April showers bring May flowers — and a new SAI Blog! 🌼🌼🌼 Just as springtime is a revival for the natural world, so too has the audio industry been abuzz with activity. While busy bumblebees bounce from blossom to blossom, Shively Acoustics International (SAI) has also been on the move in recent weeks, with a few stops still ahead. So, what has the spring looked like for SAI so far?

SAI started the season off marking its first anniversary as a company. If you haven’t yet, check out last month’s blog post featuring an interview with SAI president Roger Shively, reflecting on one year of SAI and the industry, and some trivia about our company logo.

Soon after, in mid-April, Roger and SAI were on the road for the SAE World Congress Experience (WCX) in Detroit, Michigan. “The WCX always offers a platform for accelerating progress and innovation,” Roger said about the event, and indeed the first day in Detroit was all about exploring the show floor, eagerly taking in new tech in the worlds of Automotive and Audio. The biggest takeaway for Roger — more a confirmation rather than news — was that software is the name of the game now when it comes to the automotive industry.

The trip to Detroit was a busy one for the SAI boss (Photo: SAI)

“What we’ve been learning today is that the car we knew as a hardware-defined vehicle is now a software-defined vehicle,” he said at the close of the event’s first day on April 16. It is “no longer hundreds of engine control units or modules, but thousands of lines of code,” Roger continued, adding that Audio has a natural place in all of this as it relates to “the sound we want to hear, the voice we want to record, and the noise that we want to cancel” within a vehicle. The biggest challenge, he explained, is that while audio companies have a role to play here, they need partners to cooperate on development in order to increase efficiency and affordability. This is where SAI comes in: “That’s what we’re working hard to do,” Roger said.

On Days 2 and 3, Roger split time between the event and meetings with some of SAI’s industry contacts in the Detroit area, sitting down with Scout Motors (a subsidiary of Navistar), Molex, Sonavox, Harman, and Ford to touch base and discuss possible cooperation in the future.

After Detroit, the next stop for SAI was San Francisco, California, for the Mobility Voice and Noise Conference, organized by HEAD acoustics from May 8-9. Roger was also in attendance to cover the event as a member of the media on behalf of industry magazine audioXpress. The two days of the conference were jam-packed with presentations and hands-on demos, all providing inspiration for articles Roger has planned.

Yobe CEO Ken Sutton at Mobility Voice and Noise (Photo: SAI)

Of particular interest on Day 1 was a presentation and demo given by Yobe CEO Ken Sutton on “voice extraction”, i.e. using voice biometrics to identify a human voice profile among background noise. Following the presentation, Roger held an interview with Ken to learn more about Yobe’s work, which Roger plans to eventually cover in a longer, standalone piece for audioXpress. “There is something unique there,” he said. “I think it’s very significant.” Another standout was the presentation given by Frank Kettler (HEAD acoustics), on vehicle interior acoustics, which Roger also intends to give a full article treatment.

Finally, there is Luis Miguel Arango, the West Coast Accounts Manager at HEAD acoustics, who — as Roger learned over the course of the two days — volunteers locally with youth in difficult life situations, mentoring them and teaching them technical skills to the point that some have been brought on as apprentice engineers at HEAD acoustics. An extraordinary success story that humanizes the world of Audio, Roger will pen a short profile on Luis and those he has mentored.

While these lengthier spotlight articles are in the works, however, Roger has reported on the conference as a whole, focusing on the automotive-related presentations and demos, in a guest editorial The Audio Voice newsletter from audioXpress. For Roger’s personal insights and takeaways from Mobility Voice and Noise, check out The Audio Voice #471.

Lastly, if you’d like to see more of SAI’s day-to-day content from both conferences, visit our Instagram page and scroll away! Listen to more of Roger’s reflections on the events, and see some of his personal favorites, such as an acoustic camera that can track a drone from the sound it produces — wow! 🤯

As spring slips into summer…

Those of you who have been keeping up with the SAI Blog every month know that we are relentless about plugging the upcoming Audio Engineering Society (AES) conferences — and now is no exception, with June just around the corner!

First up is AES Europe 2024 in Madrid from June 15-17. Register now and join us in the Spanish capital for all things Audio and some tapas, too.

Following that is what will be SAI’s biggest industry event of the year: the 2024 AES 5th International Conference on Automotive Audio. Having previously chaired the 2022 conference, Roger is both Vice-Chair and Treasurer of the upcoming edition, which will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden, from June 26-28. The three-day event is sure to be packed with state-of-the-art tech demos, educational talks and presentations, and plenty of networking opportunities for any and all engineers who live at the intersection of Automotive and Audio.

Check out the event website for program details, watch our promotional videos posted here in February, or, as always, stay connected on the SAI socials for more updates as the conference approaches. Register now and don’t miss out! It only comes every two years, after all. 😉

From Seattle to Detroit to San Francisco and now onward to Madrid and Gothenburg, SAI is on an Audio world tour of sorts — and that’s just how we like it: always moving and always connecting. See ya when we see ya, audioheads, wherever you’re heading next. ■

Shively Acoustics International — Modern Audio Solutions, Worldwide

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