AES and NAB – On stage again in New York

But is this their final encore together?

In October, we were again in New York City for the now established double-header for the music, post-production, TV and Film audiences who visit these two North Eastern tradeshows and technical events. The AES exhibits floor opened on Tuesday, 8 Oct., but not until 1 pm although after a full day of education events on Monday, while the NAB New York Show, occupying the larger adjacent hall, held back its opening until Wednesday morning. Both events closed at the end of the day on Thursday, a calendar driven by a number of things, including working around several religious holidays.

This year’s co-located events were also fully accessible to each other from either side of the two linked convention halls, which allowed for some useful cross-pollination of audio and video disciplines. As with previous years, a few companies, such as comms manufacturer Clear-Com and Blackmagic, decided to establish stands in both halls, splitting the product offering and staff for the two distinctly different audiences and attendees. We know of others who have chose to flip flop between the two each year, generally trying get a sense of which works better for their desired engagement.

Being held again at the iconic Javits Center on Manhattan’s west side, both organisations packed a lot of people and content in, and noteably this year, entry to the halls, especially on the first day, was smooth and well organised so there were no big lines and delays to navigate. NAB’s announced final tally was 12,000 attendees, with 250 exhibitors. Released figures for actual AES registrations were announced at “nearly 6,000 professionals, enthusiasts, and exhibitors from around the world.” The key word ‘enthusiasts’ in there, a reminder of how much music and other audio production now takes place in ‘DIY’ environments. What started to emerge as far back as the late 80s and 90s as ‘project studios’ and ultimately into ‘bedroom producers’, leaving a much smaller number of active major studios and facilities operating as fully commercial operations. Many of those AES Convention attendees were there for a densely packed and diverse presentation and education program, although there was a somewhat conspicuously less-dense show floor.

The point of holding these particular shows in New York, which is notorious for its high freight and goods handling costs and more lately for very expensive hotel rooms — about 135 of the city’s roughly 680 hotels now house migrants under the city’s mandatory shelter program, according to the New York Times — is that the city is the nexus of the country’s broadcast business. Not surprisingly, a decent amount of the audio there was broadcast focused. Calrec, illustrated several key trends in that sector, with the UK-based company demonstrating its new Argo M console, whose lower cost and IP-nativity reflected both broadcasters’ recent extreme reluctance to spend money (several major networks, including CBS and Disney-owned ESPN, needed to be made to look more attractive on the auction block as cable and Over The Air television fell to streaming) and their shift to network and cloud operations to support more cost-effective remote production operations (often referred to as REMI, i.e. REMote Integration). At the same time they were enjoying celebrating their 60th anniversary. Well done all round!

The AES show’s agenda was more focused on music production, surrounded by the usual academic and scientific papers delivered off the show floor as part of the conference programme. As usual, the pragmatic — The Anatomy of a Recording Session or a master class with producer/mixer Susan Rogers — adjoined the obscure — A Cepstrum Analysis Approach To Perceptual Modelling of the Precedence Effect — and the delightfully odd: Exploring the Directivity of the Lute, Lavta, and Oud Plucked String Instruments.

Education

One of the hallmarks of the AES Convention over the years has been its educational component, and it routinely draws hordes of aspiring young engineers and producers to its sessions and presentations where their energy and enthusiasm is welcome and infectious. This year, however, one of the established and reliably big draws for them was missing. France-based Mix With The Masters has over the years brought to the stage at AES events a slew of marquee names to discuss their respective accomplishments. This year, MWTM was notably absent, though singer, songwriter and producer Jack Antonoff and his longtime mix engineer Laura Sisk were on hand for a well-attended stage interview. Draws such as these are critical for keeping younger people engaged with the pro-audio industry, not just the broader music business.

Ironically, on the NAB side of things, one well-paying category of audio mixer is potentially creeping closer to extinction, as the broadcast business in general and broadcast sports in particular are finding their pool of ‘A1’ audio mixers steadily dwindling. Yet the audio aspect of the NAB event’s education programme appeared to be worryingly light on sound topics. Perhaps in this there has been some reliance on the AES and there being a strong audio education content program immediately adjacent and next door at the Javits for some time now. This however is all set to change next year… more on this later.

We met with Rachel Ludeman, employment coordinator at the Phoenix-area Conservatory of Recording Sciences,, at the AES Career Fair, who commented that it’s still a relative trickle of graduates who opt for broadcast. The 21-to-26-year-old males who make up the vast majority of CRAS students are still mainly focusing on music recording or live sound.

For sound and broadcast together, the pro-audio education industry, which increasingly counts large – and high-tuition – universities such as NYU and USC in its circle as well as dedicated stalwarts like Full Sail University and SAE, has not figured out a reliable way to connect these two clearly complementary cohorts. Not surprisingly, the television networks who still depend upon this diminishing supply of A1s is looking very closely at Artificial Intelligence and other technologies to increasingly automate that process. It’s another reason that remote production, under rubrics like REMI and at-home, were a big focus again at the NAB side of the event, as they allow those A1s to mix from central studio facilities, or even from their own homes, instead of having to incur travel costs and fatigue.

