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AES New York 2022 ‘Tomorrow’s technology’ will be revealed at the AES New York 2022 Audio Engineering Convention taking place at the Jacob Javits Center, October 19-20, with pre-and post-show activities on the 18th and 21st, followed by an online component, October 26-27. In the workshop ‘Mixing Spatial Audio in the Game Engine,’ Mirek Stiles, head of Audio Products at Abbey Road, will walk through the recording, DAW mixing and final Unity game engine mixing process for creating a ‘gamified’ 6 Degrees of Freedom [6DOF] Virtual Reality music experience. A stem mix of an ‘in the round’ string quartet recording of a piece by film and game composer Stephen Barton will provide a proof of concept. In the session ‘Human Machine Creativity,’ Nadine Raihani — head of UX at Native Instruments — will be joined by iZotope associate director of engineering Caroline Lacoste, for an exploration of how innovative assistive technology tools can unleash creativity. Register now at AESShow.com.
Sennheiser acquires Merging Technologies
RAK go immersive with Genelec The legendary London studio, which has recorded a catalogue of iconic music, from David Bowie and Pink Floyd to Adele and Arctic Monkeys, has transformed its historic Studio 4 into a ‘gold standard’ space for immersive mixing, with a scalable 9.1.4 monitoring solution based around Genelec’s ‘The Ones’ Smart Active Monitor family. The decision to rebuild rather than retrofit gave RAK the opportunity to work out exactly what it wanted to achieve, a process it went through with the support of Level Acoustic Design for the acoustics and Studio Creations for the build. “In a project like this, you either do it properly, or you don’t do it at all,” states Emma Townsend, Studio Manager at RAK. “We just had to tear the whole thing down and start from an empty shell.” The resulting solution features nine 8361 three-way coaxial monitors in the front and surround positions, with three W371 woofer systems extending the low frequency LCR performance. Four 8351s serve as the height channels, with a pair of 7380 subwoofers handling system LF duties. GLM software was employed for the main system calibration, taking care of in-room frequency response compensation, distance delay and level alignment. “We already had three absolutely excellent tracking rooms. The one thing that we were missing was a really good listening, writing and mixing room, and that’s what we’ve got now,” reflects Townsend. www.rakstudios.co.uk
Amazon editorial in Avid AWS cloud Neumann.Berlin and Swiss company Merging Technologies will now be working together under the umbrella of the Sennheiser group. “We plan to strengthen Neumann’s offering, particularly in the area of digital workstreams. Merging Technologies’ products and solutions are an excellent complement to the Neumann product portfolio,” said Ralf Oehl, CEO of Georg Neumann GmbH. “Both companies share a passion for excellence and a commitment to always set new standards in audio,” added Claude Cellier, founder and CEO of Merging. “We are very pleased to welcome Merging’s employees as part of the Sennheiser Group,” said Andreas Sennheiser, co-CEO of the Sennheiser Group. “As a family-owned company, we want to grow sustainably on the strength of our own resources in the coming years. We are investing significantly in our professional business.” www.merging.com www.neumann.com 6 / Autumn 2022
Avid and Amazon Studios have announced a three-year agreement to bring cloud-based editorial to Amazon Studios’ slate of more than 300 original movies and series. Editors need to access massive sets of media files that have traditionally been stored in the same location as the editing team. In collaboration with Avid, Amazon Studios will allow creative work to happen from almost anywhere. “Avid is delighted that our open technologies are being chosen by more customers who are innovating how content is produced in the cloud, on a global scale,” said Jeff Rosica, chief executive officer & president of Avid. “We are on a journey to provide a best-in-class creative platform for our productions,” explains Ben Stanbury, worldwide head of technology for Amazon Studios. “Studio in the Cloud is our overarching vision for how we provide our creative teams with a cloud-based toolset that they can use wherever they are in the world.” www.avid.com
