I attended the Audio Engineering Society New York 2022 Convention, which according to the organizers exceeded all in-person expectations. I'm not surprised that it exceeded them. I am just surprised that the Audio Engineering Society (AES) was surprised. In fact, everyone attending was surprised that it seemed as if we were not supposed to be there... and we were. As long planned and intended.

I had long predicted this would be a very well attended event. It's New York and the US East Coast. People were anxious for another show and a knowledge-sharing opportunity like this. And after having already attended five trade shows just in the past seven months, I knew there was a clear momentum building with people anxious to meet again in person, do something, and go places. After two-and-half years of Zoom sessions, with the virus weakening its effects (for now) it wasn't hard to predict.

Apparently not everyone had predicted this could happen, because the show was just a short two-day event, and apparently most of the exhibitors were also being cautious and had lowered expectations. And I don't blame them. There's been a lot of trauma (and financial hurdles) regarding event cancellations during the past years.

The Audio Engineering Society is not exactly a professional organization specializing in trade shows - in fact it is an organization that lives essentially from voluntary efforts of a lot of people who simply love audio, are part of the industry, and like the sense of belonging to something. And that is visible when the convention happens, with most of the people supposedly in charge basically involved in the intense conference program, with Workshops, Tutorials, Paper presentations and other sessions - the trade show basically runs itself and the exhibitors try to make the best under the always somewhat unpredictable circumstances.

Why was this just a two-day event? Apparently because there were some financial requirements from the Jacob Javits Convention Center regarding extending the event to a Friday (that's what I was told when I asked long ago), and there were other trade shows scheduled for the following days causing prices to rise. And the AES was not alone in this venture anyway.

The 153rd AES New York 2022 convention was co-located with the NAB Show New York, offering access to a shared exhibition floor - more open, and more shared than ever - creating even greater networking opportunities among exhibitors and attendees to both events. This was in fact the best thing about the whole event. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) had things well organized, and basically the AES highly benefited (and the press, because at least the NAB had a press office with Internet and free coffee and cookies). Ironically, the NAB Show New York also included the Marconi Radio Awards - where no member of the AES was seen.

From the moment the convention and the NAB Show opened, the lack of organization was visible. There was a single registration operation causing unacceptable lines all morning on the first day, and the NAB was the only organization with basic logistics in place. Also, when inside, things were visibly quieter and more business-oriented on the NAB Show side, contrasting strongly with the euphoric, noisy environment of the AES side.

Attendees to a NAB Show are - not surprisingly - broadcast professionals, while attendees to an AES (New York) convention are a very eclectic mix of students, musicians of every level, home studio owners who aspire to be serious music producers, and audio engineers - together representing 70% of the attendance - complemented by seasoned audio industry veterans, audio engineers, and audio industry professionals, most of which are involved in the music recording and live entertainment parts of the industry. In fact, when the AES organizes its annual convention, it’s increasingly promoting events that seem to be more from the Audio Recording Society, so much is the focus on music production, studio work, and comparing the best use of plug-ins.

To illustrate the dominant attendance of the 153rd AES International Convention, I'll retrieve a very interesting testimony included in the official AES post-event press release, from Hannah Bliss – VP of Marketing, North America, for exhibitor Focusrite Group US. “One thing that was really surprising is the increased number of students and their level of engagement. They're asking about professional development. They're asking about jobs. They're not just asking about tech. There have been a lot of musicians and studio owners, also. We’ve had three years of not being able to see gear, touch gear, and talk to manufacturers, so everyone seems really engaged.”

Not surprisingly, the largest advertising banner inside the exhibit space of the AES event was from Sweetwater, which is the largest online retailer of musical instruments and pro audio equipment in the United States (like Musikhaus Thomann is in Europe). Sweetwater loves recording gear shows like these. On the NAB side, the sales guys in the small B&H booth - strategically located in the transition area between NAB and the AES exhibits - were probably sorry of the fact they had so much video stuff and not enough audio gear.

From my side, I can just say that I had a great time, reconnecting with some of the audioXpress authors and seeing a few demonstrations of products launched since the last NAMM in Anaheim, CA, and having great conversations with some of the very few companies that are relevant to the audio industry from the product development perspective. With only two days for quality time in-person, I could hardly follow the intense conference program, where many academic papers are presented by many industry innovators, some of which also had booths at the show. There were not many product announcements at the show, but there were some - enough to keep our website busy.

I enjoyed in particular meeting the xMEMS team (who I had already met at the NAMM Show back in June) and xMEMS seems to be the first very successful MEMS speaker driver company in the audio industry, promising me that by CES time they will have significant clients with products about to be released in the market. Their focus for now? High-quality in-ear headphones and in-ear monitors, which are sensitive to the arguments of trying something new, while the large volume companies, including true wireless earbuds and hearing aids manufacturers, need more time to roll their production plans. And xMEMS is so confident about the take-up of their technology that basically they are hiring everyone with experience in the area. Congratulations to xMEMS are in order.

As part of audioXpress’ September Speaker Focus issue, Zami Schwartzman shares his personal journey to design and perfect "Motion Feedback Desktop Subwoofers for Nearfield Studio Monitors." For this project, the author perfected his own accelerometer-based motion feedback designed fully assembled plate amplifiers with MFB control, crossover, and voice coil thermal protection that can be matched with any low frequency MFB driver. After experimenting with motion feedback to create a subwoofer to extend the response of its electrostatic speakers, which included its own unique capacitive position sensor to feed the feedback loop, the author successfully explored the concept of desktop subwoofers to extend the response of compact studio monitors. The proof of concept demonstrated the ability to perfectly complement popular active nearfield monitors, mitigating the effects of room reflection. And, Schwartzman is now open to exploring all licensing or product engineering opportunities. This article was originally published in audioXpress, September 2022. Read the Full Article Now Available Here

James Croft reviews another patent of a concept ignoring abundant prior art, which apparently wasn’t scrutinized by industry experts - as it should. The patent "Dynamic Acoustic Waveguide," was awarded to William Eugene Wheeler (High Ridge, MO) as inventor and assignee, and describes a “loudspeaker and a method of operation that allow for the production and emphasis of extremely low bass tones. The loudspeaker generally is formed from a loudspeaker driver cone of conventional type which is placed in a very small enclosure with two waveguides attached thereto. A smaller balance waveguide is positioned forward of the face of the cone and a larger tuning waveguide is positioned to the side of the cone. The cross-sectional area of the aperture connections of both waveguides to the enclosure are small compared to the cross-sectional area of the loudspeaker driver cone.” As Croft notes, this is a similar idea to patents from 1935, 1966, and Amar Bose’s US Patent 4,628,528 (1982), which popularized and trademarked it as the Bose Acoustic Wave Music System. It's also true that Bose’s patent did not cite either of the earlier inventors’ patents. In this patent under review, William Wheeler re-invents this classic architecture. This article was originally published in Voice Coil, November 2016.  Read the Full Article Now Available Here