Complicated Times for the AES: New President Jonathan Wyner Tackles Audio’s Top Job

January 25th, 2021 by David Weiss

If a peaceful transfer of power sounds good to you, look to the Audio Engineering Society (AES) as a shining example.

Jonathan Wyner is AES President for 2021.

On January 1, 2021, the AES presidency seamlessly transitioned to Jonathan Wyner from the organization’s top executive in 2020, Agnieszka Roginska. As Ms. Roginska did before him, Wyner can expect to have a unique one-year term of office, steering the AES’ global membership through the ongoing COVID pandemic. While vaccines are entering the picture this year, there are zero assurances and scant visibility into the future of audio careers—some audio industry sectors fared better than expected in 2020, while others were shaken to the core.

As AES President, Wyner has the complex job of providing guidance to dues-paying members and expanding their experience, while simultaneously working to grow the AES membership. Pulling that off successfully requires intimate knowledge of the needs of multiple silos—studio recording, mixing, mastering, audio post, live sound, audio hardware manufacturing and audio software development, academia, and many more audio engineering careers—while also aiming for higher levels of diversity and inclusion across the board. All this, while hoping for a return to in-person AES shows and local chapter meetings without firm knowledge of when they will be possible.

Wyner spoke with SonicScoop in depth about the challenges ahead for the AES, and for him personally as the lead navigator throughout an unpredictable year. View the video interview, or read the full transcript below. Passages have been edited for clarity.

Hello, and welcome to SonicScoop on YouTube. You need to hear from my guest today, the new Audio Engineering Society President, Jonathan Wyner. Jonathan, welcome.

Thank you, David. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for everything you and SonicScoop do for our community. I appreciate it.

The Audio Industry Adapts: Expectations for 2021

The Audio Engineering Society must lead its members through a transforming landscape throughout 2021.

As it will be for many professions, there’s a lot up in the air right now. What do you think the audio industry can expect in 2021? How might the opportunities and challenges unfold for audio engineers right now?

Well, opportunities and challenges. I’ll start with the challenges, just because I think it’s important to recognize those who are most affected.

I want to call out the live sound community, and folks who are involved with events. That’s really hard. It’s really hard right now. I know that there are a number of people out there who are chomping at the bit. Not just audiences, but people whose livelihoods depend on our doing these things, and also some location sound engineers, and people who shoot movies and television shows, and all of that.

There have been some trainings offered to those communities, just broadly around the industry, to help audio engineers develop new skills and be able to do things around online communication. People have tried to kind of invent ways of approximating live presentations online, but that community has probably been hit most hardest.

For everybody else, almost everybody that I talk to has been really, really busy. Not only is it true that if you’re not going to go out and play live, well, let’s think about other ways of sort of creating media, and communicating with audiences, and so on. People need to record, and people need help.

The folks that I talk to who are mixing engineers, who are mastering engineers in particular, are really, really busy. Then, of course, audio is all over this. Right? Here we are [on a Zoom call]. There’s an audio component to what we’re doing. So much is transpiring over the Internet, that there’s been a lot of development of products, and tools, and people to run events online. That’s been coming on anyway, but I feel like it’s just, by necessity, ramped up like crazy. I’m finding a lot of folks are quite busy.

It’ll be interesting to see, beyond 2021, how much of that we benefit from going forward, and how much of that we continue.

That’s something about what’s going on right now: We learned last year that we can’t just expect everything to roll on smoothly the way we’ve known it. And this year, I think everyone knows that whatever happens in 2021 isn’t necessarily what we’re going to experience in 2022.

The other thing I’ll say is, have you tried to buy a (Shure) SM7B lately? It’s hard to find them. It’s hard to find hardware, because people are buying things to equip their home studios, or the studios that they can get access to. For certain purveyors of hardware and software, it’s actually been a really, really good year.

It’s so interesting to see this dichotomy between people who sort of do well in this sort of information age, for lack of a better way of putting it right now, and those that struggle because what they do is predicated on that in-person interaction with an audience. It’s been tough to see, but some people are doing very well.

That’s absolutely been what I’ve been hearing from where I sit, that some audio manufacturers had a great year, as well as audio software developers. I think they would all agree this is not how they would have wanted it to happen. That makes me think about the fact that there really are these components of what makes up the AES membership and who the AES is concerned about. On the one hand, it’s audio engineers and individual professionals, right, but also manufacturers and developers. How are you seeing the way that they’re interwoven change from where you sit?

