Advancing Music

I've been a musician for over 25 years, but at my core, I am an entrepreneur, audio engineer, and researcher, driven by endless curiosity and a passion for pushing the boundaries of music and sound. My journey in audio engineering began in 2003 when I started as a student running sound for my first bands. Since then, I have built and managed multi-million dollar recording studios. I have produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered thousands of songs and created audio for film and games. Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to have my hard work recognized with four Grammy® Awards and 10 nominations, an Emmy Award, numerous multi-platinum recordings and multiple Billboard® #1's. I hold three degrees in audio, including a PhD in Sound Recording. For over 14 years, I have taught sound and audio technology to hundreds of students at American University and McGill University. I have established myself as a leading expert in 3D audio. For the past nine years, I have been building and operating my venture capital-funded audio tech company, Audible Reality®. Through dedication and innovation, I have contributed to its success by securing several early patents in 3D audio and developing our top-performing Spatial Mastering® studios for mixing and mastering.

I've always been curious about how the infinite choices an audio engineer can make in the studio affect the listener's experience. Since 2010, my graduate research has focused on auditory perception and our experience of sound in reality. In 2014, I further developed this research while pursuing my PhD at McGill University in their esteemed Sound Recording program, which specializes in 3D audio research for music. During my time there, I explored the perception and effectiveness of various 3D audio recording techniques and mixing methods in different auditory environments, both real and virtual. I specifically focused on binaural audio and virtual reality, two fields that were still in their early stages at that time. However, concepts like "binaural" and "3D audio" were largely unfamiliar to many back then, especially the music industry. Notably, AirPods® had not yet been invented; they were first released in 2016, two years later. To support my research, I invented and developed my own software tools for 3D audio mixing and mastering which eventually led to co-founding my startup, Audible Reality®, in 2015.

You can PhD thesis here.