Hello, my name's Alex! I like to take things apart, see what makes them tick, and try to make something fascinating out of them. Many of these take place in the world of audio, electronics, and coffee.
I initially started this website as a personal diary of the gear that would catch my interest. Since then, this site has ballooned to include:
- Blog: Musical musings and other life updates.
- Workbench: My original equipment adventures, where I buy things and take them apart. I’m working on putting them back together.
- Lists: A loose collection of lists that I have filed away in my head
. This is where I keep a running list of the equipment I have played with – a superset of what is in Workbench. - Photos: Pictures I take for hobby.
Professional
I am currently at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I joined the inaugural PhD cohort in the new Music Technology and Computation program. My areas of research are:
- Spatial audio rendering
- Musical machine understanding
- Physical acoustics
Prior to this, I had worked for five years as a research engineer in Qualcomm’s Spatial Audio and Electroacoustics groups and gotten my Master’s at UC San Diego.
- At work, I developed classical and deep learning algorithms for spatial audio capture, physical simulations of soundfields and transducers, and transducer design methods utilizing laser vibrometry. See Audio RecordCtrl+F “3D Audio”, Audio PlaybackCtrl+F “Spatial Audio”, XR AudioCtrl+F “3D Audio”.
- At university, I researched volumetric soundfield representations using Bayesian learning methods. This allows for soundfields to be estimated and stored efficiently using some mix of HOA and WFS.
For more detail:
-vLinkedIn-vvRésumé-vvvvvSend me an emailatung323@gmail.com
Musical
I believe that music is a deeply intimate and sometimes narrative method of communicating between people and populations. Although many robust theories have been given for musical cognition, I think that much expression has yet to be explored, particularly in the emotional affects of harmony and consonance. These musings have taken form as numerical models or stereo listening parties.
I believe that my fascination with music and audio can be attributed to a supportive community of music teachers and an early exposure to instruments. During the pandemic, I briefly played guitar and bass with a couple groups. Despite the lack of opportunity to get together, we found ways to safely play a house party, record music videos, headline a local festival, and broadcast a live session.
While I don’t advertise myself as a producer, I have been meaningfully involved in the production of the songs below. If you have a few minutes, I invite you to go to a quiet place and have a listen.
Never Tell - Luke Chiang
In the East Was the Sun - Haiku Fields
A smaller listening party came out of this as well.
Photos
