivers, ready to boost any audio environment with reference bass. The three new subwoofers, each with M&K Sound’s signature push-pull driver configuration, build on the performance of the company’s former X Series for deeper, faster, and louder bass than ever before. Read More
Klippel Announces dB-Lab Software Updates and New Virtual Lecture 2022 Event
Klippel announced a minor software update for both the R&D and QC software of the Klippel Analyzer System, free of charge for current users of dB-Lab major version 212 or QC 7. The update introduces the new Multi-Tone Measurement (MTON) and Multi-Tone Distortion Task (MTD) measurements, updates to the Near-Field Scanner (NCS) software and new capabilities for the Poly2SCN converter utility, which converts scan data from Polytec systems to Klippel software formats. And Klippel announced details of its 2022 Virtual Lecture event. Read More
Zoom Unveils Fully Integrated R20 Multi-Track Recorder and USB-C Audio Interface with Touchscreen
Recording multiple tracks on a compact device, with tiny buttons and faders, hard to read LED meters, and an input bay cluttered with cables and jack connectors that could generate noise anytime we accidentally touch them... It seemed like a great idea in the 1980s, when it was just the cheapest (and sometimes only) way to record 4 to 8 tracks. More than 30 years later, the Japanese audio innovator Zoom Corp. believes in perfecting the concept, and launched a modern design with touchscreen interface. Read More
Dragoslav Colich Receives Innovation Award from Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society
Audeze Co-Founder and CTO, Dragoslav Colich, has received the 2021 George and Carolyn Counnas Innovation Award from the Los Angeles & Orange County Audio Society for his life’s work and achievements. The award was presented Sunday, December 5, at the Society's annual gala in Los Angeles, CA. Dragoslav Colich was recognized for his extraordinary life’s work with planar magnetic transducers and his overall contributions to the audio industry. Read More
Eminence Speaker Announces Global Standard Series for International Markets
Eminence announced the addition of a new Global Standard Series of loudspeakers to its international catalog, with future availability pending for US customers. The new series of speakers includes a range of Retro guitar amp speakers in the traditional 12" size, Retrobass woofers in 10" and 15" sizes, and six new speaker drivers for sound reinforcement applications in sizes from 6" to 15." All combining premium quality and high performance at an affordable price. Read More
Blue Tiger Solar-Powered Bluetooth Comms Headset Receives CES 2022 Innovation Award
Blue Tiger USA, a leading brand in communications headsets, announced that it was named a CES 2022 Innovation Awards Honoree for the Solare headset, the world’s first solar-powered communications headset for hands-free driving. Using Powerfoyle solar-cell technology from Exeger, the new Solare Headset harvests light from any source – indoor or outdoor for continuous use without the need to recharge a battery. Blue Tiger will be introducing Solare at CES 2022, in Las Vegas, NV, from January 5-8, 2022 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Read More
Editor's Desk
J. Martins
(Editor-In-Chief)
Audio Augmented Reality
Versus the Evil Metaverse
We are still two weeks away from the New Year Wishes season (I started early since 2022 will be the Year of Catch Up) and I’m still holding my finger over the Go/Cancel button for CES 2022. This actually saves me time by saying that my plans are still on to attend the show (variants and restrictions allowing) and I’m focused on getting a proper agenda for Las Vegas (at least eight proper meetings a day is the goal). Patience… I’ll get the meeting confirmations out eventually…

And while the news pace is somewhat slow this week, I am going to use the opportunity to address one of my least-favorite topics and get it out of the way, so I can focus on serious innovations for the pre-CES and post-CES newsletters. And that's got to do with the Zombie Zoom Apocalypse, Avatar First Person Shooting, and Low-Life Online Battle Arena that was prognosticated by Facebook. The thing called metaverse, which together with crypto and VR googles is really hitting my "bs" nerve, and so I avoid writing about it.
Second Life 2022. Been there, done that. Don't go back there.
I'm an enthusiast of technology and when I see a mix of innovation with a strong use-case for humanity, I like to dive right in and stay on top of trends. I've always done that since the 1980s when I was involved with cutting-edge 3D modeling, rendering, and animation technologies — then running on mind-boggling (and extremely expensive) Unix workstations from Silicon Graphics. Thanks to that experience and early experimental software, I still remember the excitement of playing a two-user game in a 3D labyrinth where the ultimate goal was to see our opponent's character — basically a very primitive pile of polygons that could move.

