AES Europe 2025: Full Schedule

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9:00am CEST

Tutorial Workshop: The Gentle Art of Dithering

Saturday May 24, 2025 9:00am - 10:45am CEST

This tutorial is for everyone working on the design or production of digital audio and should benefit beginners and experts. We aim to bring this topic to life with several interesting audio demonstrations, and up to date with new insights and some surprising results that may reshape pre-conceptions of high resolution.
In a recent paper, we stressed that transparency (high-resolution audio fidelity) depends on the preservation of micro-sounds – those small details that are easily lost to quantization errors, but which can be perfectly preserved by using the right dither.
It is often asked: ‘Why should I add noise to my recording?’ or, ‘How can adding noise make things clearer?’ This tutorial gives a tour through these questions and presents a call to action: dither should not be looked on as an added noise, but an essential lubricant to preserves naturalness.

Tutorial topics include: fundamentals of dithering; analysis using histograms and synchronous averaging; what happens if undithered quantizers are cascaded?; ‘washboard distortion’; noise-shaping; additive and subtractive dither; time-domain effects; inside A/D and D/A converters; the perilous world of modern signal chains (including studio workflow and DSP in fixed and floating-point processors) and, finally, audibility analysis.

Speakers

Bob Stuart

Peter Craven

Saturday May 24, 2025 9:00am - 10:45am CEST
Hall F ATM Studio Warsaw, Poland

Archiving and restoration Audio coding and compression Audio perception Audio quality Forensic audio High resolution audio Music and speech signal processing

Presentation Type Workshop

12:15pm CEST

Workshop: How to Build a World-Class Brand in 24 Hours

Saturday May 24, 2025 12:15pm - 1:15pm CEST

In this dynamic, hackathon-style session, participants will rapidly develop a world-class brand strategy for their company using cutting-edge AI tools and collaborative exercises. Attendees will leave with an actionable blueprint they can implement immediately in their businesses or projects.

Format: 90 minute session
Key Takeaways:
Master the essentials of brand strategy and its impact on content creation and sales
Engage in hands-on exercises to develop a brand strategy in real time
Learn how AI tools can accelerate brand positioning

Speakers

Joshua Ingram

Saturday May 24, 2025 12:15pm - 1:15pm CEST
C1 ATM Studio Warsaw, Poland

Analysis and synthesis of sound Audio and music information retrieval Audio effects Audio for virtual/augmented reality environments Audio perception Audio quality Electronic dance music Electronic instrument design & applications

Presentation Type Workshop

12:30pm CEST

What was it about the Dolby Noise Reduction System that made it successful?

Saturday May 24, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm CEST

Warsaw tutorial

Love it or hate it the Dolby noise reduction system had a significant impact on sound recording practice. Even nowadays, in our digital audio workstation world, Dolby noise reduction units are used as effects processors. 2
However, when the system first came out in the 1960s, there were other noise reduction systems, but the Dolby “Model A” noise reduction system, and its successors, still became dominant. What was it about the Dolby system that made it so successful?
This tutorial will look in some detail into the inner workings of the Dolby A Noise reduction system to see how this came about.
Dolby made some key technical decisions in his design, that worked with the technology of the day, to provide noise reduction that did minimal harm to the audio signal and tried to minimise any audible effects of the noise reduction processing. We will examine these key decisions and show how the fitted with the technology and electronic components at the time.
The tutorial will start with a basic introduction to complementary noise reduction systems and their pros and cons. We will the go on to examine the Dolby system in more detail, including looking at some of the circuitry.
In particular, we will discuss:
1. The principle of least treatment.
2. Side chain processing.
3. Psychoacoustic elements.
4. What Dolby could have done better.
Although the talk will concentrate on the Model 301 processor, if time permits, we will look at the differences between it, and the later Cat 22 version.
The tutorial will be accessible to everyone, you will not have to be an electronic engineer to understand the principles behind this seminal piece of audio engineering history.

Speakers

Jamie Angus-Whiteoak

Emeritus Professor/Consultant, University of Salford/JASA Consultancy

Jamie Angus-Whiteoak is Emeritus Professor of Audio Technology at Salford University. Her interest in audio was crystallized at age 11 when she visited the WOR studios in NYC on a school trip in 1967. After this she was hooked, and spent much of her free time studying audio, radio... Read More →

Saturday May 24, 2025 12:30pm - 1:30pm CEST
C3 ATM Studio Warsaw, Poland

Audio effects Audio perception Music and speech signal processing Studio recording techniques

Presentation Type Workshop