Two Audio Professors Attend Audio Engineering Society Convention

By: Jenna Berndt

At the end of October, Two Audio Professors: Bryan Sansom and Mike Wisland attended the Audio Engineering Society (AES) Convention in New York City.

The Audio Engineering Society Convention is a three day event where audio professionals from all over the world come together to network, participate in workshops and to learn about the latest audio practice standards and technologies. There were also research papers, tutorials and a trade show floor present.

“What we do at [these conventions] is we basically go to learn all the new technology that’s coming out with audio,” said Sansom. “Since we are a technology focused degree it becomes really important for us to be able to keep up on current technology and understand where the industry is going.”

One of the ways Sansom is able to keep up on the industry is by meeting with different academic advisory boards. These academic advisory boards include:

Eventide Audio Advisor Board
Neumann Audio Advisory Board
Magg Audio Advisory Board
Empirical Labs Advisory Board
OEK Sound Advisory Board
Neumann/Sennheiser Immersive Audio Advisory Board
Avid Pro Tools Advisory Board

“A key component for what I do for the university is I do a lot of networking with companies,” said Sansom. “I currently sit on different academic advisory boards where I go around and meet with a set of educators from around the world and at AES is a place where I get to meet with some of these advisory boards to figure out the future of this industry.

Mike Wisland also had the opportunity to meet professionals in the industry that have been crucial for audio education. By networking with these individuals, he had the opportunity to add minor corrections and a whole chapter of information to a textbook used in the audio program.

While a big portion of the event was for educational purposes like learning about Restorative and Generative Artificial Intelligence, the new directions Dolby Atmos is headed with Immersive Audio, and the announcement of a new streaming spec called MPEG-I there was lots of fun too! This year, the AES celebrated the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop where attendees were able to meet and interact with people who were at the root of Hip Hop when it first emerged.

“All these Hip Hop artists from the early days to current Hip Hop artists were there playing all their favorite tracks and the music that influenced them,” said Wisland. “I had the fun of listening to all these people tell their stories and play their songs and then play this music that they created. You get to find all these famous songs that you know and love and you meet the people that created them.”

Sansom shared a similar sentiment for the Hip Hop anniversary part of the convention saying, “to be able to go and listen to that panel and have friends that are on that panel and to be able to watch your friends enlighten people about the history of something that is such a big part of current culture; it is a really neat thing to be a part of and so that was probably one of my favorite parts.”

Attendees also had the opportunity to tour John Lennon’s Recording Bus and a chance to enter into a raffle to win some really cool prizes.

“John Lennon’s wife Yoko gave a few million dollars to have a bus made with a recording studio in it that travels around the country visiting colleges and universities that have small audio programs,” said Wisland. “It allows students to make a record on the bus.They also gave away a whole lot of prizes. The number one item was a copy of John Lennon’s guitar while he was a Beatle and I won that.”

The AES Convention was an amazing experience for both professors, each stating that “AES is like drinking from a firehose” because of the amount of information condensed into three days and the possibility to meet and learn from industry professionals.

“The ability to be able to walk up to somebody who either myself or my students would perceive as a celebrity and to be on the same level as them and to be in a place where it is okay to approach them and talk to them about the craft that they have done is a really cool opportunity that AES allows for.” said Sansom.