At our June meeting, we will hold our annual elections for the officers and committee positions that form the backbone of our AES section. The committee is in charge of actively planning all logistics for our meetings and activities.

Voting

• Attending the June Meeting and casting your vote in person.
• Vote by mail by downloading and printing the election ballot (right-click the link) and mail it to the address shown on the Ballot. Be sure to put your membership number on the front of the envelope (in the return address or in the lower left corner). This needs to be RECEIVED by June 27, 2016, so that it can be counted on June 29.

For purposes of the quorum, it shall be the sum of the voting members present at the meeting and those members who voted by mail. If we do not have a quorum at the June meeting, then the election shall be conducted by mail.

• Officers hold their positions for one year.
• Committee positions are for two years. There are 10 positions, 5 of them elect every year to ensure continuity in the committee.
• Members and Associate members of the PNW Section may vote.
• Nominations can be made from the floor at the meeting, or (preferably) submitted to _________ nominations chair.

More about Elections     BALLOT

Slate of Candidates and Biographical Information

• Chair — Dan Mortensen
  

  Dan is President of Dansound Inc., which specializes in live sound reinforcement and is Washington State dealer for Meyer Sound Laboratories, among other dealerships. He is currently serving on the AES PNW committee, and has previously held the posts of Chair, Vice-Chair, and Treasurer. He is the current Executive Director of the Washington Association of Production Services. After more than 20 years, Dan continues to find that serving on the AES PNW Committee is still one of his favorite things.

• Vice Chair — James (JJ) Johnston
  

  JJ received the BSEE and MSEE degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA in 1975 and 1976 respectively.

  JJ temporarily retired in 2002 but worked 26 years for AT&T Bell Labs and its successor AT&T Labs Research. He was one of the first investigators in the field of perceptual audio coding, one of the inventors and standardizers of MPEG 1/2 audio Layer 3 and MPEG-2 AAC, as well as the AT&T Bell Labs or AT&T Labs-Research PXFM (perceptual transform coding) and PAC (perceptual audio coding) and the ASPEC algorithm that provided the best audio quality in the MPEG-1 audio tests.

  Most recently he has been working in the area of auditory perception of soundfields, electronic soundfield correction, ways to capture soundfield cues and represent them, and ways to expand the limited sense of realism available in standard audio playback for both captured and synthetic performances. He was most recently employed by DTS Audio and his current status is retired.

  Mr. Johnston is an IEEE Fellow, an AES Fellow, a NJ Inventor of the Year, an AT&T Technical Medalist and Standards Awardee, and a co-recipient of the IEEE Donald Fink Paper Award. Mr. Johnston has presented many times for the PNW Section, most recently on the issues surrounding "Dynamic Range." In 2006, he received the James L. Flanagan Signal Processing Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and presented the 2012 Heyser Lecture at the AES 133rd Convention: Audio, Radio, Acoustics and Signal Processing: the Way Forward.

• Secretary — Gary Louie, UW School of Music
  

  Gary has been the recording engineer for the University of Washington School of Music since 1979, previously earning his BSEE at the UW. He has served as AES PNW Section Chair, Vice Chair, Committee, and most recently, Secretary since 1993. Gary is also the co-author, with Glenn White, of the Audio Dictionary 3rd Ed.

• Treasurer — Lawrence Schwedler, Digipen
  

  Lawrence Schwedler has worked in the video game industry as a composer, sound designer and audio director for twenty years. In 1993 he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in classical guitar and electronic music from UCLA, where he was a founding member of the Modern Arts Guitar Quartet. From 1999 to 2012 he served as audio director for Nintendo Software Technology, where he co-authored two U.S. patents for adaptive music and audio. In August 2012, he left Nintendo to direct the new undergraduate programs in music and sound design at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond.

Section Committee (alpha order)

• Paul Colvin
  

  Paul Colvin has been involved with the professional audio world for over 40 years, starting from the time he was a student in sound engineering and stage lighting at US International University School of Performing Arts in San Diego, becoming a member of AES by 1973. In 1975 he started his own professional audio sales & service company, Audio Specialists of San Diego, which supported clients such as Sea World, San Diego Zoo, Starlight Opera, the Old Globe Theatre, Hotel del Coronado, the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and various TV and radio stations. In 1978 he founded the San Diego Section of the AES.

