The 2021 Audio Engineering Society (AES) fall convention will co-locate with NAB Show, October 11–13, 2021 in Las Vegas, NV. The co-location brings together the premiere convention for pro audio professionals with the world's largest convention encompassing media, entertainment and technology. 

The AES Show will take place at the Westgate Hotel, adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center where NAB Show will be held October 9–13, 2021.

The AES fall convention was previously co-located with NAB Show New York at the Javits Convention Center annually in October from 2017–2019. The two events were held virtually in 2020.

“Our October co-location with NAB Show New York for the past few years has proven mutually beneficial for attendees and exhibitors alike,” said Colleen Harper, executive director, AES. “We all miss the engagement and excitement of the in-person AES Show and look forward to once again interacting at the convention with professional audio manufacturers and our colleagues.”

“We are excited to be building the most significant, in-person media and entertainment event of 2021 and are ready to bring the industry together once again at NAB Show in October,” said NAB executive vice president of conventions and business operations Chris Brown. “Together with AES, we will provide unparalleled access to critical information, inspiration and solutions for audio engineers and content creators.”

As previously announced, the 2021 NAB Show will also co-locate with the Radio Show as well as NAB’s Sales and Management Television Exchange.

The AES announced the winners of the AES Show Fall 2020 Convention’s Best Technical Paper and Best Student Paper Awards during the Convention’s Opening Ceremonies on Thursday, October 27. The awards highlight outstanding research Paper contributions from both professional and student authors and are illustrative of the depth of the AES Convention Papers presentations, which share and showcase top worldwide research and advancements in audio engineering. Additionally, winners of the AES Show 2020 Student Competitions were announced during the Ceremony, including submissions across a variety of recording engineering and design categories. The complete AES Show Opening Ceremonies, along with the rest of this year’s online convention, are available On Demand at AESShow.com through November 30.

Related: The Technology Manager's Guide to Audio in the New Era of UC

The AES Show Fall 2020 Convention Best Technical Paper Award, presented by AES Show Papers Co-chair Areti Andreopoulou, was awarded to Juhani Paasonen and co-author Ville Pulkki for their peer-reviewed paper “Short-range renderings of virtual sources for multichannel loudspeaker setups.” The paper’s abstract reads:

“A method for rendering virtual sources is proposed, where the sources are perceived to be closer than the loudspeaker array radius. The development is based on an informal finding about closer perception of the range of virtual sources rendered coherently over multiple loudspeakers. To avoid sound quality issues inherent with coherent rendering, the input is split to two streams, one with more transients and the other with smoother temporal envelope. The transient stream is rendered over coherent reproduction, and the continuous stream is processed with time-frequency-domain spreading technique. The results from localization tests with moving sources show that the proposed method produces the perception of closer distances on both sweet-spot and off-sweet-spot listening.”

The paper can be downloaded from the AES E-Library here. 

The AES Show 2020 Best Student Paper Award was presented by AES Show Papers co-chair Braxton Boren and was presented to Michele Ebri and co-authors Nicolò Strozzi, Filippo Maria Fazi, Angelo Farina, and Luca Cattani for their paper “Individual Listening Zone with Frequency-Dependent Trim of Measured Impulse Responses.” The paper’s abstract reads:

“Acoustic Contrast Control (ACC) has been widely used to achieve individual audio delivery in shared environments. The effectiveness of this method is reduced when the control is performed in reverberant environments. Even if control filters are computed using measured transfer functions, the robustness of the system is affected by the presence of reverberation in the plant matrix. In this paper a new optimization method is presented to improve the ACC algorithm by applying a frequency-dependent windowing of the measured impulse response used for the filter computation, thus removing late reflections. The effects of this impulse response optimization are presented by means of sound zoning results obtained from experimental measurements performed in a car cabin.”

The paper can be downloaded from the AES E-Library here. 

AES Show Student Competition winners were also announced for the Student Recording Competitions (Traditional Acoustic, Traditional Studio, Modern Studio, Sound for Visual Media, Remix, and Immersive Audio categories), the Saul Walker Student Design Competition, and the MATLAB Plugin Competition. The complete lists of Student Competition winners and judges, and sponsor information are available here.

Visit AESShow.com to watch the AES Show Fall 2020 Convention Opening Ceremonies and awards presentations, Technical Program sessions, Partner Showcase exhibitions, and much more available On Demand through November. 

With the recent vast increase in online and broadcast delivery of a near limitless array of information, entertainment, and social information, the AES Show Fall 2020 Convention’s Broadcast and Online Delivery Track will examine key technologies and applications while taking a look back at broadcast history and a look forward to the opportunities that lie ahead. 

Of utmost importance in professional broadcast applications is the embrace of current and emerging productivity-enhancing standards and developing a working knowledge of their inner workings for the best possible performance and interoperability within the global broadcast realm. The session “Practical Tips for Using Digital Audio in a 2110 Facility” will offer in-depth expertise on IP architecture and the SMPTE ST 2110 media networking protocol, of which the Audio Engineering Society’s AES3 and AES67 standards are key components, as well as related technologies and workflows. In this featured Broadcast and Online Delivery Track event, moderator Andy Butler (PBS) will host Wesley D. Simpson (Telecom Product Consulting), Robert Welch (Technical Solutions Lead, Arista Networks) and Peter Wharton (Principal Consultant, Happy Robotz, Inc.) to share their tips for media networking success and respond to your toughest questions in the follow-up Q&A.

