Talking Acoustics

Walter Alfredo Montanaro is an Argentinian, now based in Peru. He has an interest in the history of noise control and has been involved with the ASA Archive and History Committee in investigating the lives of the 32 founders of the ASA. He has also been involved in low frequency noise and communication with communities about such noise including with indigenous groups in the Amazon rainforest. 

Dr Libby Sander is an internationally renowned academic expert on the future of work and the workplace. She is the MBA Director and Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Bond University. Libby has a reasearch focus on workplaces and how workplace design affects the people that work in them. In the last few years she has been involved with two reseach programs looking at how acoustics impacts outcomes in workplaces and education settings.

Rebecca Warren is passionate about getting more women involved in acoustics and engineering. We talked about how we can raise awareness about engineering, engage in role modelling, advocacy and mentoring. She also shares some thoughts on imposter syndrome and how leaders can help their staff overcome it.

Jim Metzner has spent a lifetime recording soundscapes, from which he has produced records, radio programs and now podcasts. His podcast Pulse of the Planet, started on radio in 1988 and is now also heard widely as a podcast. In 2020, Jim's sound archive was acquired by the US Library of Congress which will be the new home of the Metzner archive: 40 years of soundscapes, programs, interviews, music and non-categorizable audio.

What do Kiwi birds, machine learning, methematical geometry and acoustics have in common? Stephen Marsland. Stephen is a Professor of Mathematics and Data Science at Victoria University of Wellington, where he leads the AviaNZ research group.

Amanda Robinson is currently the Vice President of Architecture at Aercoustics Engineering Limited, based in Toronto Canada. Before that she was with Marshall Day Acoustics in Australia for 17 years, including as Co-CEO of MDA Australia, as well as serving on the Board.

Tracy Gowen Started in Geomatic Engineering, before transitioning into environmental acoustics. She now leads the environmental acoustic teams on some of the largest intrastructure projects in Australia.

If you have read a technical paper on road noise in the last 15 years there is a fair chance James McIntosh either authored it or is cited in it. James spent 20 years at GM Holden, working on noise and vibration harshness is vehicle development before running the Crash Test Lab (which sounds like fun to me). He then moved to VicRoads, the Victorian government roads department, and was responsible for the development of much of the noise policy over his time there. In 2021 he left his government role and set up his own consulting firm James McIntosh Acoustics.

The architectural perspective on the interaction between acoustics and the built form learning environment from Hayball's Fiona Young. An immersive adventure about an acoustician and a team of architects going back to school to run a project based learning exercise with year 7 students at Domremy College, thanks to principal Vivienne Awad. 

After completing a degree in physics, Marion Burgess commenced working in acoustics in an Australian building research laboratory. Since then she has had over 40 years broad experience in many aspects of acoustics including building, environmental and occupational noise measurement, assessments, control and research.

Katie is a specialist in the technical field of environmental acoustics associated with mining, industry, roads and railway transportation. Katie manages the acoustics team for EMM in Newcastle, Australia. She is passionate about education and mentoring others in acoustics.

Joanne Valentine started out studying architecture and with Harold Marshall as a lecturer, quickly developed a passion for room acoustics. She has followed that passion for over 30 years, working on the acoustic design performing arts projects around the world.

Rick Bond is a speaker builder from Melbourne Victoria and his company Lucie Audio not only builds speakers but also a matching DSP-based audio processor to apply room corrections to the system in real time.

Meisha Stevens is a consultant with Wood & Grieve, based in Sydney who has an interest in psycho-acoustics and how we react to unpleasant sounds. She was this year awarded the Future Leader Award by the National Association of Women in Construction.

This episode is a recording of a presentation delivered by Sir Harold Marshall as part of a colloquium on Presence that took place in Auckland in July 2018. The presentation is entitled 'The Oblique Imperative: the acoustic dimensions of presence'.

Jos Mulder lectures in Sound at Murdoch University in Perth, WA. How do you get a great acoustic concert hall to sound good amplified? And what can we do to save the hearing of musicians and concertgoers?

Marcia Isakson is the immediate past president of the Acoustical Society of America. She went to West Point and served in the military before moving into research and teaching in underwater acoustics, and currently works with the University of Texas in Austin. She has a passion for attracting more women into the field and has works with the Women in Acoustics committee as part of her work with the ASA.

John Meyer, along with his wife Helen, foundered one of the worlds leading audio technology manufacturers, Meyer Sound in the 1970's. They have an emphasis on research and development which in recent years has seen the development of the Constellation active architecture system. I sat down with John recently and talked about everything from active acoustics to AM radio.  

Christopher Allen works for NASA as Manager of the Johnson Space Centre Acoustics Office. He works on the acoustics of space vehicles and faces some pretty interesting challenges that you don't have to deal with on earth.

Trevor Gore builds acoustic guitars by hand, but applies his engineering background to understand the physics of the instruments, making him a world leader in the field.

Glenn Leembruggen is not your typical acoustical consultant, he is also heavily involved with electro-acoustics and lectures in the Architecture & Design Faculty at the University of Sydney. When he is not running his two companies or working at the University he plays sax in a Chicago blues band.

Renzo Tonin built Renzo Tonin & Associates to be one of the biggest acoustic consultancies in Australia. He has conducted research that has advanced the acoustics field and in the 1980s he was one of the first people in the world to develop software to model environmental noise propogation.

Gillian Lee is an acoustic consultant as well as musician and recording engineer. We discuss the design of recording studios and live music venues as well as how to attract more women to the profession.

Peter Knowland, one of the original acousticians on the Sydney Opera House discusses acoustic design for performance spaces and a few other things he has learned in 50 years of consulting.