26the Tonmeistertagung starts on Thursday this week

posted:

24/11/2010

26th Tonmeistertagung at Leipzig with a varied convention program and the exhibition space completely booked

German Tonmeistertagung will take place at the CCL Convention Center at Leipzig between 25th and 28th of November 2010. The congress program of the internationally renowned convention includes a large number of papers, workshops, and roundtables covering new and practical aspects of professional audio. This year, there is also a particular focus on hands-on sessions. Altogether, there will be more than 180 lectures from 16 different subject areas held by a large number of experts from production companies and the audio industry. 135 companies are exhibiting in Leipzig their lates innovations.

Prof Eckart Altenmüller, director of the Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine at Hanover, will open the convention with a paper with the promising title “Music in your Brain: The Neurobiological Basis of Music Perception”, followed by more papers on Ear and Hearing. This year, one of the major topics will be Digital Cinema and 3D. Events on that subject will take place at Hall 3 of the CCL. Experts will discuss not only new possibilities in video but will also cover the audio aspect of motion pictures. These include, for example, “The Future of Film Sound” by Hubert Henle (Dolby) or a paper on new spatial audio formats (Wilfried van Baelen, Galaxy Studios). Frank Melchior (Iosono) will talk about object-based audio formats for 3-D motion pictures, and two contributions by Bernhard Albrecht (HFF) and Rene Rodigast (Fraunhofer IDMT) will deal with the basics of 180° cinema and the audio aspects of that format, respectively. A player system including height speakers will be available for hands-on presentations at Hall 5. Experts will talk about the production of 3-D audio and the Auro 3D format there. Friday afternoon will see discussions of ambisonics and wave-field synthesis, which are major aspects of Spatial Audio. In addition, Iosono will present a large WFS setup at presentation room 10.

Currently, Loudness and Dynamics are the talk of the town, in particular, in broadcasting. Discussions of those topics will take place on Saturday afternoon. Gerhard Steinke, who has promoted adequate loudness in radio and TV production for a long time, will moderate the talks. In the same place, Florian Camerer (ORF) will introduce the brand-new EBU R128 recommendation on loudness metering and management. In addition, Thomas Lund (TC Electronic) will talk about normalization of broadcast audio.

Another important topic at this year’s Tonmeistertagung is Sport Reportage. In a workshop, Hans Schlosser (IMM/VDT) will present recordings of sports broadcasts made with different surround-microphone setups. Other topics include the interaction of ball sounds and images at football broadcasts and microphone setups at sports events. The papers on sports reporting will close with a roundtable joined by several experts from the field and run by Helmut Wittek (Schoeps Microphones).

Similar to the Digital Cinema complex in Hall 3, the Event & Stage lectures will traditionally be held in Hall 1 over the whole 3 days. On Saturday morning, there will be a group of four workshops entitled “From the Rider to the Show”. Janko Ramuscak (d&b), Omar Samhoun, and Oliver Voges (Neumann & Müller) will explain the contents and function of a stage rider with practical examples and will discuss how to plan sound-reinforcements concepts purposefully using emulation software. The last paper of the morning will be about the microphone setup of the band Mordballaden. This will also be subject of the live mixing workshop that will be presented by d&b, Neumann & Müller, Sennheiser, and Yamaha on Saturday afternoon. This year, one special feature about that workshop is the sensitive integration of a string section. Following to the workshop, the band will play a show in the same place starting at 7.30 PM.

This year, all student members of the VDT have free admission to all Tonmeistertagung events including the lecture program. In addition, low-cost day tickets (€30) are available for visitors attending the Tonmeistertagung for the first time. Entrance to the exhibition area (excluding lectures) is free for all visitors on Sunday, 28 November, starting at 11 AM.

To register online for this year’s Tonmeistertagung, visit

Tonmeistertagung 2010

About TONMEISTERTAGUNG

In excess of 50 years, the TONMEISTERTAGUNG has developed into one of the most significant international conventions for the Pro-Audio sector. In a biennial cycle this convention displays an all-embracing overview with regard to the latest trends in product, research and practical application. At the same time, the personal exchange of the participants’ experiences plays an important role. The TONMEISTERTAGUNG addresses diverse occupational groups ranging from radio, studio, film, television, CD and DVD production, interactive media, stage, events, hard and software developments, research and education.