Related: AES Helps “Socially Distancing” Members Worldwide Listen, Learn, and Connect

Track sessions of historical importance include “Pass the Mic,” which will celebrate this year’s 100th anniversary of radio broadcasting and its innovations with host John Holt, and “A Century of Radio: What You May Not Know About the History of Broadcasting,” in which presenters Donna Halper (Associate Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Lesley University, Cambridge MA) and Barry Mishkind (Editor/Publisher of the Broadcasters’ Desktop Resource) will share surprising facts about broadcast history and dispel some of the myths perpetuated throughout the industry.

Microphone hygiene and podcast production are timely topics to be closely examined in the presentations: “Stay Safe: Disinfecting Microphones in the time of Covid-19” with presenter David Prentice and “Podcasts: Telling Stories with Sound” with Rob Byers of American Public Media. Byers will host panelists from Revel: sound designer/composers Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda, as well as podcast series reporter/producers Laura Starecheski and Ike Sriskandarajah. In addition, two compelling virtual tours will be conducted in the sessions “A Virtual Tour and Discussion: BBC Broadcasting House Studio” led by Jamie Laundon and “A Virtual Tour and Discussion: BBC Wales - Cardiff Central Square IP-based Broadcast Facility” with Adrian Wisbey.

“Even though we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of broadcasting, everything is new,” said AES Show Broadcast and Online Delivery Track chair David Bialik, now in his 36th year of capably curating the Convention’s perennially popular Broadcast Track and events. “The pandemic has added new parameters to getting broadcasts out. With all information out there on the ST-2110 media networking standard being adopted by broadcasters, I find it amazing that there’s so much for so many to learn. The AES Show 2020 Broadcast and Online Delivery Track will explore today’s critical issues, visit showcase facilities and recall the history of how we got to where we are through a deep and diverse list of sessions that promise to educate and fascinate.”

Free AES Show 2020 Showcase registration is open to all who register before October 1. Showcase registration will remain free for AES Members, while non-members can register for $25, or for free with a VIP promo code from one of the AES Show Partners. For everything AES Show 2020 has to offer, including the comprehensive Technical Program, All Access Registration starts at $149.

Sound reinforcement pioneer and innovator John Meyer will deliver the AES New York 2018 Convention’s Heyser Memorial Lecture on Friday, October 19, at 6:30 p.m. Speaking on the topic “Taking the Room Out of the Loudspeaker: New Tools for Transparent Reproduction,” Meyer will share his expertise on loudspeaker design and applications from his 50-plus years as one of the most lauded names in the industry. The 145 AES International Convention is being held October 17–20 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. Advance Registration pricing is available through September 20 at aesshow.com.

Established in 1999 by the AES technical council and the board of governors, in conjunction with the Richard Heyser Scholarship fund, the Heyser Lecture series, featured at each AES Convention, brings eminent individuals in audio engineering and related fields to speak on a relevant topic of choice. Meyer—also an AES fellow and recipient of the AES Silver Medal award—offers the following abstract of his presentation:

“With few exceptions, loudspeakers are not used in a free field environment but rather in an enclosed acoustical space. This is inherently problematic, as an acoustical space behaves in a manner similar to that of loudspeakers, making it difficult to separate the problematic characteristics of each using common measurement tools or subjective listening tests. This lecture will review the history of loudspeaker measurement tools as used both in the free field and in acoustical space, including Richard Heyser’s pioneering TDM methods and Meyer Sound’s own SIM (Source Independent Measurement) systems. A key focus will be on a new multi-component studio monitor that exhibits absolutely flat amplitude and phase response from 27 Hz to 20 kHz. Because this system effectively ‘takes the room out of the loudspeaker,’ it opens up possibilities for correlating new objective testing techniques with subjective listening observations. The lecture also will discuss a new test signal known as M-Noise, which effectively mimics the dynamics of music and avoids inherent weaknesses in the use of pink noise with third-octave analyzers when testing loudspeaker systems used for music. The retrospective will touch on other benchmarks in the quest for linear sound amplification, including the early Glyph large-horn systems, the Grateful Dead’s ‘Wall of Sound’ and the HD-1 high resolution studio monitor, a trusted near-field reference that remains in Meyer Sound’s product line 29 years after its introduction.”

John Meyer’s career as an audio innovator was launched in the late 1960s when he started out as designer of custom amplification systems for guitarist Steve Miller. Meyer was then the creator of the legendary Glyph very large horn loudspeakers and he was the in-house loudspeaker designer at San Francisco’s McCune Sound Service. In the 1970s his audio research at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies in Switzerland led to his first patent, awarded for a low-distortion horn design. In 1979 he co-founded (with his wife, Helen) Meyer Sound Laboratories, a company synonymous with innovations in loudspeaker design and acoustical measurement. Meyer led development of the SIM System for audio measurement, which was awarded the prestigious R&D 100 Award in 1992. Meyer Sound also pioneered development of self-powered sound reinforcement loudspeakers with introduction of the MSL-4 in 1994, launching a trend that has since revolutionized the industry. Throughout his career, Meyer has focused on development of linear loudspeaker systems, with his R&D team most recently achieving phase linearity from 20 kHz down to 27 Hz with the Bluehorn System studio monitor.

For further information on the AES New York Heyser Lecture, as well as the complete All Access Technical Program of events and experiences that comprehensively covers all things audio, visit aesshow.com.