Audio Engineering Society Paper and Help?

[Travis]

Regarding the category of paper, maybe it's best to discuss the plan for the paper with the editor of the journal first and see what they recommend.

That is truly an excellent idea, you don't want to spend the time on a 10+ page paper that has no chance of publication from the get-go. However, JAES is a full-blown professional/academic peer-reviewed journal, so it's not one editor, it's a board. Here is the current list, with my suggestions in bold:

EDITORIAL BOARD​

Journal of the Audio Engineering Society​

Editor in Chief​

Vesa Välimäki (Aalto University, Finland)

Deputy Editor in Chief​

Robert C. Maher (Montana State University, USA)

Associate Technical Editors​

Søren Bech (Aalborg University, Denmark) - spatial perception and processing

Stefania Cecchi (Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy) - digital audio processing for audio reproduction enhancement

Charalampos Dimoulas (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) - signal processing, semantic audio

Christof Faller (Illusonic GmbH, Switzerland) - low bit-rate audio coding

Woon-Seng Gan (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) - adaptive signal processing, active noise control

Adam J. Hill (University of Derby, UK) - sound reinforcement and electroacoustics

Hyunkook Lee (University of Huddersfield, UK) - perception and human factors, recording and production techniques

Robert C. Maher (Montana State University, USA) - analysis and synthesis of sound

Piotr Majdak (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria) - spatial audio

Aki Mäkivirta (Genelec, Finland) - loudspeaker processing

Vicki R. Melchior (Technical consultant, USA) - high-resolution audio

Catarina Mendonça (University of Azores, Portugal) - perception

John Mourjopoulos (University of Patras, Greece) - digital processing of audio and acoustic signals

Juhan Nam (KAIST, South Korea) - deep learning in audio and music processing

Antonin Novak (Le Mans University, France) - electroacoustics and measurement

Francis Rumsey (Consultant, UK) - perception and spatial audio

Thomas Sporer (Fraunhofer IDMT, Germany) - psychoacoustics, perception, and listening tests

Lamberto Tronchin (University of Bologna, Italy) - room acoustics and architectural acoustics

Luca Turchet (University of Trento, Italy) - interactive and networked audio

Xiaojun Qiu (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) - room acoustics and signal processing in sound field control

Nadja Wallaszkovits (Phonogrammarchiv, Austria) - audio archiving, storage, and restoration

Toon van Waterschoot (KU Leuven, Belgium) - audio and speech signal processing

 

[Travis]

I am not up for the (political) process of such standardization (think 100 meetings/committee process). But do want to introduce the abbreviated test set we are using. AES has its own protocols for DACs, ADCs, and such but as far as I am concerned, they are kitchen sink tests, mostly involving functionality than performance.

After seeing this, you might want to look at another category of paper (which can also be a presentation) called their Engineering Brief which might be the best fit. I have attached one such brief (that is open access) dealing with a database of speakers tested regarding their directivity.

About Engineering Briefs​

Engineering Briefs are intended to be short verbal talks or poster presentations that will be of interest to AES members. Topics can be very wide-ranging, such as studio experience, equipment construction, new loudspeaker concepts, room acoustic measurements, analysis of audio equipment, and project studio startups, to name just a few. Relaxed reviewing of submissions will consider mainly whether they are of interest to AES members and are not overly commercial. The manuscripts will be restricted to 4 pages, and they will be available to all members for free download using the links on this page.

The Engineering Briefs at these Conventions were selected on the basis of a submitted synopsis, ensuring that they are of interest to AES members, and are not overly commercial. These briefs have been reproduced from the authors' advance manuscripts, without editing, corrections, or consideration by the Review Board. The AES takes no responsibility for their contents. Paper copies are not available, but any member can freely access these briefs. Members are encouraged to provide comments that enhance their usefulness.

 

[amirm]

The manuscripts will be restricted to 4 pages, and they will be available to all members for free download using the links on this page.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have heard of this category before but 4 page limit will just not work even if we stick to one category.

 

[amirm]

Quick thought -- restricting the selection to "dacs, amplifiers and speakers" might still be way too broad. I think it would need to be electronics or speakers, not both.

I guess one approach here would be to write multiple papers, each on one category. My original thought was to cover all as to have it be comprehensive enough for the Journal publication. If we aim as a conference paper, then we could indeed to separate ones. I don't know if this is more or less work than one combined paper.

 

[amirm]

One thing I really like to see now is if anyone is available with professional paper writing experience with editing, formatting, etc.

 

[Travis]

A couple of more JAES papers regarding measurements of audio equipment.

