Mock Presentation

Description

Similar to the Design Doc Check and the Mock Demo, the Mock Presentation is an informal, mandatory event designed to better prepare you for your Final Presentation. In these sessions, you will present a few of your slides (about 10-15 minutes), and get feedback from the course staff as well as a few invited Department of Communication TAs. You will also be able to see a few of your peers' Mock Presentations, as there are up to 3 teams per time slot.

Requirements and Grading

The Mock Presentation is meant to be an opportunity for you to get feedback on a subset of your final presentation. It is recommended that you choose some aspect of your project, and present the design, results, and conclusions from that aspect. In order to get relevant feedback on your presentation skills, your Mock Presentation should also have an introduction and conclusion. You will receive feedback on your delivery, the format of your slides, and the organization of your presentation. Your slides should generally include:

  1. Title slide: Names, group #, title.
  2. Introduction slide: What is the project?
  3. Objective slide: What problem does this solve?
  4. Design Slides: A few slides on design, requirements and verification (should include block diagram, math, graphs, figures, tables).
  5. Conclusion: Wrap things up, future work.

Mock presentation is graded credit/no credit based on attendance and apparent effort; showing up completely unprepared will earn no credit.

Submission and Deadlines

Sign-up is handled through PACE. Time slots are 1 hour long, and multiple groups will share a time slot. This will give you an opportunity to give and receive feedback from your peers. You will be required to stay until all groups have presented and received feedback.

Master Bus Processor

Clay Kaiser, Philip Macias, Richard Mannion

Master Bus Processor

Featured Project

General Description

We will design a Master Bus Processor (MBP) for music production in home studios. The MBP will use a hybrid analog/digital approach to provide both the desirable non-linearities of analog processing and the flexibility of digital control. Our design will be less costly than other audio bus processors so that it is more accessible to our target market of home studio owners. The MBP will be unique in its low cost as well as in its incorporation of a digital hardware control system. This allows for more flexibility and more intuitive controls when compared to other products on the market.

Design Proposal

Our design would contain a core functionality with scalability in added functionality. It would be designed to fit in a 2U rack mount enclosure with distinct boards for digital and analog circuits to allow for easier unit testings and account for digital/analog interference.

The audio processing signal chain would be composed of analog processing 'blocks’--like steps in the signal chain.

The basic analog blocks we would integrate are:

Compressor/limiter modes

EQ with shelf/bell modes

Saturation with symmetrical/asymmetrical modes

Each block’s multiple modes would be controlled by a digital circuit to allow for intuitive mode selection.

The digital circuit will be responsible for:

Mode selection

Analog block sequence

DSP feedback and monitoring of each analog block (REACH GOAL)

The digital circuit will entail a series of buttons to allow the user to easily select which analog block to control and another button to allow the user to scroll between different modes and presets. Another button will allow the user to control sequence of the analog blocks. An LCD display will be used to give the user feedback of the current state of the system when scrolling and selecting particular modes.

Reach Goals

added DSP functionality such as monitoring of the analog functions

Replace Arduino boards for DSP with custom digital control boards using ATmega328 microcontrollers (same as arduino board)

Rack mounted enclosure/marketable design

System Verification

We will qualify the success of the project by how closely its processing performance matches the design intent. Since audio 'quality’ can be highly subjective, we will rely on objective metrics such as Gain Reduction (GR [dB]), Total Harmonic Distortion (THD [%]), and Noise [V] to qualify the analog processing blocks. The digital controls will be qualified by their ability to actuate the correct analog blocks consistently without causing disruptions to the signal chain or interference. Additionally, the hardware user interface will be qualified by ease of use and intuitiveness.

Project Videos