First Dip with Audio: A Summer with SAI

EDITOR’S NOTE: This month, the SAI Blog hears from University of Washington mechanical engineering student Nathaniel Jocson, who reflects on his internship with Shively Acoustics International (SAI) this summer. As the adage goes, timing is everything… With the big lead-up to AES Automotive Audio in July, along with existing and upcoming projects either nearing completion or only just warming up, we had far fewer hands-on tasks on the docket for Nathaniel.

As summers often go in audio product design, there is a period when it is necessary to take stock in the results and use them creatively to move forward, something Nathaniel experienced firsthand. We want to thank him for his impactful support during the automotive audio conference this year and are grateful for his exploration of an engineering field different to his primary area of study. All explorers take risks—we are proud of his spirit in doing so. As his time with us winds down, his final project will be the simulation of the low frequencies in an automotive audio system. We wish him continued inspiration and success for the remainder of his studies and in his future career. Take it away, Nathaniel:

First Dip with Audio: A Summer with Shively Acoustics International

I am a rising sophomore studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, and this past summer I completed a ten-week internship with Shively Acoustics International, working remotely under the mentorship of Roger Shively from early July through mid-September. Going into college, I knew I wanted to get engineering experience as early as possible rather than waiting until junior or senior year, so as soon as my freshman year was about to wrap up, I started reaching out to companies directly. I found SAI the same way I found most of my early leads, which was by cold emailing people on LinkedIn. At the time, I did not have any other offers on the table, so when Roger responded and offered me a spot, I took it, even though acoustical engineering was not a field I had ever studied or worked in before.

My own academic interests lean heavily toward the fields of automotive and aerospace, and if I am being honest, I did not expect this internship to overlap with those interests very much. Outside of my coursework, I am an active member of the Airframe & Composites team at the Husky Flying Club, so most of my experience has been related to aircraft design. I also plan to pursue my university’s respective formula, robotics, and design build fly team in the near future. Acoustics, loudspeaker design, and audio engineering felt like a completely different world from engines and airframes. I went in with essentially no prior knowledge of the audio industry. But I also understood that SAI is fundamentally an acoustical engineering and consulting firm, and that the underlying skills, like reading technical papers, running simulations, interpreting data, and communicating with a mentor and a team, would transfer regardless of the specific industry.

My early work at SAI centered on COMSOL, a simulation software I had never used before. In my first couple of weeks, I worked through COMSOL examples from their website and explored existing loudspeaker models SAI had, while also reading through Dr. Richard H. Small's lectures to build a foundation in loudspeaker theory. From there, my work shifted toward using simulation-based analysis to look at frequency response and sound pressure behavior for different loudspeaker designs, and thinking through how those simulation results might translate into practical, physical design changes. I also spent time reading papers by Floyd Toole on acoustics and psychoacoustics, and optimizing lumped parameter model (LPM) sheets used for loudspeaker analysis. Later in the summer, I compared measurements between different AXS-8 OnShape files, and I helped prepare a PowerPoint presentation for a client, DSP Solutions. A good chunk of my time also went toward helping Roger prepare for the Audio Engineering Society Automotive Audio Conference in Detroit, Michigan, which involved providing general help for the conference, such as taking pictures and videos, and being present as a front desk receptionist.

Roger was my main point of contact throughout the internship, and since everything was done remotely, our communication happened mostly through scheduled check-ins, usually about twice a week. He would give me tasks, and then let me work through them independently, which meant I had to get comfortable asking clarifying questions rather than guessing at what he wanted. That style of mentorship pushed me to be more self-directed than I expected going in. Roger had also mentioned early on that I might get a chance to work on something automotive-related at some point during the internship, which genuinely excited me, given my interests, but that opportunity never really materialized in the end.

If I am being candid, the internship did not fully meet my expectations. A fair amount of the work, especially toward the middle and end of the summer, felt like busy work. Deduplicating files, organizing shared drives, or picking up projects from outside companies that were already largely complete before I touched them. I went in hoping for more hands-on engineering design work, and while I did get real exposure to simulation tools and acoustic theory, a lot of my time was spent on administrative or support tasks rather than substantive engineering problems. That was a bit of a letdown, but it also taught me something about internships in general: Not every task is going to be exciting, and being reliable with the less glamorous work is still part of being a good team member.

One of the more unexpected outcomes of this internship had nothing to do with a specific technical skill. Spending two months immersed in loudspeaker simulation and acoustics research made it clear to me that audio engineering is not a field I want to pursue long-term. That might sound like a strange thing to list as a takeaway, but I think it is a genuinely valuable one. Ruling out a path is just as useful as confirming one, and I would rather have learned that now, as an incoming sophomore, than several years into a career. It has not changed my plans so much as reinforced them: I am still set on the automotive and aerospace industries, and this experience gave me a clearer sense of what I do not want alongside a baseline of technical exposure that I had not had before.

Looking back, it gave me my first real line of professional engineering experience before I had even finished my sophomore year, exposure to a simulation tool and a body of technical literature I would not have otherwise encountered, and practice working semi-independently under a remote mentor. It was not always the hands-on work I had hoped for, but it confirmed that starting early was the right call, and it sharpened my sense of direction heading into the rest of my degree. I am grateful to Roger and the team at SAI for the opportunity and for being patient with someone who came in knowing nothing about acoustics. ■

Shively Acoustics International — Modern Audio Solutions, Worldwide