picture of Barry Blesser
Barry Blesser Ph.D.

Technical and management consultant, independent scholar, lecturer,
and author of

Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture
Home Page
Spaces Speak
Articles
Bibliography
Contact

Dr. Barry Blesser is considered one of the grandfathers of the digital audio revolution. He invented and developed the first commercial digital reverberation system, the EMT-250 in 1976, helped start Lexicon in 1971, published the landmark paper, “Digital Processing of Audio Signals” in 1978, co-chaired the 1st International Conference on Digital Audio in 1980, and was an adviser to the US Justice Department on the Watergate Tapes in 1974. Dr. Blesser was President of the Audio Engineering Society in 1980. The AES awarded him their Silver, Bronze, and Governors Medals, both Publication Awards, and made him an AES Fellow. He has been on the AES editorial review board since 1975, and currently serves as its Consulting Technical Editor. Dr. Blesser has published numerous papers in professional journals and has been awarded many patents on audio and signal process.

After receiving his S.B, S.M and Ph.D. from MIT in Electrical Engineering in 1964, 1965, and 1969, Dr. Blesser served on the MIT faculty from 1969 to 1978 as an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He taught courses on electronic, instrumentation, and audio technology while conducting research in the Cognitive Information Processing Laboratory.

After leaving academia in 1978, he has been a technical and management consultant working with more than 50 companies worldwide. He often functions as a change agent using the principles of risk engineering to maximize productivity and profitability. In addition, he has been an expert witness on patents cases, a Director of Engineering, and Chief Technology Officer, and a founding officer of several startup companies. 

Most recently, MIT Press published his first book: Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture, which has provoked a latent interest in sound and acoustics worldwide. See also additional biographical information about the authors. Dr. Blesser, as a passionate advocate of the social consequences of corrosive acoustics, offers lectures and assistance  to those who want to be proactive in improving the aural quality of life.


Most popular downloads:
Recommended downloads:
1 audio and video pair of presentation


Last Modified: 1 June 2010