WolfTalk: Podcast About Audio Programming (People, Careers, Learning)

In this podcast episode, I was lucky to interview Jay Pocknell; a production and mixing engineer from the UK.

Not only is he a skilled sound engineer and a lovely person to talk to but also a proactive member of the audio community. He founded the Sound Without Sight organization and currently works at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) advocating for music software, music hardware, and music instruments accessible to everyone: including musicians and sound engineers with disabilities.

Basing on his lived experience with sight loss, he gives invaluable advice on how any audio programmer can make their software accessible. This is a gold mine of first-hand information!

In the podcast episode, we discuss his path to becoming a sound engineer, which obstacles he needed to overcome, and how we as the audio community can remove some of these obstacles permanently.

Note: If you like the podcast so far, please, go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review there. It will benefit both sides: more reviews mean a broader reach on Apple Podcasts and feedback can help me to improve the show and provide better quality content to you. Thank you for doing this 🙏

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• how Jay became a sound engineer,
• how he came up with the idea to start the Sound Without Sight organization,
• what is the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and how they invite industry collaborations for an accessible music experience for everyone,
• why you should even consider making your software accessible (hint: 💵),
• how audio developers can make their software accessible,
• how to test the accessibility of your software,
• what are typical difficulties of musicians and sound engineers with blindness or partial blindness,
• how Audio Developers Conference 2022 tackled the issue of accessibility and how ADC23 can improve upon it.

This podcast was recorded on April 5, 2023.

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• how Meinard Müller became a professor for Music Information Retrieval at AudioLabs in Erlangen,
• what are AudioLabs and how they relate to Fraunhofer IIS and the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg,
• how professor Müller approaches doing teaching and research in his research group,
• how to learn doing research and how to collaborate with your supervisor (for master thesis, PhD thesis, or other research work),
• how to mentor your students,
• what is the book “Fundamentals of Music Processing” about and how did the process of writing it look,
• how to tackle huge projects,
• what is a professor’s day-to-day life like,
• what is music information retrieval and how did the AI/deep learning revolution influence it.

In this episode, I was honored to interview Andrew Fyfe; a musician, a software engineer, and a researcher in the field of deep learning applied to audio.

In particular, Andrew is working on an exciting new technology, Neutone. Neutone allows quick deployment of trained neural networks to audio plugins and running them in the digital audio workstation for verification, testing, up to full-blown product releases for users.

At the same time, Andrew is wrapping up his PhD while working full time from Japan. He was kind enough to share his story and his journey to becoming an audio researcher.

Don’t forget to submit your plugins for the Neural Audio Plugin Competition until March the 17th of 2023!

Note: If you like the podcast so far, please, go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review there. It will benefit both sides: more reviews mean a broader reach on Apple Podcasts and feedback can help me to improve the show and provide better quality content to you. Thank you for doing this 🙏

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• how Andrew learned audio processing and became an audio researcher after a successful rock band musician career,
• how he explored AI for music creation in his PhD,
• what is Neutone about and how to use it to deploy trained neural networks from PyTorch to audio plugins,
• what is Neural Audio Plugin competition,
• how is living and working in Japan for a person from the UK.

Episode notes: https://thewolfsound.com/talk011/

In this episode, I was lucky to interview two members of GPU Audio: Jonathan Rowden and Alexander “Sasha” Talashov.

GPU Audio is a software company that promises to deliver real-time audio processing capabilities to GPUs in the form of an easily usable Software Development Kit (SDK). It’s their goal to allow audio programmers to utilize the power of all GPU cores for faster and more performant audio processing.

If you are interested in why it is not easy to process audio on the GPU and how it can be done, then this episode is for you!

Don’t forget to submit your impulse response for their IR Competition until February 23, 2023!

Note: If you like the podcast so far, please, go to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review there. It will benefit both sides: more reviews mean a broader reach on Apple Podcasts and feedback can help me to improve the show and provide better quality content to you. Thank you for doing this 🙏

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• how was GPU Audio conceived,
• why typically GPUs are not used in audio plugins,
• why previous approaches to GPU audio processing haven’t been widely successful,
• how GPU Audio’s solution handles the main problems of GPU processing,
• how one can learn about GPU processing in general,
• how you can help test their software and possibly win cool prizes in their IR competition.