Years later, when there was already a company selling Windows NT graphics workstations dreaming of rendering "Toy Story in One Day," I again remember being excited when a flock of birds animated with a complex algorithm to generate random paths and group behaviors surprised us all when one bird passed very close and looked at the (virtual) camera. A unique, magic moment for computer graphics that made us all dream about the possibilities of "AI" because a poorly 3D-modeled bird looked straight at us...

Anyone involved in those early days of 3D computer graphics, when "First Person Shooter" nightmares didn't yet exist, will also remember vividly how we all started to envisage the possibilities to create immersive audio soundscapes, recreating the physical world by manipulating objects and particles, leading to the rediscovery (for me at least) of ambisonics, virtual microphones, soundfield synthesis, etc. In a way, a first foray into what we would call today (real) Spatial Audio. And that was before HD video, before gaming was an industry, before the Internet was in every home, and long before Second Life was imaginable.

Fast forward to the pandemic days, and Facebook discussing metaverse feels like a joke. I've been there, done that. All these years that I have followed the evolution of computer graphics with hyper-realistic ray-tracing images, I have failed to see the excitement of Phong shading basic 3D online gaming environments, much less when seen through Virtual Reality goggles. I never even understood the appeal of "virtual" and I was always excited with "reality" — first by recreating it, then by augmenting it.

Non-fungible experiences stored in our brains, not the blockchain, are like musical emotion. Non-fungible. That is where I believe technology is going in the next few years. And those who have their VR sleep masks will never see it coming...
While Facebook is touting the metaverse, real companies such as online try-on technology Zyler are the next big thing on the reality front. Millions of outfits are tried on Facebook since styling groups began sharing the technology created by image-processing specialists Anthropics Technology. Zyler can be used directly on retailer websites or by users through the Zyler swipe app. No avatars, just the real us.
I truly believe that Augmented Reality (AR) is a key concept for a lot of things and totally key for the audio industry. AR is not a single technology, and will become an enabler principle now that we can tie it with edge computing and edge-AI. That is already visible in a number of implementations. Just like real voice assistants, it will take time to get there, but the benefits are clear. Augmented audio is the ultimate-hyper-high-end audio level, because it's focused on us, on making us hear better. Also, because augmented audio, like AR applications in general, results from a combination of augmenting stimuli to different senses — sound amplified by audio systems plus haptics and — it is my strong conviction — vision. Augmenting natural vision. Because without vision, AR becomes VR, limited to virtual.

This is not about social interaction with "virtual" fake worlds. We understand that Mark Zuckerberg needs that to escape from the mess he created with social media. This is about interaction with the real world, augmenting our senses and experiences.

In fact, it already started with all the many things that are enabled by smartphones (screens), smart watches (wearables), and true wireless earbuds (hearables), which are the first platforms for AR. Augmenting our senses and experiences will never happen with the VR goggles on.

An example applicable to audio AR is foreseeable in the real time collaboration network platforms that studios and musicians are using now and have been trying for a while. Those remote collaboration platforms, particularly now with the pandemic, are evolving to new levels, beyond the basic levels of simple interaction. Elk Live, Sessionwire, Steinberg VST Connect, Spire, Sphere, Soundtrap, and many others, are building dedicated tools to augment the user experience. Some more “video-centric,” others totally DAW-centric, some hardware-based, and others completely software/web-based. But all suffering from the same problem of network latency, which (like the speed of sound) will always be there. Augmented reality can help in such applications by creating an immersive interface for each musician that — like the maestro in an orchestra — helps compensate for the distance, and indirectly the effects of latency. Dear Reality is an example of a company with interesting technologies for that purpose, as long as they keep out of the VR goggles.

