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 17, 2015, so that it can be counted on June 18.

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 — Chris Deckard
  

  Although I was more content to take apart my toys as a kid rather than play with them, I was sure to put the cassette recorder back together. Thus began my infatuation with audio and electronics. After playing in various high school bands, I decided to put together a recording studio in South Saint Louis, where I focused on an organic approach to recording involving an MS16 and EMT140 in a large storefront space built in 1893. After some time, I decided to sell off the studio, get an EE, and go into designing audio equipment. After a failed attempt to get an internship at Saint Louis Music (this was about the time they were acquired by LOUD Technologies), I realized I'd have to move to Seattle to work for an audio company. While finishing the EE program at UW, I worked for a HiFi repair shop and modified a PM2000 console for a local studio. After graduating, I worked at a machine company wiring industrial robots. I currently work at LOUD/Mackie in Woodinville as a digital design engineer in the acoustics department, although I'm interested in analog design as well.

  My current personal endeavors include a SET (single-ended triode) microphone preamp; various audio analysis tools in MATLAB and MAX/msp; a filter board for the HP8903 audio analyzer; a bluetooth speaker; a mic preamp based on THAT corporation chips; and of course, a record label. I attended my first AES meeting over 10 years ago, and have been hooked ever since!

• Vice Chair — Steve Turnidge
  

  Steve Turnidge is a noted mastering engineer at UltraViolet Studios with dozens of albums and thousands of licensed music tracks to his credit. His latest project is to co-produce and master the upcoming Jellyfish Tribute Album.

  He has over 20 years experience in the Pro Audio electronics industry specializing in mixed digital and analog printed circuit board design (with a specialty in FireWire audio designs). Steve taught a year of Audio Recording at Shoreline Community College, and is currently assisting in the design and documentation of the new XBOX Studios at Microsoft.

  In addition to being the Vice-Chairman of the PNW Section Audio Engineering Society committee, Steve is a voting member of the Recording Academy and plays bass in The Nervous Freemasons.

  Steve is also a founder of Shared Media Licensing and co-host of the Krimson-News podcasts.
  www.arsdivina.com

• Secretary — Gary Louie / University of Washington, 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 — Greg Mauser
  

  Greg has a Bachelor's Degree in Electronics Engineering from Bradley University. He has as an extensive background in Hardware and Software product development for industrial and aerospace markets. He currently works as a Test Engineer at Astronics Corporation in Redmond.

  Greg has been building amps, pedals, and synthesizers since he started playing guitar at age 14. He is an avid home recording enthusiast and has produced several CDs of his own music. He has played in many PNW bands since moving here from Chicago 20 years ago and is currently working on his own business startup designing and manufacturing guitar pedals. He has served for the past several years as committee member and Vice Chair of the AES PNW Section.

Section Committee

• René Jaeger
  

  After graduating from Jesuit taught Fairfield Prep, René Jaeger studied Physics (briefly) at Boston College in Massachusetts. Then, after a several year sabbatical of self-discovery, he began his audio career in the 60s at Karg Laboratories, famous for its vacuum tube, crystal controlled FM tuner.

  The attempted development of a high performance PLL synthesized tuner brought him to a job at Adams-Russell, where he learned much about the techniques of low noise, broadband RF devices catering to the Military's cold war activities. A chance meeting with David Blackmer began a nine year romp at dbx, designing audio compressors and noise reduction systems. Among the fun projects were low noise bipolar and fet preamp designs for moving coil pickups, which led to the design of a fet preamp for Charles Fischer (Cambridge Records), which was used in one of his ribbon microphones. He then moved on to Lexicon doing a-d and d-a converter development as well as the legendary PCM-60 digital reverb, culminating in the even more legendary 480L reverb. A brief stay at New England Digtal (they went banko) ended with a move to California to the Grass Valley Group. Further corporate turmoil led to moving to the PNW, where he worked for Mackie Designs/Loud Technologies designing mixers and a class D power amplifier.

  In addition to the above, René has done consulting work for instrumentation, medical and professional audio companies, managed the development of the Pacific Microsonics Model One HDCD mastering converter, and partnered in the founding of Berkeley Audio Design. After retiring last September, René is devoting himself to the perfection of audio reproduction at home and other household activities.

• Ron Jones
  

  Ron Jones has worked as a professional creative composer for over 45 years. He studied at Clackamas Community College, University of Oregon, University of Washington, and Seattle Pacific University where he received his BA in Composition and Music Theory. Moving to Los Angeles, he studied composition and arrangement at the Dick Grove School there.