In this episode, I was incredibly excited to interview Stefano D’Angelo: a freelancer in the field of audio programming.

Episode notes: https://thewolfsound.com/talk009

Stefano comes from Italy and is well known in the field. He’s completed his PhD thesis at the Acoustics Lab of the Aalto University, then worked for Arturia for some time, and then decided to start his own freelance gig, which eventually led to him grounding the Orastron company. During this time, he’s been incredibly active in the programming field as well as in the research field.

Many WolfTalk listeners ask “how to become an audio programming freelancer?”

Well, in this podcast episode, you will learn a way of how this could be done 😉

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• how Stefano pursued his interest in music to eventually become an audio programmer and a researcher,
• how developing audio software at Arturia looks like,
• what challenges must audio programming freelancers overcome,
• how to “productify” your audio programming expertise,
• what is the Brickworks library about,
• how to approach the development of novel audio products,
• how does work in an R&D department at a company differs from research work at the university,
• what are the challenges when it comes to creating virtual analog plugins,
• useful tools for audio research and programming,
• how do the Digital Audio FX conference and the Audio Developers Conference compare.

In this episode, I was fortunate to interview Prashant Mishra, an Audio Director who is now building audio products and creating awareness about audio tech and game audio.

Prashant is an audiophile who has worked as an Audio Director for educational games and videos in collaboration with Disney to create IP-specific sonic experiences, during which he created voice based apps. He helped in setting up and scaling the sound department at an India-based ed-tech since 2015 for their entire catalogue of projects.

He is now building audio products with companies such as Soundly, and hosts games, spatial & interactive audio training sessions.

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• how Prashant went from Mechanical Engineering to audio production, to managing audio teams, and to building audio products and educating others,
• how Prashant cooperated with various brands, for example, Disney, with regard to sound,
• what is sound design and how it differs from technical sound design,
• what is important in managing audio-related teams of musicians, developers, and related,
• what tools you can use to speed up your audio workflow (as a solo producer or in the team),
• how you can become a technical sound designer,
• how Audio Developers Conference 2022 in London turned out 😄

In this episode, I was fortunate to interview Dr Tom McKenzie, a researcher in the field of spatial audio and acoustics and a musician, who is currently working at the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in Acoustics and Architectural Acoustics.

At the time of the interview (November 2021), Tom was a postdoctoral researcher at the Aalto Acoustics Lab at the Aalto University in Finland.

He was the last member of the lab interviewed by me. Previous interviews included:

• Leonardo Fierro,
• Jon Fagerström, and
• Alec Wright.

Please, if you are enjoying the podcast, leave it a review on Apple Podcasts.

And if you’re looking for a simple checklist on what is needed to start writing code to process sound, download my free audio plugin developer checklist!

Many thanks to Aalto Acoustics Lab for letting us record this interview in their office.

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• What are ambisonics?
• What is spatial audio?
• What are 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF)?
• What is important in spatial audio for a realistic impression?
• What is cross-talk cancellation?
• How does individualization look in virtual reality?

In this podcast episode, I had the privilege to interview Moritz Schaller: a professional musician who turned programmer and successfully transitioned into a software engineering position.

Moritz is a colleague of mine from Loudly GmbH. Not only is he a skilled and smart programmer but also a great person who is extremely likeable.

I am sure that if you are considering a change in your career paths, Moritz’s story and tips will provide you with inspiration and guidance on how to do this.

In this podcast episode, I was happy to interview Steve Barile from Conductive Labs. Steve was a 9-5 employee of Intel, until he and his best friend Darryl, started experimenting with building their own audio hardware. First prototypes led to concrete product ideas, which led to a crowdfunding campaign, which led to founding a successful business... but let's listen to him tell the story!

In this podcast episode, you will learn:

• ✅ how to start making your own music hardware, for example, hardware synthesizers,
• ✅ where to get product ideas from,
• ✅ how to go about validating your product in the market,
• ✅ where to look for manufacturers,
• ✅ recommended resources for building audio hardware.

Special thanks from Steve to the Conductive Labs crew:

Jesse, Cantrell, Paul, Nick, Ben, Chuck, Blake, Shashi, Kelly & SOs: Joyce and Lisa

Episode notes: https://thewolfsound.com/talk005