06/05/2026
Thoughts on AES Europe this past weekend from our founder Roger Shively:
3-days, 500 attendees, and a sense of change...
In a time where there is academia, and the rest is: “ we don’t need to validate that again; it’s proven; here’s a solution based on that, available today”, the pace of development is accelerating beyond a classical scientific rigor that insists on repeated proofs. Accepting the previous work, without critical review can lead to false conclusions. It doesn’t need classical scientific rigor, but it needs inspection, and that inspection should be recorded.
This is happening now in the AES Conventions and Conferences: Whether it is a Minimum Audible Angle based method that serves as an effective and reliable tool for evaluating binaural rendering algorithms from the perspective of spatial resolution, or the acoustical topology optimization in the non-trivial process involving on-axis pressure, directivity, beam width, and other metrics for tweeters in a car cabin, or the use of GPU processors for real-time audio processing, and many more. AES is bringing in old minds to repeat the basics, because fundamentals need to be taught, because the disciplines are being lost. But, a bridge is also being offered to the rapid pace of product development in studios, homes, and headphones.
The historical science is being mined, the fundamentals are absorbed and mastered now on day one – and innovation starts on day two, and is in production soon after.
Audio Engineering Society Roger Shively Shively Acoustics International
