Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 3 Fall 2018 | Page 14

STORY, PHOTOS, VIDEO BY ROSAIRE BUSHEY
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
Engineering and arts join
forces at Moogfest
It’s not often an engineer is featured on the
lineup schedule for a music festival, but Mike
Roan, a professor of mechanical engineering
in the College of Engineering has done it as
part of Moogfest, a community of futurists
who explore emerging sound technologies in
Durham, North Carolina.
originally designed in the Cube,  a four-story-
high, state-of-the-art theatre and high tech
laboratory that serves multiple platforms of
creative practice, to another live music venue.
The results, according to Roan, could change
the way artists view sound during a live
performance.
“When we think of live con-
certs we think of a large array
of speakers facing the audience,
and for decades, that has been the
template for live performance,”
said Roan. “Working with Tan-
ner in the Cube in the Institute
for Creativity, Arts, and Tech-
nology at the Moss Arts Center,
we have really upped the ante for
what is possible with immersive
sound technology, and in 2017
we put some of that on display at
Moogfest.”
This year, Roan, who works in areas of
immersive audio, psychoacoustics, and digital
signal processing, joined with Tanner Up-
thegrove, media engineer with the Institute
for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, to
provide the festival with a first-ever event – a
large scale immersive audio experience.
Working with Meyer Sound, a designer and
manufacturer of innovative sound solutions,
Roan and Upthegrove transferred a project
MOMENTUM
FALL 2018
It was during the 2017 festival
that Meyer Sound got involved.
Company representative Steve
Ellison saw what Roan and Up-
thegrove were doing with their scaled down
version of an immersive audio system and told
the pair the company would be interested in
working together in the future. The future
came in 2018 as Meyer Sound pulled up a semi
with more than $100,000 worth of equipment
to the Armory in Durham.
“The efforts of Meyer Sound were really
huge for showing what an immersive sound
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