Despite what some may think, measurements and testing of audio equipment to determine "high fidelity" have been around for a long time, especially with AES. I have attached a couple of more papers on this subject that might spark some ideas on narrowing down the focus of a paper. All of these are open access, but show the necessity of doing some research on prior AES publications on the subject of testing/measurements of audio equipment as it relates to the end user/consumer. The 1950 article, Toward a More Realistic Audio has highlights I added around topics and ideas you see stated in this forum.

 

[amirm]

A couple of more JAES papers regarding measurements of audio equipment.

Thanks for the samples. Of course measurements are part of many papers. The difference is that the measurements are a component of the larger research project/paper. In our case, the data is the paper! Yes, there will be text and analysis, justification of the testing, etc. but ultimately, what I like to expose is the performance of current audio products, the good and the bad.

Interesting to see the first two papers more or less hitting the 10 page limit to avoid paying extra fees for publication.

 

[Travis]

One thing I really like to see now is if anyone is available with professional paper writing experience with editing, formatting, etc.

I would suggest you see if @Floyd Toole or @Sean Olive might be able to give you some suggestions. I have many published articles, but they are all in the legal field which, from what I have observed over the last twenty years, is nothing like what is necessary for an academic/professional journal in the engineering field.

As mentioned earlier, searching past JAES articles on measurements, testing, and their relation to objective and subjective impressions, will spark ideas on what a topic "of general interest" to AES members might be whether it is a presentation or a straight article.

As a member, all of the publications are free and accessible. I would start by searching papers by Bruce Hofer, Mark Gander, Scott G. Norcress/Gilbert Soulodre, Christopher Struck, and John Beerends (ITU Standard for Objective Measurements of Perceived Audio Quality) who have written recent articles related to where you are going (testing/measurements of various equipment and their practical application) and who have also won awards for best journal articles by AES.

There is someone on this forum, whose name escapes me currently, who is an academic (in the highest and best sense of that term) who is widely published in science (physics???) - clearly the person to talk to.

I will help in any way that I can, but I'm afraid that it may be limited to brainstorming and "other things to consider."

 

[Gruesome]

That is truly an excellent idea, you don't want to spend the time on a 10+ page paper that has no chance of publication from the get-go. However, JAES is a full-blown professional/academic peer-reviewed journal, so it's not one editor, it's a board. Here is the current list, with my suggestions in bold:

EDITORIAL BOARD​

Journal of the Audio Engineering Society​

Editor in Chief​

Vesa Välimäki (Aalto University, Finland)

Deputy Editor in Chief​

Robert C. Maher (Montana State University, USA)

Associate Technical Editors​

Charalampos Dimoulas (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) - signal processing, semantic audio

Adam J. Hill (University of Derby, UK) - sound reinforcement and electroacoustics

Hyunkook Lee (University of Huddersfield, UK) - perception and human factors, recording and production techniques

Robert C. Maher (Montana State University, USA) - analysis and synthesis of sound

Aki Mäkivirta (Genelec, Finland) - loudspeaker processing

Vicki R. Melchior (Technical consultant, USA) - high-resolution audio

Catarina Mendonça (University of Azores, Portugal) - perception

John Mourjopoulos (University of Patras, Greece) - digital processing of audio and acoustic signals

Juhan Nam (KAIST, South Korea) - deep learning in audio and music processing

Antonin Novak (Le Mans University, France) - electroacoustics and measurement

Francis Rumsey (Consultant, UK) - perception and spatial audio

Thomas Sporer (Fraunhofer IDMT, Germany) - psychoacoustics, perception, and listening tests

Lamberto Tronchin (University of Bologna, Italy) - room acoustics and architectural acoustics

Xiaojun Qiu (University of Technology Sydney, Australia) - room acoustics and signal processing in sound field control

Toon van Waterschoot (KU Leuven, Belgium) - audio and speech signal processing

Well, does anybody here on ASR know anybody there (on the editorial board)? Or even better, is somebody from the editorial board here, and can give Amir advice?
It's not my field, so I know nothing and nobody...

Purely guessing from the descriptions, at first glance, the guy at the Fraunhofer Institute could be the right address (psychoacoustics, perception, and listening tests) for the loudspeaker aspect. Or maybe not, since listening tests play a relatively small and more importantly non-standardized role in your tests. Do DACs, amps and speakers all fall under 'signal processing'? Or, since Genelec takes some top spots in your tables, might the 'loudspeaker processing' editor be a good choice for the loudspeaker testing aspect? To me it doesn't quite sound like it. There are a lot of partial matches in the editor field descriptions with aspects of the paper(s).

The prospective paper (series) covers several fields, so I would still advocate to send a brief outline to the top guy/gal and rely on him/her delegating it to the appropriate subcommittee(s) for feedback.

