After AES 2012: Asynchronous Audio
San Francisco was the site of the 133rd AES.
Out of sync.
From the moment the 133rd AES Convention opened up the showfloor at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, you could feel it: Things were out of place – from the glaringly obvious to the subtly disquieting – that were going to take some thought to work through.
There were plenty of success stories to be found throughout the show, to be sure. Some brilliant new products were released, and with admirably minimal fanfare. People traveled from around the globe to reconnect in person, and potentially productive new friendships were formed. The AES itself worked hard, and hosted many interesting panels, papers and speakers.
But there was a disconnect between the audio world we know and the one that was on display at AES – one that was hard to reconcile.
Extenuating Circumstances
It would be easy to blame the weather in a big way for the cloud that hung over this year’s convention. Hurricane Sandy impacted a high percentage of exhibitors and attendees, who realized soon after landing in California that we would all face a perilous and unpredictable return journey.
It’s tough to talk shop when sheer survival – yours and your family’s – are occupying your mind. Strategies for returning home, or finding a place to stay in San Francisco before you could hop another plane, kicked off the conversations that were usually focused on the latest and greatest gear.
Others who would have liked to have been there never even made it. Studio owners and manufacturer support staff either found their later-timed flights cancelled out from under them, or decided to stick it out on the home front rather than get stranded.
But everyone knows that fully 50% of AES is about the evening action outside of the convention center. Fortunately, gatherings large and small – held at the Bay Area’s diverse facilities like Tiny Telephone and Studio Trilogy, to Mission District clubs like Brick & Mortar – provided plenty of happy distractions that lasted into the wee hours. (See pics here!)
Missing in Action
Many of the seeds of this year’s misalignment were sown well in advance of the meteorological mayhem, however.
Looking to catch up on the latest offerings from the biggest and/or most influential players that you’d visited with in years past? You’d need sharp eyes to spot representatives from Avid, Apple, Waves, Universal Audio, Apogee, Roland, Mackie, and Yamaha – none of these ubiquitous brands had a booth.
Oddly, the other leading DAW developers – who must surely smell blood in the water as Avid’s financial problems continue to snowball – like Steinberg, Logic, Cakewalk, and MOTU, also all opted out of investing in floor space. You’ll almost undoubtedly see them at NAMM in January, down the road in Los Angeles, but the numbers apparently didn’t add up for converting users at AES.
Which leads to another fascinating oddity: For an industry that’s gone wholeheartdedly, unabashedly, deeply, madly, utterly, in the box, there were very few software developers representing at the show. Audio today is almost wholly dependent on DAWs and the plugins that they host – yet their voice was barely there.
Why was that? Some plugin developers told us that a once-booming business has gone flat at best. Business is not going down, but it’s not going up either. Others acknowledged that Avid’s shakier standing is giving them pause, as they’re increasingly forced to imagine a sales environment without the 800-pound gorilla to sell through to.
Still others explained that the move to 64-bit is forcing them to allocate virtually all coding resources to ensuring that their plugins will continue to work in the next-gen format – creativity will have to wait until they get fully up to speed on the fast-approaching processing platform.
Assessing the AES — it’s not as easy as ABC.
Box Boxing
If it was gear lust you came to satisfy, however, there were indeed aisles and aisles of beautiful hardware on display.
Producers and engineers who insist on the character or extreme accuracy that only well-built microphones, monitors, preamps, compressors, EQs, and summing boxes can deliver all found some fresh art objects to aspire to. The excitement around Slate Audio’s Raven – a giant touch-screen control surface that runs DAWs in a very 21st Century way – was palpable. And new 500-series modules once again abounded at every turn.
But this can’t be an easy time for the fiercely dedicated hardware designers that overwhelmingly populated the show floor. While most of their products are truly outstanding, overall demand for studio-grade gear can’t be what it once was: Big studios are being replaced by independent producers who are buying a few choice pieces, rather than one of each like in the good old days.
And, as you may have heard, recording budgets are on a downward trend. So while there may be a bigger pool of potential buyers out there, they have less to spend. And as the box builders saw when they roamed the aisles themselves, there’s plenty of competition from other hardware boutiques for the available 1RU or Lunchbox slot in a songwriter’s personal suite.
Standing at the Crossroads
What it added up to was a tantalizing oasis for every attending sound aficionado who wants something to shoot for – produce a hit, earn a heavy compressor!
But how do you really build that buzz when foot traffic is flat or down, and AES exhibitors are on decline?
An estimated 14,000 attendees registered for the AES this year – the same as attended the last SF show in 2010. That’s 2,000 fewer than visited in NYC in 2011, and 4,000 less than 2009. And the 310 exhibitors who showed up in 2011, were down 17% to just 256 this year.