Sessions

Christoph Thompson, Director of Music Media Production, Ball State University, again chaired his fascinating ‘Audio Design Roundtable’ session for the next generation of product designers, which featured a number of verterans and rising stars of audio electronics design including George Massenburg, Tony Agnello, Marek Walaszek, Dave Derr and Brecht De Man. Discussions focused a lot on the value of having a go and how all designs may not be perfect but by getting started, listening and learning from others you learn and evolve better design. Christoph also used this session to present and explain about the Saul Walker Student Design Competition which he also chairs and which Interfacio has supported for a number of years by way of a mentoring prize focused on product commercialization.

On Wednesday, AES Education Co-Chair Ian Corbett hosted a session about starting your career entitled rather intriguingly “Ask Me Anything”. The panel included Margaret Luthar (NPR), Josh Rogosin (Tiny Desks), sound designer and Podcaster, Angela Baughman, Joel Hamilton (Studio G Brooklyn) as well as our own Richard Wear. It proved to be a fun discussion looking at how the various panelists broke into their chosen careers and navigated both obstacles and opportunities.

The AES Career and Education Fair took place as usual, this time on the final day on the main show floor, which we attended alongside a host of audio educators from across North America alongside a small number of employers. We always enjoy meeting students recent graduates as they embark on their professional journeys exploring the landscape of opportunities in the audio industry across production, engineering and business, and how to present themselves and articulate their ambitions and career ideas. We were pleased to see this format maintained following the major changes in the Society’s operational and commercial management over the last year and hope to see this continue. It would be good to see a stronger representation from employers as well as educators going forward, at what is an ideal recruiting event.

Out and about in the City

Away from the show floor, we were able to get to a number of off-site mixer events, most notably the Barbizon roof-top reception on Tuesday evening, with a host of film and TV technicians and operators, production industry and product brand representatives, and featuring some stunning projection across to neighbouring buildings. John Krivit, founder of the Hey Audio Student community group and past President of the AES, together the UK-based pioneer and innovator in remote collaboration and production, Audiomovers, hosted an education mixer at Quad Studios In Times Square which featured a live demo and hook up with Audiomovers’ sister company Abbey Road Studios in London alongside tours of the studio and some great conversations on the future of audio technology, production and education

And AES President and Grammy Award winner, Dr. Leslie Gaston-Bird hosted the now regular DEI reception sponsored by Source Connect, which highlighted the strides forward that the audio industry is making and seeing in diversity, equality and inclusion across the various areas of the business. This was well supported but clearly there is more work to do to keep this trend moving in the right direction…

AES going west next year

The announcement mid-show that the 2025 AES Show would take place in Long Beach, California and not co-located with NAB or any other trade organisation’s expos left some exhibitors befuddled, a decision an AES spokesperson attributed to “budgets and the demand from our members,” after considering other east- and west-coast locations. So, the NAB New York event will take place next year at the same Javits Center location, October 22-23, without a partnering AES event.

The National Association of Music Merchandisers’ (NAMM) and the AES’s core constituencies — the musicians and performers of the former and producers and engineers of the latter — have been increasingly overlapping in the digital era for decades now. In 2012, the TEC Awards, pro audio’s main technical awards program, moved from the AES Show to the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA; a second major pro-audio awards program, the Parnelli Awards, which honour achievements in live and touring sound, also relocated to NAMM’s January main expo, in 2017. For its 2018 expo, the NAMM Show unveiled a new 200,000-square-foot wing that’s been dedicated to pro audio since then. Next year’s “2025 NAMM Show” will also for the first time run for five days, a day longer than usual, as its exhibitor and attendee numbers increase. We feel that NAMM, with its extra space at the winter show on the west coast, or even in Nashville for their established summer event, would present a suitable alternative partner for the AES to team up with to ensure a critical mass of attendees and a pragmatic distribution of costs for both exhibitors and visitors. For 2025, clearly the North East audio community and Metro New York In particular will be missing out, and we’re yet to see and hear what is anticipated and proposed for the longer term.

Asked further if any consideration had been given to co-location next year’s or other subsequent shows with the Summer NAMM Show in music-centric Nashville, the AES spokesperson replied, “Not currently, but it’s something definitely that can be explored.”

Takeaways, and going remote

Overall, it was a lively and engaging few days with the NAB and AES organisations and events working hard to engage with their new market dynamics, trends, constituents, users and customers in new ways. Remote collaboration and production is clearly uppermost in the minds of many suppliers, broadcasters and content producers, alongside the inevitable need to understand and harness AI in production and creation in positive ways. And DEI is also at the forefront it seems now as a priority and agenda for the whole industry alongside the clear need to develop and educate the next generation of audio and broadcast professionals.

As we look back on New York and the AES show in particular, we can’t help wondering how the AES Convention will fair next year as it cuts loose from its now established home in New York and October show partner NAB, as it navigates the strong winds of change blowing through the audio and broadcast production industry.

One thing is for sure – We’ll be there in Long Beach to find out….

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Creamsource ; Calrec Audio ; BlackMagic ™ ; ClearCompany ; Rachel Ludeman and Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences ; Rebekah Wilson and Source Elements ; Audiomovers ; TELEFUNKEN ; Christoph Thompson and Ball State University ; NPR ; Studio G Brooklyn ; John Krivit ; ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS LIMITED