I'm always very enthusiastic about other people writing stuff up.... ;-)


Also, about the per page fees: other journals in other fields have pretty strict page limits (at least for some categories of papers); the JAES seems to merely soften these cutoffs by introducing penalties. But I wouldn't be surprised if going significantly over would decrease the chances of getting published, at least in the category you picked.

 

[Travis]

Yes, there will be text and analysis, justification of the testing, etc. but ultimately, what I like to expose is the performance of current audio products, the good and the bad.

Remember, if it is a full JAES paper, their guidelines do not typically allow you to name products, they have to be described in general. If you look at Floyd and Shawn's papers, they give general descriptions of different speakers, but they never state the specific models. The "database" example I listed above is the closest I was able to find (so far) on what it is I think you are seeking to do. The presentation is on the database, but they don't include the entire database. If is very much scientific method -- this is what we do, this is how we do it, this is where you can find the information, this is what we have found to be significant about these measurements. Then they compare two out of their database (Sanders and KEF).

I think you could do a similar paper/presentation on the ASR databases of DACs, Amplifiers, etc., individually or combined.

Their abstract:

ABSTRACT
Anechoic directivity data for a variety of loudspeakers have been measured and compiled into a freely available
online database, which may be used to evaluate these loudspeakers based on their directivities. The measurements
are illustrated through four types of plots (frequency response, polar, contour, and waterfall) and are also given
as raw impulse responses. Two sets of directivity metrics are defined and are used to rank the loudspeakers. The
first set consists of full and partial directivity indices that isolate sections of the loudspeaker’s radiation pattern
(e.g., forward radiation alone) and quantify its directivity over those sections. The second set quantifies the extent
to which the loudspeaker exhibits constant directivity. Measurements are taken, in an anechoic chamber, along
horizontal and vertical orbits with a (nominal) radius of 1.6 m and an angular resolution of five degrees.

 

[amirm]

Remember, if it is a full JAES paper, their guidelines do not typically allow you to name products, they have to be described in general.

Yes, I expect to have to anonymize the data. Conference papers do include specific product names in an appendix. Not sure if that is allowed for the Journal or not.

 

[lecriquet]

I agree 100%.

You should first talk to the editor before spending hours writing the paper.

Regarding the category of paper, maybe it's best to discuss the plan for the paper with the editor of the journal first and see what they recommend.

As I read it, the fees for excess pages seem simply structured to discourage research papers much longer than 10 pages and review papers much longer than 20 pages.

About the deadlines for reviewed papers for the conference issue: maybe I don't understand your question correctly, but those have to be earlier to leave time for the reviewers, including possible iterations of the paper to get it accepted.
if you just submit a regular paper for review, it will go into the next issue when it's ready, whichever issue that is.
I'm not familiar with the JAES, but does your paper have to be targeted at the conference issue (because those issues get more attention, maybe?), or could it go into a regular issue of the JAES?

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I agree 100%.

You should first talk to the editor before spending hours writing the paper.

Absolutely - they also have a sense quite early on, of what everyone else is submitting and can steer the author away from duplication. I've always found them very helpful because it's in their interest for the talks to be stimulating thereby bringing more attendees

 

[robwpdx]

Hello everyone.

Despite the popularity of ASR, I feel that a lot of people in the industry are not aware of what we have been doing. Specifically I am talking about huge library of objective review data we have created across many categories of products and some conclusions from the same. To remedy this, I thought I/we should submit a paper to Audio Engineering Society, either for convention (i.e. no peer review required), or the Journal of AES (peer reviewed with potential fees for publications). Alas, I have not honed in on the specific title and focus of the paper. The general thought is, "Learning and Conclusions from Objective Measurements/Review of 1500+ Audio Products."

The purpose of this thread is to (1) get feedback/ideas on this work and (2) get help from those of you who have written professional papers (for this or other industries) to do the actual editing, formatting, etc. of whatever we write.

My current thought is having a paper with distinct sections for speakers, headphones, amplifiers, DACs, etc. We would explain what is measured and why, followed by summary tables/graphs (e.g. SINAD, SINAD vs cost, SINAD vs country of manufacture, etc.). We would opine on why tests are selected, value and issues with each.

I think done right, this would be a very comprehensive paper with significant length. It is not typical of what AES publishes but I think that is what makes it so needed.

Assuming we move forward, the target should be AES New York Conference 2023, held October 25th through 27th. Here are the deadlines for various types of papers: https://aes2.org/contributions/aes-new-york-2023/

Papers & Express Papers:​

Peer Reviewed Papers Category 1 proposal deadline
May 31, 2023

Express Papers Category 2 proposal deadline
August 4, 2023

JAES Papers proposal deadline
August 4, 2023

Peer Reviewed Category 1 acceptances emailed
July 31, 2023

Express Papers and JAES Papers acceptances emailed
August 21, 2023

Categories 1 & 2 final manuscript deadline
September 29, 2023

I don't understand why peer reviewed papers for the conference have such quick deadline whereas the Journal papers which are also peer reviewed have a lot more time allowance.

