Annual Meeting: David Bowles on Surround with Height Channels

Microphone Array for Recording Music in Surround-Sound with Height Channels

In the past few years, sound recordings with spatial audio have moved from the realm of theoretical research to the actuality of physical and digital releases in the market. At present, three Blu-Ray disc formats utilize a traditional 5.1 surround-sound recording, with an added 4-channel layer of height channels. David Bowles will discuss how to capture vertical localization effectively within this release format, utilizing existing research on hearing localization and techniques learned in the field. The proposed microphone array has time-of-arrival differences between all microphones, yet mixes down to 5.1 and stereo without excessive comb-filtering or other artifacts.

This is also the annual meeting of the San Francisco section, with election results for the new year.

Schedule
7:00 pm Light refreshments & mixer
7:30 pm Lecture begins

Seating is limited, reservations required, click here to book your seat.

Speaker Bio
David v.R Bowles formed Swineshead Productions, LLC as a classical recording production company in 1995. His recordings have been GRAMMY-nominated (Classical – Best Orchestral Performance) and won the “Classical Orchestral Album” prize (Just Plain Folks Awards). Other Bowles-produced and engineered releases have been named “Record of the Month – Editor’s Choice” from Gramophone Magazine, MusicWeb International and Opera News; “Record of the Year” from the New York Times (three times), the New Yorker, American Record Guide, Miami Clásica and Classical Candour. Several of these are available as high-resolution paid downloads from Naxos.

In collaboration with New York University’s Music Technology programme at Steinhardt School of Music, Mr. Bowles is pursuing research in height channel recording. He has given a paper on his “Bowles array”(a height channel microphone technique) at AES conventions in New York and São Paulo, both followed by 9.1 channel playbacks.

As an educator, Mr. Bowles is a guest lecturer for Tonmeister programmes at New York University (Steinhardt School of Music), the Royal Danish Academy of Music, the Peabody Recording Arts and Sciences (John Hopkins University) and the Banff Centre. He was Visiting Professor of Recording Arts at Indiana University’s Jacobs School.

Mr. Bowles is a member of the AES (Audio Engineering Society), was on the Board of Governors, served on convention committees, and the committee of the San Francisco AES section. He is a member of NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences) Producers & Engineers Wing and SPARS (Society of Professional Audio Recording Services).