  Leaving San Diego for Los Angeles in 1980, he went to work at Litton-Westrex as its Engineering Manager, during which time he became a member of the Hollywood-Sapphire group and SMPTE. Leaving Westrex after its sale to Quad 8 in 1984, he went into consulting in both the audio and computer worlds. Moving to Chicago in 1989 he became active in the Chicago Section of the AES, serving as its Secretary from 1996-1998. In 2000 he moved to Seattle, and has continued his connection to professional audio through his membership with the Pacific Northwest Section.

  During these years Paul has presented 2 papers at AES conventions. The first in 1978 on Disco Sound Systems, and the 2nd in 1983 on Servo-looped Disc Playback Systems (a paper co-authored with Professor Keith O. Johnson of Reference Recordings). As an audio engineer Paul has worked for such artists as Paul Anka, Peter Nero, Eddy Arnold, and Victor Borge and engineered shows such as Applause, Music Man, 1776, and Bye Bye Birdie.

• Stephen DeVore
  

  Stephen DeVore received Degrees, with honors, in Audio Engineering and MIDI Production in 1992 and 1996 respectively. In 1995, he received several certificates from The Recording Workshop in Ohio, and in 1997, the Certificate in Sound Production from the University of Washington. The love of music was at the heart of it!

  He has recorded over 70 hours of his own original songs and music, playing & singing; submitted music for indie films; been in several choirs; took several years of college music theory, and the PNW Film Scoring Summer Intensive. He has also recorded and/or mixed several artists. He has a passion for multimedia, taking some in college. Over the years he attended several AES Conventions, CES (shows), NAB (even in 2016), NAMM, Surround, ASCAP, and other shows, plus many AES PNW meetings.

  Stephen worked in the UW's School of Music Computer Center, seeing the birth of the World Wide Web; and worked in various computer labs for years before that, helping students and teachers use the software and hardware.

  He then worked as a broadcast-television camera operator for several years, and in recent years has worked on dozens of film projects.

  Stephen has been an AES member across many of the years, since 1997, and of several, related, industry organizations, such as NARAS, SIFF, NWFF, WIF, TPS, etc. In 2003, he updated his background by taking official classes in Pro Tools (through 210M & P), and in the past few years has taken several more audio courses - film, location, studio - including the 2014 "Hayride" seminar/workshop with Steve Fisk, John Goodmanson, and Steve Turnidge. Since 2014, he has taken more than 60 classes related to film and audio.

  Stephen DeVore is an award-winning Executive Producer of three films made over the past 2 years (2014-2016), and has loved helping people with their films and music! He would like to serve our local AES Section as a member of the Section Committee.

• Steve Macatee
  

  Steve Macatee was born very young in Philadelphia. In 1986 he received a BS in Electronic Engineering from Monmouth College, New Jersey, USA. This is not too far from the armpit of the world, Elizabeth, NJ - but believe it or not, there is a valid reason New Jersey is called "The Garden State" - it's south of the armpit.

  Steve has worked at Rane Corporation since 1987 in several capacities: from manufacturing; mechanical, interface & PCB design; in-house & product documentation; analog, digital, embedded systems and &endash; luckily for everyone &endash; not much GUI or DSP software code. After a decade in R&D Engineering, Steve underwent an Inverse Dilbert Transform and moved to Sales for 4 years as a technical and consultant/contractor liaison. He currently heads the New Product Development and Training department at Rane where he defines new products & technology ideas.

  Steve has been an instructor for audio workshops for AES and Syn-Aud-Con on Grounding and Audio Networking, has published AES papers on grounding and computer-controlled networked audio devices and currently &endash; along with Brad Benn &endash; co-instructs the Synergetic Audio Concepts Digital seminars with Pat Brown of Syn-Aud-Con fame.

