SAI in July
🎵 July, July, July, July
Oh me, oh me, oh me, oh my
July, July, July, July
What’s new, what’s new, at SAI? 🎵
Welcome back, dear readers! While you’re groovin’ along with Billy Paul on your loudspeaker of choice, sit down with the SAI Blog for your July update on Shively Acoustics International (SAI):
To start things off, it’s time again for our monthly visit to the wonderful world of webinars. APDA Webinar #10 👩💻 is going live tomorrow! The latest online industry talk hosted by the Audio Product Development Alliance (APDA) is “Vietnam’s Next Chapter – Supply Chain and Manufacturing Strategies” by Bruce Crompton, co-founder of Crompton Manufacturing Consultants Vietnam (CMCV). Southeast Asia, and Vietnam in particular, has been on the economic rise for a while now to anyone who’s been paying attention. The country is fast becoming a regional manufacturing and logistics hub as production is increasingly being relocated there as an alternative to China.
With 30 years of boots-on-the-ground experience in both East and Southeast Asia, Bruce joins the APDA to discuss how Vietnam is developing its industrial strategy, what challenges and advantages come with moving production there, and much more on the region. The general pivot to Asia is in full swing across many sectors – don’t miss this snapshot of the bigger picture!
BTW: Have you joined the 👉APDA LinkedIn Group👈 yet?
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BTW: Have you joined the 👉APDA LinkedIn Group👈 yet? 〰️
On the business front, our work with Modus, the new automotive and marine audio brand from DSP Solutions, is progressing! First announced here in March, most recently we have rolled out loudspeakers for their marine/boat applications – having optimized their existing design and added novel design features, with production already underway at the time of this writing. Next, we’ll do the same for their automotive speakers. Plans are also to revisit the marine speakers a bit further down the road for a full ground-up redesign to add even greater performance, as both Modus and SAI want nothing less than best in class. These, among other long-term projects that are still awaiting sign-off. Sometime further ahead, one of these projects might feature in an SAI Spotlight 🔦.
Shively Acoustics has also begun a two-month summer mentorship with Liam Claybaugh of Manhattan Beach, CA, through the Standout Connect high school internship program. With an eye for marketing and branding, during the two months Liam is researching the origins of branded audio and how it got started with companies such as Bose and Harman, and the connections with automotive audio in particular, in addition to learning how a company like SAI networks within the audio industry.
Roger will also be instructing Liam on the very basics of loudspeaker design – having him solve basic electrical engineering and design problems to solve in order to demonstrate how their practical solutions directly relate to the actual speaker they are taken from. Finally, our mentee will lend a hand in communications-related tasks for the promotion of the APDA Webinars. Welcome aboard, Liam! 😊
It’s been a few years since we last mentored an aspiring professional, but this always remains a possibility (and not necessarily only for those interested in or pursuing engineering studies, as this summer shows). Before Liam, SAI last took on Kyle Laemmle in summer 2022, who at the time was a mechanical engineering student at Miami University of Ohio. In addition to his engineering internship, Kyle interviewed Roger as part of a podcast project on sound engineering in cars, which you can listen to here in a previous blog post. To update our readers, Kyle is currently an aerospace engineer for the United States Air Force, a position he has held since June 2024. Good work, Kyle. 🫡 Wishing you all the best!
Coming up: Digital Twins in October
Coming to a magazine near you this fall!
There’s a phoenix on the horizon. We are more than pleased to announce the resurrection of a technical paper that unfortunately still hasn’t had its day in the sun. Back in 2019, Roger and fellow APDA member and Equity Sound Investments founder Steve Hutt co-wrote a paper on using a “Digital Twin” virtual model to evaluate the perception of vehicle-to-vehicle performance variance (e.g. in loudspeaker production) – down to the change of a single attribute – and how this perception affects Subjective Preference Ratings. The intention had been to present this paper at the AES Automotive Audio conference held that year, though ultimately, that never happened.
The unaccepted work nevertheless became a white paper in 2020, before being reformatted into a (still unpublished) technical paper in 2024. Now, we’re dusting it off again and reworking it a bit, and “Digital Twins: Subjective Evaluation of Production Vehicle Audio System Variance” is set to see new life as a featured article in the upcoming October issue (published at the end of September) of industry magazine and SAI media partner audioXpress. Look out – the Twins are coming!
In contrast, we are sad to announce that we are not attending the upcoming 2025 AES International Conference on Headphone Technology in August, as previously planned. If you were hoping to meet us in person next month in Finland, we’ll have to raincheck that for the next event. To anyone attending, however, some must-sees will be Sean Olive’s keynote address on Day 1 of the conference, immediately followed by his paper presentation “The Preferred In-Ear Headphone Target Curve Based On Method of Adjustments”.
As an aside, Sean just recently left Harman International after 32 years, for a time having overlapped with Roger’s own stint at the company, where as many readers will know he worked before founding his own ventures, including SAI. Sean and Roger have been talking about potential collaborations in Automotive Audio.
🎵 July, July, July, July
Until, next time, this is, goodbye ■
Shively Acoustics International — Modern Audio Solutions, Worldwide