The Audio Engineering Society (AES) has taken a look back at some of its achievements throughout 2020, and unveils its expanded events and resource plans for the year ahead.

Under the leadership of outgoing AES president Agnieszka Roginska and the AES’s Board of Directors and Board of Governors, with the assistance of the AES staff spearheaded by Executive Director Colleen Harper, scores of volunteers led and served on the committees and working groups that recreated AES services in the face of a global pandemic. 

Throughout 2020, the AES facilitated paths for advancement in the art and science of audio for audio professionals, students and enthusiasts, while looking ahead towards adding new, additional ways to provide the benefits of Audio Engineering Society membership in 2021. 

“AES faced many unprecedented and daunting challenges this past year,” past-president Roginska reflected. “When I look back on what we accomplished in the face of chaos, fear, and uncertainty, I feel an immense sense of pride – none of these things would have been possible without the commitment of the amazing AES community.”

The AES began 2020 with the sold-out AES Academy in January, a featured four-day event held in conjunction with The NAMM Show 2020 in Anaheim, CA, which was followed in March by the AES Worship Sound Academy held in partnership with Belmont University in Nashville, TN.

As the AES looked ahead to the first AES convention of the year, the Society agilely pivoted and adapted the planned AES Europe Convention into “AES Virtual Vienna,” presenting the AES’s first online-only convention.

The AES also introduced a new initiative dedicated to audio product development, the AES Audio Product Education Institute (APEI) and its dedicated events, including an Interactive Voice Con in July, a Product Development Symposium held during the AES Show Fall 2020 Convention in October, and the recent Supply Chain and Sourcing Webinar on December 15.

August saw the third in its series of AES AVAR Conferences on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality, which hosted virtual attendees for a three-day event focusing on spatial audio and technology for virtual, augmented and mixed reality, with a focus on technical solutions and recommended practices in the field. The AES Virtual Symposium on Applications of Machine Learning in Audio followed in September, exploring topics including automatic mixing, audio source separation, audio visualization and effect control, audio capture and recording, sourcing audio data, legal issues, and more.

The AES Fall Show 2020 expanded into “Audio Engineering Month,” offering engaging new ways for attendees to experience more than 300 livestreamed and on-demand presentations, the Partner Showcase exhibition and online booths, virtual TechTours of top studios around the world and more.

One of the year’s biggest debuts was the newly rebuilt AES Live: Videos portal, offering more than 365 videos curated from decades of AES Convention sessions, oral histories, topical workshop and tutorial presentations and more, with additional videos being added year-round. In addition, hundreds of new research papers and documents have been added to the AES E-Library, now featuring more than 20,000 searchable documents covering a variety of topics and technologies. 

2021 looks bright for the Audio Engineering Society. Upcoming events including: 

• The AES Audio Education Virtual Mini-Conference (February 7, 2021)
• The AES Immersive Audio Academy (February 11, 2021) 
• An AES AoIP Summit (February 25, 2021) 
• AES EDM Academy (March 11, 2021)
• The AES Show Spring 2021 Convention (June 1 – 4, 2021)
• The rescheduled AES Audio Education Conference (July 22 – 24, 2021)
• The 2021 AES International Conference on Automotive Audio (October 6 – 8, 2021)
• The AES Show Fall 2021 Convention and Audio Engineering Month events (October 2021)

More announcements and opportunities can be found at AES.org