DAFx-16 19th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects DAFx-16 September 5–9, 2016 Brno, Czech Republic
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DAFx-16 Program

DAFx-16 Program at a Glance

The entire program at a quick glance. Scroll down for information on keynotes and tutorials, and for the complete program.

Tutorials

Václav Peloušek & Lennart Schierling (Bastl Instruments) - Instrument Design Upside Down with Bastl Instruments

Abstract:

Emulating inherently digital artefacts with analog technology? Sounds created by running sound processing on processors virtually unable to render them? This Bastl [local term for hack] mindset as a design approach for musical instruments and tools has been the key for Bastl Instruments main developer Václav Peloušek to create a range of desktop hardware instruments and eurorack modules. Analog and digital circuits running at the edge of collapse to work in harmony as part of digital-analog-mechanical hybrid systems. Lennart Schierling is the main developer of Thyme—robot operated digital tape machine—a very universal sequencable hardware DSP processing unit to be released soon.

Bio:

Bastl Instruments is a dynamic and community driven company focused on producing hand-made electronic musical instruments. The products we make mainly spring from our needs we have as musicians and range from tabletop instruments and utilities to modules for eurorack modular systems. We are based in Brno, Czech Republic where we also run a small shop called noise.kitchen . It all started in 2011 as Standuino and transformed into Bastl in 2013.

Václav Peloušek has a MA degree in Art & Science, University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Lennart Schierling has a diploma in electrical engineering from Dresden university of technology.

Jaromír Mačák - Analog effects modeling - new ways to get old sounds

Abstract:

The term virtual analog effects has been known in digital audio effects community for several years. But until recently, this type of audio effects have been accepted by a wider range of musicians and end users as adequate equivalent to classic analog audio effects. This is due to a significant improvement of the methods and algorithms for real-time digital simulation of analog circuits. This tutorial will give an overview of basic techniques used in virtual analog modeling based either on deep analysis of the circuit schematic or measurement of analog audio effect. Pros and cons of both approaches will be mentioned as well as real examples using these techniques with attention for real-time implementation of these algorithms.

Bio:

Jaromir Macak is a software developer and researcher with passion for real-time digital audio effects. As an electric guitar player, the main interest is digital simulation of analog guitar effects and amplifiers. He received a Ph.D. at Brno University of Technology with focus on real-time digital simulation of analog circuits. He has had research stay in Hamburg at Helmut Schmidt University. He is an author of several algorithms used in commercial products.

Jukka Pätynen & Sakari Tervo (Aalto University School of Science) - Detailed Analysis of Room Acoustics by Spatiotemporal Methods

Abstract:

The analysis of sound fields in rooms has been under interest for a long time. Many traditional methods aim to describe the room-acoustic effect in terms of single number values. However, numeric parameters often fail in communicating the multi-dimensional effects. The introduction of compact microphone arrays have enabled an increasingly detailed analysis of the sound field. This tutorial will present the latest advances in investigating the spatial, spectral, and temporal structure of the acoustics of enclosures with visual techniques. These methods are demonstrated with a recently published, freely available analysis toolbox.

Bio:

Dr. Sakari Tervo is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science in Aalto University. He received a M.Sc. degree in audio signal processing from Tampere University of Technology in 2006 and a D.Sc. degree in the field of acoustic signal processing from Aalto University in 2012. He has been a visiting researcher in Philips Research, in the Netherlands, in 2007, and in the University of York in 2010. His research interests include spatial audio analysis, synthesis, and reproduction methods.

Jukka Pätynen is a post-doctoral researcher in the field of room and music acoustics in Aalto University, Espoo, Finland, where he also received his Ph.D.. His research interests span a wide range of topics ranging from musical instrument sounds and auralization to novel analysis methods of room acoustics and psychophysiological effects of sound. His most prominent publications contribute to the perception of concert hall acoustics.

Keynote Speakers

Peter Balazs (ARI Vienna) - Frames in audio processing: What you use, but might not know

Abstract:

Given a certain number of sampling points, can it be useful to represent them with a larger collection of points/values? If not, why are spectrograms usually using overlapping windows? Given a particular analysis filter bank, when and how can a synthesis procedure be found that enables perfect reconstruction? What are the conditions for that? Is a quadrature-mirror condition the only way? How can a time-varying filter be implemented by directly manipulating the time-frequency coefficients? What properties do such time-frequency filters have? All those (and similar) questions will be answered by using the theory of frames and its application to audio signal processing.

Note: use DAFx16 Wireless Guest Access password to open the presentation.

Bio:

Peter Balazs received the PhD (2005) and the habilitation (2011) degree at the University of Vienna in mathematics, in cooperation with the Numerical Harmonic Analysis Group (NuHAG). He is a member of the Acoustics Research Institute (ARI) of the Austrian Academy of Science since 1999. He also worked in Marseille, France both at the Laboratoire d’Analyse Topologie et Probabilités (LATP), and the Laboratoire de Mécanique et d’Acoustique (LMA), CNRS from 2003 to 2006; and with the Unité de physique théorique et de physique mathématique (FYMA) from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-La-Neuve in 2005. He is the founder of the working group ”Mathematics and Acoustical Signal Processing” at ARI in 2008 and institute director since 2012. He has received the Austrian START price (the national equivalent of the ERC starting grant) in 2011 and is IEEE senior member since 2012. He has authored or co-authored 33 peer-reviewed international journal papers, three book chapters, as well as 20 peer-reviewed proceedings. His research interests include frame theory, time-frequency analysis, Gabor analysis, signal processing, acoustics, and psychoacoustics.

Michael Hlatky (Native Instruments) - Design at Native Instruments

Abstract:

Since Native Instruments introduced Generator, the first modular synthesizer for a desktop computer environment more than 20 years ago, the company has released a large variety of hardware and software to perform and produce music. This talk will give an insight into how we—the people working at NI—design the hardware, develop the software, decide upon features and what lessons we learned.

Bio:

Michael Hlatky works at Native Instruments as a product designer in the areas of interaction design, user interface design and experience design. Before joining Native Instruments, he worked as a sound designer and DSP developer for Audi AG and Bang & Olufsen a/s.

Sakari Tervo (Aalto University School of Science) - Parametric Spatial Room Impulse Response Analysis and Synthesis: A High-Resolution Approach

Abstract:

The analysis of room acoustics is of great interest in subjective and objective studies of acoustic spaces. Often, the goal in room acoustic studies is to explain the subjective experience of sound, for example, speech clarity or bassiness, with the objective measurements of the sound field. In order to describe a sound field spatially, a microphone array impulse response measurement is required. This keynote lecture presents an approach to the analysis and synthesis of the sound field measured with a microphone array via parametric models. Estimation methods of the parameters in the model, and the detection of which model fits the data the best are described. Pros and cons of the parametric approach are discussed and examples with some commercially available microphone arrays are described.

Bio:

Dr. Sakari Tervo is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science in Aalto University. He received a M.Sc. degree in audio signal processing from Tampere University of Technology in 2006 and a D.Sc. degree in the field of acoustic signal processing from Aalto University in 2012. He has been a visiting researcher in Philips Research, in the Netherlands, in 2007, and in the University of York in 2010. His research interests include spatial audio analysis, synthesis, and reproduction methods.

DAFx-16 Program

Please note that the program is subject to change.

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