It’s an interesting question. It relates a little bit to the comment about live events. One of the challenging things is to connect people together when we’re sort of operating on the current set of conditions, so facilitating connection between manufacturers and audiences.

Actually, I’ll even sort of spin it a slightly different way and say connecting students who are just graduating now with potential opportunities for internships, and for their next learning opportunity when they graduate from schools. That’s been challenging. That’s one of the things that we’re committed to try to facilitate, and figure out a way to connect people and keep people connected during this time.

Transcending Zoom interactions represents a significant challenge for the audio industry.

Right. That’s what I see and hear is that really this puzzle of how to make people connect, how to replace the interactions that we’re used to at the shows, meeting one on one. Then, like you said, actually being able to have an intern show up at a place and do their job. I think we’re actually not going to know the impact of this interruption for a long time.

I think you’re right. I think there’s been a lot of ingenuity, and a lot of people have figured out ways of working around this. I was actually just talking to (NYC-based mixer) Chris Tabron a few months ago. He spent some time in his room, and then he has his assistant come in on a different day and do things. I was talking to Tony Visconti, and he’s working it out too. People are figuring it out.

We have had some events online. For instance, our Pacific Northwest chapter. There’s a fellow named Dan Mortensen who runs some programming up there. This is also true of our San Francisco chapter with Bt Gibbs running some programming. They have had events where they just have to kick people out after three hours. People are hungry for this. They get together because they’re drawn together by a topic and a passion, and then they use these sort of online meetings as a chance to connect with each other.

It’s clear that the appetite is still there, and it is still happening. It’s just maybe not quite as visible as it would be as if it were an in-person event. The other thing that’s cool, of course, is that we had incredible attendance at our Latin American event, because everybody could go to Latin America and take part in the Latin American conference. There’s some really positive signs out there.

Rethinking the AES

Those are some of the tradeoffs, right? Is that maybe people can’t meet in person, but it is actually easier to attend an online meeting, for example. So those are things that can come out of it. Now, as far as the AES itself, I want to shift gears and talk about the organization, which had to go through a radical evolution last year due to the COVID pandemic. Most notably the AES is shifting its conventions, and the chapter meetings, as we just discussed, to an online format. How have these developments affected the AES?

Well, I won’t sort of go over the same territory over again about losing that in-person networking aspect. But as a technology-oriented organization, we were well set up already to adopt technology.

For instance, in our fall show, we had 180 hours of programming that we produced as part of that show. The only way we could’ve done that is if we had that technical expertise already in house, so there was a lot of scrambling, innovation, improvisation, and challenges. We’re still figuring out best practices. I think there’s a requirement for us to kind of level up, because everybody’s got Zoom fatigue, or online meeting fatigue.

There are silver linings. I think this is not just for the AES, but it’s certainly true for the AES, that having to rethink the value of what we do and how we do it is not a bad thing. Right? We were given an opportunity to do that in 2020.

Whereas, it’s kind of like if you drive your same old car to work every day. Right? You don’t really have to think about improving your car if it gets you there. Then, one day, it’s like, “Oh, wait. Now I have a chance to rethink this, and maybe I’ll get a car that has less carbon emissions, better for the environment,” etc… You know? It’s kind of a rough analogy, but I think you get my point.

Sure. And there’s probably plenty of analogies right there in the studio that we could think of as well! Jonathan, what you mentioned before was rethinking, getting a new idea about the value of what the AES has to offer. How would you characterize the new perception that you have about that?

I think the pillars here for me are sort of the notion of equity and inclusion, diversity in every sense of the word. Also, being able to expose people to new technologies and new topics, and providing real training and education to people. It’s not easy for people who are sort of spread all around the planet, necessarily, to have access to experts who can demonstrate techniques and talk about ideas about how they do their work, whether it’s in the context of mixing a record, restoring an old record, implementing a neural network to do research around machine learning, immersive audio.

We’ve got the full range from the leading-edge technologies that we’re exposing people to, so this gives us an opportunity to really think about distilling each of these efforts and bringing them to a wider audience.

Then there really is, when you use the word “equity” and “inclusion” in the true sense of the word. I think that reducing friction for people to have access to the kinds of information, and to the network and the networking, is something that’s really important to us.

I think it’s important, again, not just to the AES, but for the future of our industry and the future of our world, making sure that those who are interested in connecting with others, who are already doing the work of making recordings, or interested in learning how to develop audio products, that that information is available to everybody. Really, the Audio Engineering Society is the biggest audio tent that there is in terms of breadth. We have to make sure that we are representing all of the members and all of their interests, no matter who they are or where they are.

