December 2009: Jonathan Novick, Audio Precision, Inc., gave a talk titled, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Specifications". In the ‘60s and ‘70s over-zealous marketing led to inflated specs. The Federal Trade Commission stepped in to create a federal regulation.  Today confusion reigns again and the FTC is not stepping in, because there are few complaints.  Listening demonstrations illustrated the talk.

September 2009: Jim Thompson and Scott Hunt gave a tour of the new joint facility of Brüel & Kjær, Material Sciences Corporation, producer of Quiet Steel, and Link Engineering, designer and builder of NVH test systems. This facility includes half and full space anechoic chambers, reverberant chambers, and dynomometers is to serve automotive manufacturers and their suppliers, plus companies in the appliance, electronic and telecom industries to optimise the sound and vibration characteristics of their products.

June 2 - 4, 2009 the International Conference on Automotive Audio was hosted by the Detroit Section of the AES.

December 2008: Bob Dennis and Greg Reilly, owners of The Disc Ltd, hosted a meeting in their studio. Bob reviewed his role in the history of the music recording industry in Detroit. Bob pointed out that studios based in houses have dominated in the area, from United Sound begun in 1933 though Motown and HDH to what Bob estimates is a thousand small studios in the area today. While the major lables report falling sales, Bob says independent lables have great success. Greg gave an overview of the functioning of the studio which has an SSL console but primarily uses Pro-Tools.

November 2008: The 60th Anniversary video with excerpts from the AES Oral History Project was played and discussed. Bob Klacza outlined the history of the Detroit AES Section. David Carlstrom gave an overview of selected papers sessions, workshops, and broadcast sessions at the 125 AES Convention in San Francisco, October 2008.

June 2008: Jay Risk and Jason Carlock of iBiquity Digital Corporation spoke on HD Radio, In-Band, On-Channel digital broadcasting and the HD Digital Radio Alliance, a joint initiative of radio broadcasters.

May 2008: Tony Bongiovi of Bongiovi Acoustics spoke at the Motown Historical Museum on the secrets behind the famous “Motown” sound. Tony gave a presentation on the methods that were used to give Motown recordings that unique sound. The methods gave a small midwestern recording studio an advantage over larger more established studios in New York and LA, and allowed Motown to make its mark on music history. The meeting drew a large turnout including former Motown engineers.

February 2008: David Clark of Alpine Electronics spoke on the continued development of the PTF system. Progress was made in measuring Image Direction using wavelet test signals and onset time analysis. This module reveals many perceived attributes of a sound system and is basis for time alignment of woofers, tweeters and the rear speakers of an upmix surround system.

September 2007: Wade Bray and Randy Stanley of HEAD acoustics, Inc. spoke on the history of binaural technology and the Aachen HEAD.

June 2007: Tom Nousaine chaired a discussion on "Near Side Bias in Automotive Audio". In testing nearly 700 OEM automotive sound systems, over 200 competitive aftermarket automotive sound systems and several hundred aftermarket loudspeaker systems, Tom found over 95% of the passenger seat listeners receive a soundstage with images that are asymmetrically clustered toward the near side of the car. In the opinion of Mr. Nousaine near side spatial bias is a nearly universal problem in automotive sound design and implementation. In considering this issue, individual panelists presented their interpretation of the situation with methods and techniques for solving the condition.

April 2007: Takayuki Watanabe, Yamaha Corporation, Advanced System Development Center, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan, introduced the section Yamaha's approach to Reverberation Enhancement called Active Field Control. AFC utilizes acoustical feedback to increase the energy density of diffused sound, increasing reverberation time. Clarinetist Kristin Fosdick played to assist in the demonstration.

February 2007: Robert B. Schulein, owner of RBS Consultants, and Founding Partner of HIP Systems LLC, spoke on Binaural Recording: 1932 - 2007 Creating Realistic Sound Fields Using Only Two Audio Channels. The presentation was followed by three interactive demonstrations of modern binaural applications.

August 2005: Tony Bongiovi, noted record producer who got his start at Motown, spoke on “The History of Sound Imaging – Past and Present”. Tony gave the section a better understanding of the position of the record industry relative to multi-channel sound imaging product offerings. He illustrated his talk with music clips and a historical outline the technology that has dictated this position. Tony's paper on the subject is available from the Detroit Section for the asking. Use the e-mail link at the top of this page, or e-mail the webmaster at the bottom of this page.

Jume 2005: Earl Geddes, GedLee LLC, spoke on room design and loudspeaker design synergy for small rooms. A new approach is proposed. The speakers were demonstrated at Earl's Home Theater.

April 2005: Section Elections & Horizontally Arrayed Center Channel Speakers: What The Industry Hopes You Won't Find Out About Them - Tom Nousaine, Contributing Technical Editor to Sound & Vision magazine.

March 2005: Special meeting soliciting input on the section's future. Plans were discussed, a slate of candidates was prepared, and a date set for the next meeting.

November 2004: Earl Geddes and Lidia Lee, GedLee LLC, spoke on the perception of loudspeaker compression driver sound quality. Several loudspeaker compression drivers were evaluated for perception of frequency response and distortion. The test was double blind. The results indicated frequency response differences were audible and distortion differences were not for the high quality drivers evaluated.

