The Audio Engineering Society (AES)

The Audio Engineering Society was established in 1948 and has been publishing standards since 1977.

Their standards and guidelines are targeted at professional audio engineers and annual conventions are currently organized every year in Europe, the USA and Latin America. The technical papers are collected into a proceedings volume, and selected papers are published in the member’s journal. The individual papers are available from the AES Electronic Library. The AES works closely with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and provides input to the ISO/IEC standards bodies.

AES Standards

Arguably one of the most important AES activities is the creation of standards for managing audio equipment, connecting it together and delivering content from one place to another. The AES brings diverse engineering teams together to develop standards that:

• Facilitate the adoption of new technologies.
• Improve performance for delivery and quality of service.
• Ensure interoperability between different manufacturers.

The day-to-day operation is well organized with helpful documents that provide guidance for members of committees and task groups. The duties of officers who manage the workings of the AES are also similarly well set out.

It is therefore no accident then that the AES has published a large body of high quality and reliable standards since it was founded, and that these standards are used throughout the media, entertainment and broadcast industries.

The AES attracts expertise from a variety of practitioners:

• Hardware engineers.
• Software engineers.
• Sound engineers.
• Audio consultants.
• Musicians.
• Acousticians (dealing with the physics of sound propagation).
• Audiologists (specialists in hearing).

The AES is happy to interact with anyone who has expertise in the production or use of audio whether they are subscribed AES members or not. Useful input to the standards process is welcomed. Membership is encouraged as this provides access to the standards library on a more economical basis.The AES has produced over 60 important standards for audio during its 77 year history. Their documents are gathered into several collections:

Refer to Appendix H for a complete list of AES standards. AES guideline documents with an ‘id’ suffix for the most part use the corresponding AES number that they augment but this is not always the case.

Liaisons With Other Organizations

Standards cannot exist without reference to work by other organizations and the AES works in collaboration with numerous other organizations that need to deploy audio as part of their area of responsibility. The AES provides specialist knowledge since it is only focused on matters concerning audio reproduction and transmission.

These organizations all share expertise and provide source material to each other for the development of their own standards and specifications. Some of these liaisons are formal while others are more loosely collaborative:

The SMPTE ST 2110 specifications deploy AES standards in the context of an IP driven studio workflow. Data formats and transmission are covered by AES while ST 2110 describes how to apply them in a practical situation.

Who Develops The Standards?

The standards are developed by working groups that AES assembles from members and industry experts who are willing to devote some time to the common good. You need not be a member to provide time and expertise to a working group but it is encouraged. The working groups are gathered under the guidance of sub-committees that are responsible for thematically related activity:

These working groups operate under the subcommittees. They have a prefix identifying their managing subcommittee:

The working groups can form task groups of specialists to investigate specialist areas and draw up draft standards documents for evaluation. Here are a selection of the task groups currently in progress. They are labelled with the working group ID and a letter suffix to identify each one:

The numbering of sub-committees and working groups is missing some indexes because they are created as needed and sometimes disbanded when their work is complete. An identifying code should not be reused for another purpose as this would just confuse everybody.

Likewise, the task groups are formed by the working groups when necessary and break up when their work is done.

There is not currently a working group developing standards for AI in the context of audio but we might speculate that this is an area worthy of attention at some point.

Standards Status & Development

The standards development process is conducted in a staged and orderly manner with several stages of review taking place. Here is an outline summary:

• A new project request is received.
• If this is deemed appropriate, a new project is initiated by the subcommittee.
• A task group is formed and creates a PTD document. This is a proposed draft.
• The working group refines the task group output and publishes a working draft as a PWD document.
• When the document has matured sufficiently, it is published as a proposed call for comments (PCFC) document. This is still an internal publication.
• Comments on the document content are reviewed and incorporated as necessary.
• When it is ready, the document is published as a public call for comments (CFC).
• Public comments are reviewed and incorporated as necessary.
• When the document is ready, it is published and made available for downloading.

Following publication, the standards will be reviewed periodically and a similar process takes place to produce a revised version. Whereas the ISO organization releases many amendments to standards for reviewing and republishing this is generally not the case with AES standards, although they are occasionally created. Any amendments are incorporated at the next revision.

Occasionally, the standards are reviewed and no changes are necessary. Those standards are marked as being reaffirmed, signifying that they are still up to date for now.

Some standards are stabilized when there is no further need for changes, or there is no available expertise to make changes.

When a new standard or revision is published, the details are included in the next edition of the Journal of the AES magazine.

There is more information about this in the AES Standards Committee Rules document.

Find the current status of the published AES standards here:

Acquiring The Standards

The standards are accessible via the AES web site. The search engine will list standards that match your query and you can then add them to your shopping cart.

Members with a current subscription in force will see a $0 charge. The checkout process will therefore not require a payment.

The Pro-Audio Reference

The Pro Audio reference was created by Dennis A. Bohn (1942-2022) and is a hugely useful collection of reference material concerning audio.

Dennis created and maintained this resource from the 1990’s until he retired in 2016. The responsibility for maintaining it was then bequeathed to the AES. It was published as a printed book in 2002. The latest information in this resource lives on as on online knowledge base at the AES web site and is a lasting testament to Dennis.

There are four principal sections. All of them useful in different contexts:

• Glossary of terms. Alphabetically organized encyclopedia of audio related terminology. It is very detailed with in-depth descriptions of the terms.
• Pro-audio company names. This lists many (but not all) organizations that manufacture audio products.
• Pro-audio reference books. A bibliography of important publications that should be on your bookshelf. Many of these are available on book reseller sites as they have been in circulation for some time.
• Pro-audio style guide. Describes important aspects of how various audio related terminology should be formatted when writing technical articles. This is vital reading for anyone who creates content or documentation.

Join The AES

Joining the AES is one of the best value for money propositions you will find in the standards world. Around the same time that SMPTE made all their documents free of charge to subscribing members, the AES did the same. Joining both organizations may be worthwhile. You can join the AES as an individual but not as an organization.

Downloading just a couple of the standards will immediately recoup the cost of your annual membership fees.

These Appendix articles contain additional information you may find useful: