*** Audio Engineering Society 53rd conference on Semantic Audio ***

London, UK, January 27-29, 2014.
Chairs: Karlheinz Brandenburg and Mark Sandler, Email: 53rd_chair@aes.org


Semantic Audio is concerned with content-based management of digital audio recordings. The rapid evolution of digital audio technologies, e.g. audio data compression and streaming, the availability of large audio libraries online and offline, and recent developments in content-based audio retrieval have significantly changed the way digital audio is created, processed, and consumed. New audio content can be produced at lower cost, while also large audio archives at libraries or record labels are opening to the public. Thus the sheer amount of available audio data grows more and more each day. Semantic analysis of audio resulting in high-level metadata descriptors such as musical chords and tempo, or the identification of speakers facilitate content-based management of audio recordings. Aside from audio retrieval and recommendation technologies, the semantics of audio signals are also becoming increasingly important, for instance, in object-based audio coding, as well as intelligent audio editing, and processing. Recent product releases already demonstrate this to a great extent, however, more innovative functionalities relying on semantic audio analysis and management are imminent. These functionalities may utilise, for instance, (informed) audio source separation, speaker segmentation and identification, structural music segmentation, or social and Semantic Web technologies, including ontologies and linked open data.

This conference will give a broad overview of the state of the art and address many of the new scientific disciplines involved in this still-emerging field. Our purpose is to continue fostering this line of interdisciplinary research. This is reflected by the wide variety of invited speakers presenting at the conference.

Keynote and invited speakers
-----------------------------------------

* Meinard Müller (International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany)
* Gaël Richard (TELECOM ParisTech and CNRS, France)
* Gerhard Widmer (Department of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria)

* Yves Raimond (BBC R&D, London, UK)
For an up-to-date list of the invited talks, please refer to the conference website at http://www.aes.org/conferences/53/.



Submission of papers
-------------------------------

Submissions may include full papers for peer review (4-10 pages, conforming the AES conference template), or short, late-breaking paper proposals including a title and abstract (60-120 words). Complete manuscripts (encouraged for full peer review) should be submitted at www.aes.org/53rd_authors by September 15, 2013. Late-breaking paper proposals should be submitted by October 15, 2013.

Peer reviewed papers may be presented in the main sessions, or as a poster at the discretion of the committee, although authors may indicate a preference. Acceptance of papers will be determined by the 53rd international conference review committee based on the full paper submission. Accepted authors will be notified by November 6, 2013. Final manuscripts must be submitted by November 27, 2013. Authors wishing their conference papers to be considered for publication by the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (JAES), should read the Journal's guidelines described at: http://www.aes.org/journal/authors/guidelines/ and, following the conference, submit a revised and extended version of their paper for review, using the Journal's online submission system.

Acceptance of late-breaking demo and poster proposals will be determined by the review committee based on the abstract. Accepted authors will be invited to submit two page extended abstracts (short papers), which will not form part of the official proceedings, but will be published online, and available from the conference web site. (Additionally, authors of short papers are invited to use open-access publication routes including arXiv.org.) Accepted authors will be notified by November 6, 2013. Final submissions will due January 6, 2014.

All papers must conform to the LaTeX or MS-Word templates available from www.aes.org/53rd_authors. If you have any questions about peer reviewed paper, poster or extended abstract submissions, please contact: 53rd_papers@aes.org.
Conference website: http://www.aes.org/conferences/53/

Please submit manuscripts at www.aes.org/53rd_authors no later than September 15, 2013, or proposals for the late-breaking session no later than October 15. 2013.


Proposed topics for papers
-------------------------------------

* Audio signal processing and feature extraction
* Machine learning methods for audio content analysis
* Intelligent audio production using semantic analysis
* Intelligent audio effects
* Semantic audio description and ontologies
* Semantic Web and Linked Data for audio
* Automatic tagging of audio signals
* Speech processing and analysis
* Content-based audio retrieval
* Music informatics and retrieval
* Automatic music transcription
* Audio source separation
* Audio restoration
* User interfaces for audio management and retrieval
* Applications in gaming, entertainment, education, etc…


Conference Programme
-----------------------------------

The three day conference programme includes oral and poster sessions to be held at the Barbican Centre in a convenient central London location, social events, and a technical tour at the BBC in London (participant numbers will be limited and subject to registration on a first come first served basis). An additional tutorial day will be held at Queen Mary University of London on effective research practices (e.g. the use of version control and unit testing in audio research) and selected topics TBC (e.g. Semantic Web technologies for audio and/or Sparse Representation).


Important dates
-----------------------

Manuscript deadline: September 15, 2013.
Late-breaking demo/poster proposal deadline: October 15, 2013.
Acceptance emailed: November 6, 2013.
Camera-ready submission deadline: November 27, 2013.
Late-breaking paper deadline (extended abstracts): January 6, 2014.


Paper co-chairs
-----------------------

Christian Dittmar, Fraunhofer IDMT
George Fazekas, Queen Mary University of London
Sebastian Ewert, Queen Mary University of London
Email: 53rd_papers@aes.org


Organising Committee
--------------------------------

Karlheinz Brandenburg (chair), Fraunhofer IDMT
Mark Sandler (chair), QMUL

Chris Baume, BBC R&D
Christian Dittmar, Fraunhofer IDMT
George Fazekas, QMUL
Joshua D. Reiss, QMUL
Michael Terrell, QMUL
Panos Kudumakis, QMUL
Sebastian Ewert, QMUL
Sue White, QMUL
Thomas Wilmering, QMUL
Yading Song, QMUL