Hopefully these trends will reverse. But if they don’t, what are you left with? A smaller number of companies meeting with a smaller number of visitors who, for the most part, are hoping to maybe buy their products someday – as opposed to learning more about the tools that they actually use. Which, for the most part, are not exhibiting at the show.
Out of sync.
If anyone gets the crossroads of where the AES is at, it’s incoming president Frank Wells, who has reported on the audio industry for decades and has its growth, rejuvenation, and relevance very much at heart.
We’ll be interested to see his plan for bringing the excitement back to AES, so that attendance is essential, and not something that audio pros do simply out of habit. Tradition is a beautiful thing, and this annual family gathering provides no shortage of heartfelt re-connections. But it can be costly and time-consuming to take part, and people have a right to expect their ROI – otherwise, everyone is going to have to start looking elsewhere.
It may seem like a lot to puzzle out. Fortunately, at least one thing stays true: Plenty more music remains to be made.
— David Weiss
Frank Wells, President of the AES, has responded to this column. You can read his reply here.
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Smiley
October 31, 2012 at 5:44 pm (12 years ago)Great article and overall perspective, a big help for those who stayed in NYC!
S. Vaughan Merrick
November 6, 2012 at 2:06 am (12 years ago)This is a great narrative of the show. But in the interest of
sparking conversation, why should we care about AES? Innovation in
recorded music is dead. The consumer is happy with MP3s and many audio
professionals seem to be totally ok with 48k/24bit. I for one am not
and prefer to work at 192k, but I don’t see any interest in innovation
amongst my peers. I’m not sure if this apathy is the result of the weak
music industry or whether innovation in recording is tapped out.
Certainly PCM is not the ultimate digital recording format, but who
cares? I’ve started to hear in the last couple of years that the status
quo is “good enough.” So why do we care about AES, just cause it’s fun
to see our peers?
S. Vaughan Merrick
November 6, 2012 at 2:13 am (12 years ago)also I might mention that there has been very little mobilization of forces to combat music piracy. Until money comes back into the business, don’t count on much innovation on the new technology front. AES will be dead on music fronts until piracy is quelled or new ways of monetizing music filter through the system to recording professionals in a meaningful way. As long as professionals are afraid to speak out for fear of consumer backlash, they will be victims of their own silence.
TrustMeI'mAScientist
November 8, 2012 at 11:14 pm (12 years ago)This is probably true!
TrustMeI'mAScientist
November 8, 2012 at 11:35 pm (12 years ago)I totally respect where you’re coming from, but I might not fully agree with this set of statements.
In recent years, I’ve been won over by the audio scientists who say that 24/44 is more true to the source, has greater dynamic range and more accurate frequency response in the audible spectrum than any analog format we’ve ever had. All of that is empirically and provably true.
It’s also true that 320kbps MP3 and AAC files have been shown to be indistinguishable from their original masters in clinical trials — even among trained listeners like us! (That said, I’d love to try one myself! And once you go up to 320 kbps, you’re practically at the size of a lossless FLAC.)
But just because we’ve made enormous headway in audio formats and resolutions doesn’t mean that there’s no more room for innovation.
The truly new technology I saw at AES represented giant leaps forward in capture and control: The Slate Raven. The Sennheiser 9000 series, which brings us one step closer to the possibility of a lossless wireless recording studio. iPad recording and mixing. And, in addition to more powerful processors, we also have more accurate transducers (speakers and microphones) than ever before… and at lower prices, too!
All of this stuff is new. And all of it is quite innovative.
In the end, there’s plenty of room for incredible growth and innovation. But to look for it in file formats — where we which have already gained so much ground — is to look for it in the wrong place.
That’s one man’s opinion, anyway.
PlugDev
November 9, 2012 at 10:38 am (12 years ago)Regarding software developers.. the missing link here is that shows have a very difficult time offering decent RoI for relatively low-priced digital goods, and there’s stiff value competition from other marketing channels. It’s no secret that the software business is going increasingly toward a mix of direct sales, third party app store delivery, and digital delivery via a handful of specialist sales outfits. If you want to check out some software, what makes more sense – drive down to GC & look at pictures on a box (little chance at most stores that you’ll get to talk to a well-informed salesman who has a properly working demo system), or watch a few videos, download an eval version and hit the BUY button without ever having to leave the room? Heck, some of the best software these days is built by indie startups who have little or no presence at all in the big stores (U-he, Camel, Cytomic etc.)