Here are the submission requirements for J. AES papers: https://www.aes.org/journal/authors/guidelines/

Strange that they charge for 10+ pages to the tune of $100 per page! Maybe we can qualify as "Review Paper" with 20 page allowance.

Anyway, let's first hash out if want to do this and if so, exactly what we want to propose. Least hassle would be a conference paper but sure would be nice to have a Journal one.

That is a great idea. It would be some work to pull together all the references on "just noticeable difference," listening space noise floors, phase response and discontinuity perception, and the finer points of sampling rate and bit depth in the face of in-home digital processing. It should have a perceptibility vs age reference. Psychoacoustic masking with the seminal work by Fraunhofer Institute and Dolby Laboratories is important. Best SINAD vs year might be an interesting graph.

It might be an idea to collaborate with Audio Precision and Klippel. It is certainly worth a literature search for papers mentioning them. The industry has several platform designers at Purifi, Hypex, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, etc. who could be resources or reviewers. Going too deep on platforms in the paper is probably not appropriate as too commercial.

Usually you will find PhDs in audiology and perceptual psychology who will know the literature, like maybe at UW and among the ASR community. You really need a network like that to bring forth the seminal papers. Universities and their libraries have the literature search database licenses ordinary mortals do not.

 

[Thomas_A]

Interesting idea. For speakers, how about preference score divided in quarter groups and analyse the median/SD of frequency response and directivity plots in the four groups as well as median price with variation? You will need a student/assistent for it though...

 

[sarumbear]

I guess one approach here would be to write multiple papers, each on one category. My original thought was to cover all as to have it be comprehensive enough for the Journal publication. If we aim as a conference paper, then we could indeed to separate ones. I don't know if this is more or less work than one combined paper.

If you separate the device types and have an overview paper, all linked (as the sample paper’s authors did) to an online database on ASR then 4-page may suffice. Linking may be good for “marketing” ASR too.

 

[thecheapseats]

@amirm - a couple of points...

first, I'm sure (actually know) your work to date has been noticed by AES membership in general - in fact three AES members I've known for decades (design engineers and mfgs) independently of each other told me about your site and work - which is how I ended up here...

second and most importantly, the (J)AES is rarefied air steered by academics - and the requisites for accepted publishing are typically built upon prior published works (with citations) and the bar is very high...

by all means proceed, however with only a few months to prep and submit a tech paper, that's a steep climb...

 

[AdamG]

JMHO.

A massive undertaking in such an abbreviated time scale will result in suboptimal results. Kick this project back to 2024 submission.

Significantly reduce the scope of this project and instead consider a more flexible annual submission process. Submit separate papers for each specific product category that aligns with your database groupings. Keep it simple and uncomplicated. The concept is broad but the sample products need to be very focused.

I will volunteer for proof reading drafts and whatever administrative tasks you need help.

Start with the newest technology that is making the biggest impact on the Audio World. For instance Class-D amps are changing the landscape and paradigm of big, heavy and hot. We can make a Green Energy argument here as well. Higher efficiency results in smaller carbon footprint. Audiophiles help in saving the planet politically correct stuff. Next would be a feeder follow up on Powered Speakers. They are becoming the new measurement standard in speaker performance and they are employing class-d amplifier technology. Thirdly I would consider a paper on Streaming DAC’s as they appear to be the future of Music delivery services.

If the goal here is to shine a light on what we do here at ASR? Then we don’t need to feed them the whole buffet. We give them a cherry picked appetizer/Hors D’oeuvres. Hopefully the first sample submission will create a desire for more submissions. This will further help us identify and understand the AES Board interest levels for what you/we do here.

 

[GXAlan]

I think it will be too controversial to do the cost and country info. Sample error plays a big role too.

What would be less controversial but equally useful for expanding the ASR brand:

For inflation adjusted costs, we can report SINAD relative to year of introduction. This will show the overall impression that we have better gear at lower costs, which makes everyone happy.

Or preference score versus year of product introduction for speakers, ignoring non standard radiation patterns.

Sampling error is that only the best vintage stuff would have survived. But you still would expect to see that trend.

 

[thecheapseats]

...A massive undertaking in such an abbreviated time scale will result in suboptimal results. Kick this project back to 2024 submission....

there's something to be said in favor of 'striking; while the iron is hot, and possibly missing a timely opportunity that cannot be recaptured (while chatter re: ASR is high beyond the resident membership here)...

it's a tough call to go for a submission this year or postpone until 2024.... glad I don't have to make that decision... : )