That’s kind of a big goal. That’s an aspiration. That’s a statement of the end state, right? But that’s really what I think we need to stay focused on.

When you talk about reducing friction in terms of access to these materials, are you talking about the sessions and all the panels that took place over the (Fall 2020) Show? They were recorded—do people have access to the archives? Do you have to be a member?

You have to be a member to have access to the archives. We had some programming that was free, as we typically would do in person. Also, it was less expensive. We don’t have to rent a facility, so we don’t have the same overhead. We can certainly improve access in that way.

Also, we have started to offer programming that is following our members’ interests. The hip hop and R&B track that we implemented as part of the New York show a few years ago was something that clearly needed to happen. It wasn’t that we thought it was a good idea. It’s that our members were saying, “This needs to be represented.”

The way that we make records in 2020 or 2021 is something that’s of interest. It exposes new workflows. It’s not just the aesthetics around the genre. It’s the engineering and the techniques that are being used.

I guess it’s not exactly correct to say it’s a reduction in friction, but it is kind of an inclusive aspect of what we’re doing. I think it’s important. I mean, the same is true for our collaborations, whether it’s Sound Girls, or Women’s Audio Mission (WAM), or other women in tech organizations that are interested in reducing friction by creating learning opportunities for people from every community. That are interested in audio.

Evolving the AES Member Experience

Sometimes the AES has been criticized as being less in-touch. I know that the AES has worked hard to address those criticisms. In terms of being able to instigate change, and get new programming, and more inclusive things happening in the AES, how does that actually happen? Do people have to become a member? Is that a step that they’re skipping sometimes? Put another way, I’m wondering about the channels of communication: I know some people complain about the AES and what it has to offer, but they may not necessarily be members.

Well, actually, yeah. You raise a very important point, which is that sometimes people will form an opinion based on a snapshot or a point in time, and it takes a while for people to recognize what has changed.

I think that that’s something that one has to work with. We’re committed to the notion of inclusion and equity in terms of access, so we just have to keep doing that work. There’s one way in which it’s relatively easy to do this: We invite experts to come in and talk about their work and to train people, and those experts are of every gender identification, and every sort of whatever category you want to assign. People are doing that and they’re in our community, so they are talking about their work.

I think it’s so important for people to have role models where they can see themselves. Not just their interests reflected, but who they are reflected in the people who are talking to them. That’s a really, really important component of doing this work.

So, then, what might be the typical experience, or maybe an optimal experience that you can imagine, if someone who’s watching this isn’t an AES member right now and says, “Okay. I’m going to give the AES a try. I’m going to see what it can do for my career.” So they join up. What might they get to do in the next month or two, or quarter, that they weren’t able to do before?

Well, obviously, this is driven in part by what they’re interested in. We have an immersive audio academy coming up [see all upcoming AES events here]. You can learn about the basics of the workflows around immersive audio. This is a hot topic for audio engineers these days to prepare themselves for being able to produce audio for new distribution outlets.

We’ve got an electronic dance music event coming in March where people are going to learn about techniques for producing effective electronica. We’ve got our spring show, which really runs the gamut across all of the different disciplines. Whether it’s attending papers around research on particular topics, or presentations about live sound, it’s kind of the full breadth and width of the AES experience. We’ve got a modern music production event happening in June. We’ve got an audio educators mini conference coming in February, actually, Super Bowl Sunday, just before the Super Bowl, where people can get some insights into forming curriculums and so on.

That’s just some of what we’re doing in the next bunch of months. In these events, you will also see other people who have similar interests online that you can connect with in the context of these events. Learn who they are. Be seen by them. The networking aspect of a society like this is just incredible. For me, it’s given me so much value over time, so I think that that’s something that members benefit from.

I can’t even begin to say what the convention itself has done for me over the years. That’s not even to mention what it would bring to me being a member, and all that would appear to come with that. So what’s your challenge in actually growing the AES membership then? How do you approach that as an organization?

Again, it’s really making sure that we understand what people value, and trying to serve their interests. I mean, it’s kind of that simple. It’s not telling people what [we think] they want to know. It’s giving our members what they’re hungry for.

