The Audio Powerhouse Event

PLEASE READ ALL THE INFORMATION BELOW

This is a fantastic opportunity to take advantage of an organised series of visits, demonstrations and tours, centered around Salford Quays in Manchester and Bradford.

Our hosts will be:
BBC Research & Development.
The University of Salford, Acoustic Engineering Dept. [Professor Trevor Cox];
The National Science & Media Museum in Bradford. [Claire Groom, curator of TV and Broadcast and Annie Jamieson, curator of Science & Technology].

The proposed schedule is:
Friday 19th May 2017. 13:00 to 16:00.
BBC Research & Development, Salford Quays, Manchester.
- Venue Explorer
- Object based media work
- Listening room/sound studio
- VR (with reference to binaural sound)

Saturday 20th May 2017. 09:00 to 12:00.
University of Salford, Acoustic Engineering.
- Head tracking audio
- Wave field synthesis
- Anechoic chambers
- Acoustic labs
-Making Sense of Sound, and listening tests

Saturday 20th May 2017. *14:45 to 17:45.
National Science & Media Museum, Bradford.
- National TV collection
- New media collection
- Sound technologies
* (at 13:45 a lunch at MSMM, if pre-booked, awaits those traveling from Salford)

BBC R&D
The job of BBC R&D is to help the BBC understand more about what different technologies might offer their audience, and to influence and contribute to developments in technology, from editorial, through to production, distribution and consumption. We plan for you to encounter:
Venue-Explorer. An application to interactively explore ultra-HD panoramic video of a live event, which allows users to zoom into areas of interest, automatically re-mix audio and add live data overlays.
The most up to date Virtual Reality. This intensely immersive experience for the audience presents new challenges and levels of excitement for content creation and delivery.
Project Orpheus. A European research project to develop, implement and validate a new end-to-end object-based media chain for audio content.

University of Salford.
Visit the Acoustic Labs and listen to their work and experiments, including the anechoic chamber. Experience in-depth demonstrations of Waveform Synthesis rigs and other technologies and then get involved with 2 research projects. Spatial Audio ~ and ~ Making Sense of Sound, trying to understand what features of a recording give rise to a particular response e.g. what feature of a dog bark leads a human to think the animal is happy, sad, anxious etc. It is the sort of thing sound designers seem to do intuitively when choosing which particular sounds to use on a track.

National Science & Media Museum.
As the newly re-named National Science & Media Museum, it has now adopted a new definition of its primary areas of interest: the science and culture of light and sound technologies (and their impact on our lives). In line with this, the collecting policy is extended to cover sound technologies more comprehensively, beyond the contexts of film and broadcast media. Our access is private and privileged, and we will receive a tour of the TV and Broadcast collection which has been relocated to storage during the upgrade of public facilities. Many normally unseen items will be made available to examine and discuss. Afterwards the Sound Technology Collection will be displayed and explained. Our guides are 2 (possibly 3) curators of the National Collections.

You can register to attend any or all of the parts of this weekend event, but the IPS, depending upon numbers, may have to prioritise those people booking for more than one part in order to be fair to everybody, especially those making travel and accomodation commitments. There are a total of 30 places at each venue, so hopefully plenty of space for everybody interested.

We do not plan to prearrange accommodation but you will be asked during the booking process if you may need a hotel room for the Friday night. If there is sufficient interest, the IPS may be able to negotiate a group rate with a suitable hotel closer to the time, This will be entirely dependent on numbers, and therefore we can offer no guarantee that we can achieve this. If you prefer a little stability in your life and wish to book your own accomodation sooner rather than later then please go ahead and do so.

If a ticket for any particular part of this weekend event is 'sold out' please contact events@ipstrading.biz to be added to a waitlist.

Thank you.
IPS Events Team.