  • Received a Grammy Nomination in 2010 for Best Song in Media
  • Received 5 Emmy Nominations for Best Underscore and Best Song
  • Numerous BMI and ASCAP awards
  • D.I.C.E Best Score for Video Game
  • and many more.

  Some of the TV series that he has composed for include some of the most popular of all time, including: Star Trek:TNG, Disney's Duck Tales, American Dad, Family Guy, and many more. Ron and his wife relocated back to the Pacific Northwest to both enjoy the area and to build a new music production center on their estate in Stanwood. When completed, the studio will have a full scoring stage, live tracking room, control room, music production suite and a conference area for teaching, workshops, and master classes.

  Ron believes strongly in building community among the musicians, engineers, performing groups, composers, arrangers as well as helping students and professionals to learn, grow, and build success.

• Steve Malott
  

  Steve Malott has participated in AES meetings for many years but has only seriously put his money where his mouth is for a few years (by joining AES). As a broadcaster (and former SBE student member), audio engineer, producer and educator, Steve is continually surprised by the talent unearthed and the diverse opportunities available to anyone who has more than a passing interest in audio. After serving his second term as Governor for the Recording Academy and participating in Producer's and Engineer's Wing, Grammy U and membership activities, Steve's goal is to negotiate a closer alliance between the two organizations, with an eye towards more cooperative cross-participation for both groups. Among the topics Steve is interested in pursuing for PNW AES:

  • The economics of audio equipment (who decides to make what, and how much money do they make doing it)
  • Math for struggling audio engineers (and why it's good to understand it)
  • Sharpening listening skills: a primer for audio professionals
  • Why is it sometimes $150 mics seem to sound as good and work better than $5,000 mics?
  • Why don't most audio engineers win national awards or substantial industry recognition?

  Steve says, "I'm always interested in great hardware or software demos, along the lines of:

  • Mic Shootout
  • A-D / D-A Shootout
  • Loudspeaker Shootout
  • Codec Shootout

  and the ever-popular — DAW Shootout.

  Even if not elected I am still interested in moving NARAS and AES closer together in membership and participant activities."

• Dr. Michael Matesky
  

  Dr. Michael Matesky is the designer and owner of Opus 4 Studios (audio and video recording) where he also engineers. Born and raised in Los Angeles, where his father worked in the studios and taught music at USC, he has an MM in cello, and a DMA in conducting from the University of Washington. He is a composer and arranger, President of Opus 4 Music publishing company, studio musician, music contractor, founding cellist in the Opus 4 String Quartet, and occasional Gypsy jazzman with undeniable traces of evidence found at www.opus4studios.com. He has recorded both as cellist and conductor at what is now known as Abbey Road Studios. He has performed before the Queen of England and two US Presidents. Dr. Matesky is currently serving on the PNW Section Committee.

• 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.

• Bob Smith
  

  Bob has a BSEE from the University of Washington and has worked in the Biomedical industry for over 30 years. The last 20 years he has spent developing acoustic research and audio engineering disciplines for Medtronic / Physio Control to improve speech intelligibility for medical device voice prompting and voice recording systems in noisy environments. He is responsible for voice prompting in 30+ languages. The department now handles acoustic measurements of components such as drivers, microphone capsules and system measurements including Thiele-Small parameters, polar plots, waterfalls, frequency response, impulse response, several speech intelligibility methods, etc. When he's not playing acoustic/audio monkey for his corporate master, he runs an acoustic lab, soundSmith Labs. From time to time, he can also be found recording local musical talents. Currently he is working on automotive interior noise assessments and their effect on speech intelligibility.

• Dave Tosti-Lane
  

  Dave will be retiring from his position as Chair of the Performance Production Department at Cornish College of the Arts this December, after which he imagines a life of leisure cavorting with unicorns and other mythical creatures (imagination, as you can see, doesn't always serve him well, but he'll theoretically have more time to be the Vice Chair anyway). He has been a professor, sound designer, technical director, lighting designer and technical consultant, and is one of the founders of the department he leads at Cornish. He is active in professional organizations such as the U.S. Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT), where he is Commissioner of the Sound Commission and the Associate Editor for Sound for TD&T, the Journal of the USITT; The International Organization of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians (OISTAT), where he is a member of the Sound Design Working Group; and the Audio Engineering Society (AES), where he has served on standards committees, and has been a committee member, Vice Chair and Chair of the Pacific Northwest Section of the AES.

  Dave holds a BS in Management and an MFA in Technical Theater/Lighting Design from Virginia Polytechnic Institute, however his adventures in sound probably started with the 3" reel to reel message recorder he was given sometime around 1962 (and immediately took apart to see how it worked - or used to work at that point).