I don’t know if I’m speaking out of term, but I’m going to say it anyway: We’re in the midst of a website redevelopment, and one aspect of it is that we will be able to highlight what’s going on at AES section meetings all around the world. If you’re a member, and you see something that’s really interesting that’s happening from the AES section in the UK, you can attend that. If there’s something that’s going on in Asia, from our Tokyo section. There might be some sort of localization issues, language barrier issues around that, but just sort of being able to surface the richness of this sort of worldwide society, and everything that’s going on, is something that I think is really exciting.

I think that, especially these days with everybody sitting at home, we don’t see everybody else out there that’s doing all of this exciting and interesting stuff. We need to change that.

Is there anything else that you want to let me know about what’s going on in the AES right now?

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention. You know, we’ve got the spring show. It will be kind of focused primarily on the European time zone, because that is, but not entirely. We aim to have some encore, and some replays, and time-shifted presentations so that some of that programming can be available elsewhere.

Then, we have announced our Las Vegas-based, next in-person event next October. The scale of it is a little bit TBD depending on what the local best practices and recommendations indicate. You know, how many people you can have in a room and how close together at that point in time. If all goes well, I look forward to seeing you in October in person in Las Vegas. At the same time, we will also run a virtual event to serve people who can’t go.

The Near Future: Audio Trends in Mixing & Mastering

I have one more question about audio for the moment, which is: What are you personally excited about in audio right now? Either technically, or creatively, or both.

Both! It’s a really interesting time in a couple of ways. I get really excited by innovation in music, and in developing musical vocabulary. I’m reminded of one of my heroes, Brian Eno, who is a creative innovator. The tools that exist now to innovate with music and create new musical vocabulary are just next level.

Composer Holly Herndon’s use of AI is part of audio’s next phase.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Holly Herndon, who’s a wonderful composer in Berlin and is also sometimes based in California, who uses AI (artificial intelligence) in her creative compositions. It’s really fascinating and interesting to see how she thinks of it, and how she thinks of the way it relates to culture, and cultural appropriation, and other issues.

What I love is, as technology marches on and access to it increases, we see more diversity in genre, and creativity, and musical ideas. It’s really exciting to me. You know, mastering engineers like variety, right? You don’t typically work on the same genre every day of the week, and that just describes me. I like this sort of variety of what’s out there. That relates a little bit to my interest in technology.

Again, this is coming a little bit from my role at iZotope, thinking about machine learning, and thinking about AI. What does it unlock for us? What does it allow us to do that’s different? Also, looking at object-oriented audio is really interesting. Not having to think about tracks and channels in quite the same way that people used to, but thinking about an object in space interacting with other objects in space. What does that unlock to the mix engineer, for the consumer? It’s really, really fun and really interesting right now.

I think that it’s time for us to kind of move past the 20th century studio. Don’t get me wrong. I mixed some records on Neve 80-series consoles that were some of my favorite mixes I ever did. I’m not saying they were great mixes, but they were my favorites. I love tactile things, but I just get excited about reimagining ways of doing things, and maybe making things a little bit more human.

Right. I see. Are these going to apply to mastering too? Mastering is a profession that I think a lot of people feel like is locked and loaded, right? Since I’ve got the opportunity to talk with a top mastering engineer such as yourself, I’ll let you give a shout out for your sector. What might be changing in mastering?

Well, obviously, tip of the hat to those who are experts in mastering and can provide that sort of expertise, and the ability to take something to the next level.

Having said that, the notion of a fixed presentation, “This is just the way that the music is, and that’s it. It’s done.” I think that that’s sort of fraying a little bit around the edges, and I think it has been for a period of time. When we started to work in 5.1 surround, we had to think about making a six-channel mix that would fold down to a two-channel mix that would also work in mono. That’s kind of an initial idea of the presentation has to be somewhat flexible and adaptable. There’s no single version.

I don’t know if you remember the Yamaha Soundfield Processors. There were others where the users could change things about the sound afterwards to their taste. I’m not advocating that, but I think there have been ways in which we’ve already started to give people the chance to adjust audio. I think the possibility of having the playback presentation adjust to the user’s environment, that’s something that’s been at play for a period of time.

In other words, I think these are all things that are changing in the way that audio gets presented, and consumed, and interacted with by the end listener, which gives creatives more choices. Right? It makes you think a little bit outside of the box. I think there will always be a place for people who are experts with audio who are able to elevate what people listen to and make it sound fantastic, but I just think it’s going to get implemented and distributed, probably, in a way that’s different from what we’ve seen in the past.