  Steve enjoys getting out of the idealized lab and into the real world which doesn't happen quite often enough for him to have a "real clue". Yet he doesn't let this stop him from speaking publicly.

  For fun, Steve enjoys music, great food, spending time with his most-excellent wife and attempting to be a musician with several jazz ensembles in the Seattle area. But, being a drummer, perhaps "musician" is not the proper word?

  A few local AES meeting ideas:

  • What is Impedance? Impedance for air, in electronic circuitry & loudspeaker loads?
  • Listening. I wish there was a way for a periodic listening meeting. Just hang out with some fine loudspeakers in a decent space and play music. Bring your favorite. A side topic for short discussion would be: MP3 vs vinyl vs CD vs reel-to-reel vs 8-track - but the goal is to have attendees hear quality audio since it is becoming a rare thing these days.
  • An evening with Filters: linear & non-linear phase, minimum & non-minimum phase, IIR, FIR. What can you equalize and which filter tool is best for what you just measured? Maybe this needs a part 1 meeting on phase and part 2 is on filters in more detail?
  • Audio Precision - testing audio of any kind.
  • How different local audio companies differ - and why? Compare in a moderated &/or serial discussion with employees from: Audio Control, Symetrix, Mackie/Loud, Tectonic Loudspeakers, Rane, perhaps Music Group (your personal favorite “local” folks: Behringer. Maybe we can get Uli to show up?)
  • Microsoft's anechoic space
  • Visit an audio install - church or performance theater and talk about the audio system challenges.

• Dana Olson
  

  Dana was raised in Shoreline, currently resides in Kirkland WA. He crashed his first RC plane behind Shoreline Community college when he was 18. He is currently semi-retired with occasional fits of work on loudspeaker design (spending money) and consulting at Parade Technologies on new touch screen technology (making money to spend).

  • Received both BS and MS degrees in Aeronautical Engineering from U of W.
  • Flight control engineer at Boeing working on design software, windshear detection, and fly by wire on airplane 777.
  • Architect and electrical engineering supervisor at Physio Control (Medtronic) in firmware, digital signal processing, ECG measurement signal processing filter, and product development.
  • Sr. application engineering manager for capacitance touch screen sensing, and architect for large touch screen and noise rejection systems.

• Marlie Pesek
  

  Marlie believes that success is a mixture of entrepreneurship, talent and tireless, hard work. It is her mission to envision and implement an audio program of the highest caliber, rich in real-world experience for Robert Lang Academy Students where she is co-owner and Program Director.

  She feeds off of her educational experiences as a graduate of the Audio Engineering Program at Shoreline Community College and as a student at Berklee College of Music where she studied Voice and Performance. She has had the pleasure of performing with artists like Paul Simon, collaborating with the AES and The Recording Academy and serving as a member of Shoreline Community College's Performance Arts/Digital Filmmaking Advisory Committee.

• Mark Rogers
  

  Mark is Director of the AV Department at the Greenbusch Group, a Seattle engineering consulting firm. He is a designer of audio/visual systems, including sound reinforcement, audio reproduction, video projection and displays, videoconferencing and audioconferencing, and related control systems. Typical projects include corporate boardrooms, convention centers, universities and hospitals. He has been designing and installing AV for over 45 years, and also teaches classes and seminars on AV technology. He is a registered Professional Engineer (Washington and Idaho) and earned his BSEE at the University of Idaho. He is a past Vice Chair and Committee member of the PNW AES Section and has presented several topics to the section.

• Rich Williams
  

  Rich is the owner of Lunchbox Audio, a local and online audio retailer for recording & live sound equipment, software, and accessories. Previously he ran a humble project studio producing demos for bands in the Midwest but the lure of getting a rain-tan caused him to relocate to the Pacific Northwest. Rich is also a member of the Recording Academy, BMI, and NAMM.

  Recent praise for Lunchbox Audio include 2013 & 2014 NAMM Top 100 Dealer, 2013 Moog Up & Coming Dealer, and Focal Professional's 2013 Dedication Award.

Last modified 05/22/2016 14:06:28.