Napkin immortalizes a design breakthrough

At the 113th convention of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), held over the weekend of October 4-8 at the Los Angeles convention center, Michael Goodman, Managing Director of CEntrance has been commended in connection with his efforts on behalf of AES.

A special workshop at the show was devoted to the recently released AES document, AES42 - The Digitally Interfaced Microphone Standard. The digital microphone would not be possible without the hard work of Michael Goodman, who co-chaired the working group together with Steven Harris, a known expert in the area of digital audio.

At the workshop, Steven Harris described the painstaking five-year process of establishing a standard amongst a dozen parties with conflicting interests. As part of his talk, Steven relayed the story of when he and Michael Goodman sat in a street cafe in Munich after a challenging workgroup session. In this meeting, users demanded a digital microphone connector to be incompatible with the standard XLR, while manufacturers desired a compatible connector. Frustrated by the lack of consensus, Michael and Steven began to brainstorm. Suddenly, they had a brilliant idea and immediately immortalized it on a nearby napkin. The solution involved creating a special pin, which users could install or remove to suit their compatibility preference. Shortly thereafter, Neutrik of Switzerland began to offer this connector, known as the XLD, as a standard part.

This was the second time when Michael Goodman came up with the solution to satisfy conflicting requirements. Previously, the group could not agree on the byte format for the remote control commands. In response, Michael derived a 64-bit code word, which was compatible with both proposals and allowed everyone to move on.