I think that’ll require us to change. Mastering is a blast, but we don’t have to decide what’s next. We have to respond to it. Right? When loudness normalization became a thing, it requires us to think about, “Okay, so how do we incorporate this into our work?” So it’s always interesting.

Get in the Head of the Prez

Finally, I wanted to step outside of audio minute as we get to my last few questions. Who are some leaders outside of audio that you look to for inspiration? How have they affected the way you approach life, and of being an organizational leader right now?

Many of my mentors and the people that I’ve learned from have been in audio, so I won’t talk about them.

No, you can!

I’ll call out a few people. There was a man named Tom Bates who passed away a few years ago. He was somebody who—not only could he mix the heck out of a record, not only could he design the gear that you would use to mix the record—he also could make the most incredible cup of coffee and understand how that would ultimately be meaningful to help fuel an artist’s sort of mindset and their work. He just really understood how to inspire people.

To some extent, it really was by practicing kind of acceptance, and recognizing the vision, and seeking to understand what was important. Then he had all the tools to kind of implement the result, if you will. My admiration for him knows no bounds, and I learned a great deal just by sitting next to him and watching him navigate relationship with people.

Wyner counts AES Past President Agnieszka Roginska among his mentors.

My immediate predecessor as president of AES, Agnieszka Roginska, has been a great mentor for me in watching how she leads people. She really is wonderful at empowering people and helping unlock the potential of what people want to get done.

Mark Ethier, who is the CEO of iZotope, is a wonderful friend. It’s important that we pay attention to what we believe is important, and to our own values, and have some goals for the work that we want to do. I think, in a way, sort of leading from beneath, sort of rising up and lifting up others, as opposed to trying to sort of hold the banner and hoping that people are walking behind you and following. It’s just something I admire immensely.

I can’t say that Barack Obama is my anything, but I really admire that human being. I think his ability to articulate, extend understanding. Just somebody I admire immensely. I could go on, although I’m not very good at name dropping.

Those are a few examples of people who I admire. I admire my wife. She’s a veterinarian, and she’s so grounded. She sometimes holds my feet to the ground as I start sort of worrying about what might be. She’s like, “Well, this is what is.”

My wife keeps me grounded as well, so we’re both pretty fortunate to have someone like that around. That’s great that she’s a veterinarian. We were talking before about our cats. You’ve got a couple of Bengals, which sound beautiful. Send us some shots!

Audio Career Directions: Where to Turn in 2021

So here’s my last question, which is, Jonathan, finally, what do you want to say to audio engineers who aren’t sure of how to direct their careers in 2021? What are some dos and don’ts?

Well, the first thing I would say is stay flexible. I mean, have a goal, and have a thing that you’re interested in, and learn everything you can about doing the thing that you want to be doing. There are lots of resources and people talking about how to interact with potential clients, how to develop a name for yourself, how to develop your portfolio. Pay attention to the sort of notion of financial literacy and being smart, but be flexible.

My career, I think, is a perfect testament to this. I started out as a French horn player. My goal was to completely deconstruct the instrument and turn it into something that nobody had ever seen before. I sort of was going to be an “Artist” with a capital “A.” I think I’ve had like three or four separate careers, because technology required it. Opportunities presented themselves. They were all somewhat aligned with something I care about and something I love to do.

Being flexible and being persistent. It’s somewhat abstract, but I think it’s also really true. I think that’s ultimately what leads you to doing something that you care about and that you enjoy. I don’t want to make it sound easy. I mean, I spent some time working in restaurants to sort of prop up my audio addiction early in my career, and so on. Just be flexible.

I’d say those things you did on the side make you an Audio Warrior, Jonathan. I know a lot of those, and they really inspire me. I just can’t believe what some people are willing to do in the name of audio and music. It’s just incredible, and I know a lot of them are in SonicScoop’s audience. Jonathan, we’ve had a great conversation. Anything you want to add that we haven’t discussed yet?

Again, I appreciate SonicScoop, and I appreciate what you do, David. You help connect people together, and help connect people with their interests, so that’s fantastic.

I just want to inspire people to think forward. Think about what’s next. You know? There’s going to be developments in audio over the next 5-10 years that are going blow people’s minds. I guarantee you that this is true. Look up differentiable DSP on Google, and see where that takes you. See what kind of interesting ideas that stimulates. Just amazing.

So I’m excited! In the quiet moments, I’m intimidated, in awe, and worried about the future. But I’m excited.

David Weiss

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