The remote collaboration platforms will evolve with dedicated and unique features, much in the same way as voice chat apps for gaming evolved to go beyond what audio-conferencing platforms originally enabled. Also, as we are seeing AI-based audio features being introduced in music production and audio editing tools, with edge-AI platforms we will see audio being processed in real time at the source. Directly from the microphone, and recorded or fed directly to our ears. Augmented Audio means the possibility to have the whole iZotope RX suite available for real-time processing by a team of genius audio engineers, cleaning up the sounds of the world in our earbuds. No longer a question of "how much DSP" horsepower we can have, but having AI making intelligent use of that DSP depending on the context. Augmenting OUR reality.
Voice technology company DAISYS (The Netherlands) announced a breakthrough in the development of human-sounding voices by means of cleverly “trained” AI models. The technology narrates written texts in a natural way, using generated voices, with speech properties such as speed and pitch, which can be adjusted in real time, allowing the voice to be customized. The website DAISYS has audio examples in Dutch (English should be easy after that).
And what do I see as the ultimate Audio Augmented Reality application? Two weeks ago I discussed the potential for moving away from hearing assistance to augmented hearing and I truly believe that the field of "super-hearing" is a horizon to be explored. (Likewise, imagine having fully adjustable prescription glasses which are also able to zoom...). The other big application is obviously language translation and having virtual voice assistants that are able to deal with multiple language environments.

Of course, there will be deviations in the use of such technologies, the most dangerous of all - particularly for now - being the creation of deep-fakes. Anyone focusing on AI and augmented reality knows that the ultimate goal is to improve and build upon our own abilities and senses. A few twisted minds will of course use it for evil so we will require new levels of artificial intelligence to help spot the deep-fake differences. Remember, we can augment our intelligence, but we can also augment our stupidity.
In California, Five9 is working to perfect life-like conversational AI synthesized from human voices that can be used to extend their intelligent cloud contact center platform to self-service experiences. The new high-fidelity synthetic voices will be available in 2022 in the new Five9 Virtual Voiceover platform. Five9 is working with WellSaid Labs, a Seattle, WA-based synthetic media company researching text-to-speech systems and conversational AI engines.
You Can DIY!
The DH-220C MOSFET Power Amplifier - Part 1 The Circuit
By Bob Cordell and Rick Savas
This article offers the first serving of an amazing DIY project from amplifier experts Bob Cordell and Rick Savas with an upgrade for the legendary Hafler DH-220 lateral MOSFET power amplifier. The design is implemented on two PCBs, one as a drop-in replacement for the original Hafler circuit board and the other as a new board that consolidates all of the output stage wiring and components within the heatsink and under the main PCB. This first article describes the design and performance of the various circuit approaches, and was originally published in audioXpress, July 2021.  Read the Full Article Now Available Here
Voice Coil Test Bench
The 15DS100 15” Pro Sound Subwoofer from B&C Speakers
By Vance Dickason
This Test Bench explication characterizes the 15DS100 15” professional subwoofer from B&C Speakers. This new transducer from the Italian company is a very high power handling design, able to deliver 3kW continuous (1.6W nominal), thanks to B&C's latest generation of very long voice coils - a great asset in applications from discreet PA subwoofers to three-way PA speakers. The B&C 15DS100-4 uses a proprietary 12-spoke cast aluminum frame with cooling vents for the neodymium FEA motor, which uses a 4” four-layer voice coil wound with round aluminum wire on a non-conducting glass fiber former. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, October 2021. Read the Full Article Now Available Here
audioXpress December 2021: Digital Login
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