September 2004: Jesse Spence, Bully Subwoofers, gave a talk on loudspeaker driver design basics. Basic physics, design choices, materials, causes of distortion, and causes of frequency response fluctuations were be covered. The viewpoint was that of a loudspeaker driver designer.

May 2004: Joint meeting with SMPTE: Tim Carroll, Linear Acoustic, presented Audio for Digital Television. Via metadata, Dolby Digital (AC-3) has built-in loudness controls, downmix controls, and dynamic range controls. Assuming that 5.1 channel audio has actually made it to the encoder, how can you ensure that everything is set correctly? What happens if metadata is missing or is set incorrectly (intentionally or otherwise)? How effective are the parameters anyway? What about mixing local two-channel programming with the 5.1 channels coming from the network- why does the dialogue seem to disappear? Consumers must be protected from loud and annoying audio, from jarring image shifts, and from hidden parameters causing different problems on mono, stereo, and 5.1 channel receivers.

October 2003: 87 people attended a joint meeting with the soon to be University of Michigan Section of the Audio Engineering Society: Tour of the Audio and Video Studios in the UofM Media Union on North Campus and a Multichannel Surround Seminar by Mike Sokol.

October 2002: Euphonix Max Air. Euphonix digital audio consoles and equipment, in a specially equipped truck is outfitted with a 96 channel Max Air mixing system simulating a local TV station digital Audio control room with playback of 48 channels of digital audio and 8 video Streams. Joint meeting with SMPTE, MMP, and SBE. Those who attended learned that the Euphonics truck did not arrive due to a collision with a deer. An informal discussion replaced the program.

June 2002: Earl R. Geddes, GedLee Associates - Advanced Polar Response Measurement - Using new techniques of radiation modal responses Dr. Geddes showed how one can reduce the polar response problem by several orders of magnitude.

May 2002: David Clark, DLC Design - Spaciousness - The Final Frontier - A further report on the author's Perceptual Transfer Function measuring system, numerically evaluating tonal balance, maximum loudness, distortion and bass capability. This study extended objective measurement into the category of Spatial Rendition, including aspects of soundstage size and location, imaging and ambience.

March 2002: Greg Miller, Sr. VP and Co-Owner of Goldline - The new ISO speech intelligibility standard, STICis, NFPA 72, STI-PA tones, and measurement equipment.

February 2002: Doug Button, Vice President JBL Professional - The EVO Intelligent Loudspeaker System, and A High Frequency Acoustical Element for Multi-band Articulated Line Arrays

November 2001: Floyd Toole, Vice President of Acoustical Engineering, Harman International Industries, Inc. - Audio Engineering - Science in the Service of Art

October 2001: Ryan Dunne, DVD Product Specialist, Roscor Corp. - An Introduction to DVD Authoring. (Joint Meeting with Detroit SMPTE)

September 2001: David T. Turner, Vice President of Engineering - ENCO Systems, Inc. on Engineering High Speed SCSI Disk Systems for Multimedia. (Joint Meeting with Detroit SMPTE)

May 2001: Mark Ziemba, Lead Engineer - Panasonic Automotive Systems on Test Signals for the Objective and Subjective Evaluation of Automotive Audio Systems. This paper investigated many test methodologies and uses some new test signals for both objective measurement and subjective evaluation of vehicle sound system performance. A new special test signal embraced harmonics. This test signal sounds similar to an organ note and is spectrally similar to music signals that have been shown to be helpful in hearing distortion because of their tonal complexity. Of special interest was intermodulation distortion because of its audibility and high annoyance factor. When this signal is introduced without and then with a low bass warble tone, a large amount of intermodulation distortion appeared in some vehicle audio systems.

April 2001: Joint Meeting with SMPTE: Ford Motor Company World Headquarters Media Auditorium Audio and Video Upgrades: Jim Hegarty - Ford Communications Network; Kurt Kreszyn - Ford Communications Network; Chris Hill - Roscor; Devon Tiderington - Roscor

March 2001: Perceptual Transfer Function - David L. Clark, DLC Design

February 2001: Measuring the Linear Properties of Loudspeakers - Dr. Earl Geddes, Visteon

June 2000: Speech Intelligibility in a Beautiful 150 Year Old Architectural Environment, Saints Peter & Paul Jesuit Church in Detroit. Technical presentation and demonstration of the Duran Audio IVX-6C speaker system. - Roger DuNaier, of Performance Devices, representative for Duran Audio of The Netherlands.

April 2000: Acoustic Lever - Theory and Implementation. - Dr. Earl Geddes, Visteon.

February 2000: Distributed Mode Loudspeakers. - Roland Francis and Adrian Horne, NXT.

December 1998: Small Room Acoustics - Dr. Earl Geddes, Visteon.

January 1998: CD-R Replication Systems - Mark Anzicek, President of ZenTechnologies.

December 1997: Everything about DVD - Mark Anzicek, President of ZenTechnologies.

November 1997: PC-AV Convergence & IEEE 1394 - Arnold Krueger & Robert Klacza