The 2022 AES International Automotive Audio Conference Is Next Week - A Retrospective from the Chair
In September 2019, we were just wrapping up the last Audio Engineering Society's International Automotive Conference in Ingolstadt, Germany. Within four months, the way we looked at the world would change in many historical ways.
Roger Shively, Chair of the 2022 AES International Automotive Audio Conference in Dearborn, Michigan, speaking at the 2019 AES International Automotive Audio Conference in Ingolstadt, Germany.
Planning for our next conference started a month after Ingolstadt, and we scheduled it for June 2021. We quickly decided it was time we returned to Detroit, the home of the first International Automotive Audio Conference in 2009. In the coming months it became clear we would need to delay or think of an alternative.
The world was going virtual. But, while we might be able to design a car, or tune a car, or talk about a car virtually, the only way we could truly experience the qualities and features of automotive audio was to be in a car. To touch it. And this wasn't to be. One delay was followed by a looming pause. And we paused.
Planning continued, but we waited. In the space of time, careers changed, and our planning committee changed. We bid farewell to those starting new adventures and welcomed those who were happy to take on new responsibilities and challenges.
When light began to shine again, dimly at first, we said now or never, and June 8-10, 2022 in Dearborn, Michigan would be the time and the place. And we pressed play. And we began to run down-hill toward the coming days. A little exhausted, but excited, and equally honored to help make this always unique experience of the Automotive Audio Conference come to life.
We've added our friends at AES's Audio Product Education Institute (APEI), (now known as the Audio Product Development Alliance), to work along-side us at the conference and to try to focus on the new topics that emerged and became more relevant as the automotive industry hit a reset button and electric vehicles became the main thing on planning calendars. All the new topics will be covered: Noise and Sound, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning, and of course Automotive Audio, immersive and otherwise.
It has been my honor to serve as the chair for this conference, and to help guide the team through such an unprecedented time in the conference’s history.