The shows and their service providers have had predatory pricing policies for as long as I’ve been in the business; San Francisco hotel prices don’t help matters either. A bare-bones presence at one of these shows costs at least $20k by the time you add it all up.. double that if you want to look like you mean business. If you’re selling $5k outboard, or $100k consoles, or just have 20 high-value channel partners to impress, that can make sense. For a cheap piece of software, you’d need to generate many hundreds of extra end-user sales, or thousands of channel sales, just to cover the cost of being there… to put it another way, a small, modest booth needs to generate a sale every 5 minutes of show time.The same budget will get some beautiful product videos made, buy a gajillion banner impressions and online feature articles & enough print coverage to make an impression, and still leave enough left over to fly out and spend some time with the remaining key channel partners, writers etc.
On top of that, word of mouth is more effective than it’s ever been. If you have the kind of revolutionary product that pulls the big crowds at shows, with half a clue about all things marketing you can set the world buzzing about it in no time. Sure, that won’t work for the more traditional end of the AES audience, but most traditionalists aren’t big on ITB in general.
So until the shows give software companies a much more cost effective platform to show the world what they’re up to (Avid’s and Apple’s pod-farms used to offer good value there), what’s the point of wasting scarce cash? And when the big DAW vendors, the Apples and Abletons and Native Instruments aren’t attending, which of our customers are going to travel 500 miles to check out a few plug-ins?
S. Vaughan Merrick
November 9, 2012 at 12:01 pm (12 years ago)Brilliant – yes the world is changing.
S. Vaughan Merrick
November 9, 2012 at 12:27 pm (12 years ago)let me make two points
A) anyone who says that 192k or DSD is not better than 44k is either a pencil pusher or not that keenly tuned (someone is in a rage reading this right now). A/B tests are not sufficient because of the “gotcha” threat to the listener. I would suggest ear fatigue tests to be a part of the comparison. There is NO question in my mind that analog tape and DSD are superior formats to PCM (A/B Michael Jackson “Thriller” and Human League “Dare” on DSD to CD and listen to the SACD of Yo-Yo Ma “Silk Roads”). Obviously tape suffers from noise floor and coloring challenges but for many of my clients tape’s character trumps PCM. Clearly analog and DSD formats suffer obstacles in the distribution of music and there are important voices who are not interested in changing the status quo. Other people can argue the “good enough” argument, but in my opinion, that’s like arguing whether the sun revolves around the earth… We have lost the hi-fi culture and turned into a “good enough” culture.
I may also suggest that the coming revolution that LTE-Advance proposes is something that everyone in production should be thinking about.
B) I saw the Slate product and while this represents a “yeah DUH” product, I understand they’re proposing a price tag of 70k for a product that shouldn’t be more than a $1500 touch screen at retail. I love Slate’s other products which is why in part I find this pricing structure ridiculous if the rumour is true. If an iPad costs $499, there’s no reason why a multi-touch controller should cost much more. People who wish to see where the world is headed should youtube Corning’s “A Day Made of Glass”
advances in transducer science are welcome of course, but without a real change in speaker technology, what are the real percentage gains in innovation here? Thank you TrustMe, you make some very valid points
David
November 10, 2012 at 6:14 pm (12 years ago)Very interesting article with some genuine insights.
I’m glad to be able to read these viewpoints, thanks.
My question, if Avid is not doing well, does upgrading to the new Protools HDX system make sense. If the company is not going to be able to release version 11 is there a compelling reason to buy the product? Keeping in mind that new interfaces will have to be purchased to use V11. If S. Vaughn Merrick is correct that the general sentiment in the industry is that good enough is good enough, and what we have now is good enough, why take on the financial burden of an upgrade, that ultimately has to be paid for by some form of cash flow? Someone has to pay for this upgrade, if the artist/customer does not care who should?
Just pondering going HDX and wonder if there is any reason to do so.
Looking at the $10,000 price tag and thinking there are a lot more compelling needs right now, like buying flood insurance.
S. Vaughan Merrick
November 12, 2012 at 8:00 pm (12 years ago)David, I am an avid, so to speak, proponent of HDX. But I also am not one to say “Oh yeah, good enough.” Regardless of the arguments that 44/24 is good enough, there is strong evidence that frequencies above 20k are perceptible by human beings. For more information please search: “The role of biological system other than auditory air-conduction in the emergence of the hypersonic effect”. Tsutomu Oohashi, et al. for instance. The DSD experience is better than PCM but the battle was lost to the iPod. High frequency resolution PCM still contains hypersonic information, though its re-presentation is dependent on transducer technology.
If you are debating whether or not to upgrade to HDX you should do so on feature sets and how important latency is to your work flow. Rest assured, it is HIGHLY improbable that AVID is going to go out of business.