The AES San Francisco Chapter’s November meeting was held at the Expression Center for New Media in Emeryville.   Twenty-eight Bay area professionals attended the meeting.  Guest speaker Jim McTigue, Director, Electronic & System Engineering at Euphonix, Inc. made a 90-minute presentation on the Human/Machine Interface and the issues associated with Audio Production.   The lecture centered on the complexity facing modern professionals and how the machine interface can help or hinder the recording and mixing workflow.

The lecturer began with the statement “We live in the age of spin where well marketed opinions create powerful mythologies.  And of course everyone’s product is the most Ergonomic?”  McTigue indicated that there were approximately 300 hundred professional mixers in the world today.  This is a fraternity not unlike the National Basketball Association’s membership where a few elite participants establish the standards by which the profession is judged.  He followed this with an overview of some modern audio post-productions systems such as Stage R at Todd AO Lantana in Los Angeles pictured below.

 

Historical overviews of ergonomics and the evolution of the mixing console to its current incarnations were presented.  This was followed by an overview of McTigue identified the information age and the related rise in complexity for audio production as the single biggest barrier to human friendly design.

Human Integrated Design and Human Machine System concepts were discussed including the impact of anthropometrics, biomechanics, Fitt’s Law, and the three interface system classes. The first is the Manual system where an operator (i.e. audio mixer) performs the task on the machine (an analog mixing console.  The second is the Mechanical system where the machine performs the tasks while the human guides the process (control surfaces).  And the third is the Automated system where machine (configured by human intervention) performs the task alone (i.e. Sundance Systems).  In addition to these three system classes, the impact of the operating environment on the performance of the Human/Machine interface must be considered. In the case of audio production, the lighting, acoustic, and thermal environment are pivotal in optimizing human performance.

Human perception and cognition were discussed extensively as they apply to the processing of information.  The relationship between stimuli and expectations, the conceptual association between coding and symbols, the physical arrange of controls and displays and the associated movements of these objects were presented.   The impact of the modality (visual, auditory, tactile) and stimulus –response combinations were touched upon.

The discussion of perception and cognition was followed up with a description of the human memory system and mental workload metrics.  Also included were examples of human decision making biases and problems with large amounts of information.

Since Ergonomics is the applied science of equipment design intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort close attention must be paid to several system elements when designing any human/ machine interface. Factors such as the environment, hardware designs, software functions and the compatibility of the aforementioned play an important role in the success of any ergonomic design.  Equally important are the human stratification factors such as age, sex, physique, training, and education and how they relate to the human performance continuum.  As well as the tasks being performed with their associated speed, accuracy, and repetitive sequences.

The lecture concluded with several examples of complex audio production systems, some current solutions, and a brief discussion of future directions for audio production Human/Machine interfaces.