Bio
I began my audio-related education some years ago when I pursued a BSc in Sound Engineering at Vicente Pérez Rosales University, a five-year program covering Music, Electronics, Computer Programming, DSP, Acoustics, Music Recording, and more. Initially, my main interest was studio recording, so I worked on many music productions spanning a wide range of styles, including Rock, Hip-Hop, Funk, Electronica, and Trip-Hop. As a student, I was twice awarded for my musical productions, one of them judged by recording engineer Barry Sage. You can listen to one of my early productions here (link).
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At a certain point, after taking courses in Computer Programming, Digital Signal Processing (DSP), and Acoustics, I realized that I actually wanted to build the audio equipment I had been using, rather than simply being a user. Consequently, my undergraduate thesis focused on the development of a VST/RTAS audio plug-in for Digital Room Correction (DRC) intended for multi-track recording sessions. |
The knowledge and skills I acquired while working on my thesis motivated me to learn more about audio technology research and development. After graduating, I decided to pursue a master’s degree abroad, since no audio technology-related postgraduate programs existed in Chile at the time. A couple of years later, I was awarded a scholarship to study the MSc program in Music Engineering Technology at the University of Miami, FL, the first audio technology master’s program in the USA. It was directed by Ken Pohlmann for thirty years and is currently led by distinguished professors such as Dr. Colby Leider and Will Pirkle.
Throughout my career, I have worked on a variety of projects. On the creative side, I have produced and recorded music, performed as a singer, and worked in live sound. As a teacher, I have taught several courses, including Pure Data, MIDI, Pro Tools, Audio Plug-in Design, and DSP Workshop. As a developer, I have built numerous tools for audio analysis, processing, and synthesis; completed an internship at Bose Corp.; and contributed to the development of a robot for automating tests on point-of-sale machines. I also worked as a research engineer at the Speech Processing and Transmission Lab at the University of Chile, where I explored novel feature extraction techniques for text-dependent and text-independent speaker verification systems, as well as applications of ultrasound for automatic bubble sizing, with results published in peer-reviewed journals.
I am currently a PhD student at the Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR), The University of Edinburgh, under the supervision of Professor Simon King, where I am conducting research on new signal representations and acoustic modelling for statistical parametric speech synthesis.