Coast to Coast in October
It’s trick-or-treat season again and for Shively Acoustics International (SAI), the treat has been a pair of audio events dropped into our candy buckets – we’ve been knocking on doors from Boston all the way to Long Beach! – and the trick has been finding the time for all of it and more. But we always manage, so let’s keep the treats short and sweet in this edition of the SAI Blog.
October is an eventful month for Shively Acoustics every year, something we take just as seriously as our puns. First was the COMSOL Conference 2025, once again held in Boston, from October 8-10. As COMSOL certified consultants, we have the annual preeminent acoustics modeling and simulation event permanently penciled in. As usual, SAI chief Roger Shively was there in the thick of it, meeting, mingling, and marveling together with industry.
He also covered the conference in a guest editorial in The Audio Voice newsletter published by SAI media partner audioXpress. After the release of Multiphysics 6.3 last November, the highly anticipated version 6.4 of the modeling software was naturally on the mind of everyone in attendance. COMSOL Manager for Electromagnetics Andrew Strikwerda in his keynote address provided a detailed look at the most important of the new features and functionality of version 6.4, though sadly not among the details: a release date. 😔 So, get “up to speed” with what’s to come in 6.4 and all the other loudspeaker and acoustics highlights at COMSOL Boston this year in Roger’s in-depth account of the conference in edition #536 of the industry weekly.
The tenth month of the year also marks the return of the Audio Engineering Society’s annual US convention. Under the motto “California Audio Dreamin’ ”, this year’s AES Show was held in Long Beach from October 23-25, and Roger found the dream alive and thriving in the discussions and demos held out west last weekend.
Serving as the show’s Chairman of Product Development, the SAI boss moderated the related workshops, which included automotive audio. A high point among these for Roger was “Practical Loudspeaker THD Modeling and Simulation” early on the second day, a workshop originally prepared by Marc-Olivier Chauveau, founder of Moca Audio and one of SAI’s European partners who provides simulation and design support as well as anechoic and Klippel testing. Marc-Olivier was unfortunately unable to attend the show, and so our chairman presented in his place, demonstrating the technique of using COMSOL and Klippel to quickly estimate Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) of a virtual loudspeaker model. Roger reports that the prepared material was received by a “full and lively audience with good discussions during the demo”. Très bien, Monsieur Chauveau, très bien!
(Photo: SAI)
Another standout was an audio product development workshop from the afternoon of the third and final day, “Digital Twins in Mobility Components and Beyond” by APDA co-founder and former co-chair Scott Leslie of Loudspeaker Labs. Readers of the blog will remember the concept of using “digital twin” virtual models in evaluating automotive audio systems, a topic that featured in an article co-written by Roger and Steve Hutt for the October 2025 issue of audioXpress that is based on a previously unpublished technical paper from the duo. If you still haven’t, there’s no time like the present to snag a copy and dive in.
As we said at the top, we’re keeping the update short again this month, so let’s put a pin in AES Long Beach for now. Readers can confidently expect a full treatment of the 2025 show in one of the upcoming editions of The Audio Voice newsletter, with Roger as co-author this time and focusing on the automotive audio and product development aspects.
The other great news out of California this year came in the convention’s opening remarks, when the upcoming AES 6th International Conference on Automotive Audio was officially given approval – music to the conference’s returning Chairman’s ears, as Roger and the rest of the technical committee (TC-AA) step up preparations with little more than half a year to go. For the rest of the year, Shively Acoustics will principally focus on our ongoing projects as things on the events side take a breather until CES 2026 in Las Vegas in January.
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Finally, after a brief pause in September, the monthly webinar offerings from the Audio Product Development Alliance (APDA) are back on. The twelfth in the series, “Audio Measurements: Correlating Test Results to Audibility” by Steve Temme of Listen, Inc., aired this past Tuesday. If you weren’t able to attend the livestream, watch it and all past recordings on the APDA YouTube channel @AudioProductDevAlliance.
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Signing off and sounding off for a spooky weekend ahead! ■
Shively Acoustics International — Modern Audio Solutions, Worldwide