Boston Section

The Second Annual "Show and Tell" meeting of the Boston Audio Engineering Society was held March 11, 2003 at the Digital Bear Entertainment studio. The purpose of this meeting each year is to provide members with an opportunity to share recent recordings, learn what our peers have been doing, and get learned feedback on current projects in a friendly, non-competitive forum. As in prior years, the meeting was an unqualified success. The atmosphere, as with most BAES meetings, was relaxed, fun, and collegial.

The evening began with nearly all participants arriving early! While we awaited the arrival of dinner, we warmed up the evening with some old-fashioned head banging to the 5.1 surround DVD-A of Metallica's self-titled album.

The BAES provided its usual gracious spread, this time Chinese food from Chef Chow's House on Harvard Street in Brookline. Served buffet style, we were able to mingle and catch up with each other. The listening program began upstairs in the home theatre area where we were able to listen to a number of Digital Theatre Sound (DTS) encoded CDs of classical recordings made and brought to us by David Greisinger of Harmon Industries. These included surround recordings of the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall, other ensembles at Jordan Hall, Trinity Church, and Sander's Theatre. In particular, David commented on the use of the rooms in his recordings, and made special note of where the room was actually working against the recording, explaining his solutions as we listened.

Ira Leonard provided a number of commercially released DVD-A for listening pleasure, in particular a recording of concerto for double orchestra, wherein the recording was made with one orchestra in front of the recording/listening position and the other behind. Very interesting and effective use of surround! I am still ruminating on the applications to rock arrangement.

The group then moved downstairs into the DBE studio to listen to stereo recordings. This was a true fun fest! Too many pieces were played to list them all, but highlights included some slick pop from Matt Girard, metal from Steve Devino, hip-hop from Brian Moynihan, jazz by Steve Richardson and Mike Andrews, and big hair metal by Joel Goldberg's son's band. To cap off the evening, we listened to a 30 second composition for commercial television advertising done by Digital Bear Entertainment's Director of Artist Relations, Adam Nelson.

On behalf of the AES, and other participants, I'd like to thank everyone for coming out to this exciting meeting and sharing their projects and wisdom. I'm sure that next year's "Show and Tell" will be similarly stimulating.

See you all next month.

- Jordan Tishler, Chairman
Audio Engineering Society, Boston Section