Recommended Practice

The CEDIA/CTA-RP22 Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice was without a doubt the single biggest and most profound project I've ever been involved with. With the finished product being around 150 pages, it took the CEDIA/CTA R10 joint working group (now known simply as CEDIA Standards) more than two years to develop under the leadership of the indefatigable Peter Aylett, CEDIA Fellow and partner at Officina Acustica.

When the near-completed draft of RP22 was first handed to me as a docx file, it had been written piece-by-piece during working group meetings and/or offline in segments as assigned to the various contributors. What I found was an assortment of writing and diagram styles. It was my job to unify it.

RP22 needed to become one cohesive document with one voice and consistency across the many diagrams throughout. I'd already designed the look and feel of CEDIA/CTA recommended practices with RP28 a couple of years earlier, which then served as a template for RP22 (albeit with some further improvements). By the time RP22 was ready for public release, I'd:

• comprehensively copy edited the entire document

• reordered as necessary according to users' system design workflow

• painstakingly sorted the text into its many sections and subsections for logical separation and flow

• cross-checked all standards references to ensure accuracy and latest versions

• created eps files for dozens of diagrams with consistency of style and color palette

• laid out all resulting content for contextual clarity

• created section title pages as separate layers in the pdf version for print-friendly output (mitigate overuse of ink when printing full color block pages)

• Apps used: Adobe InDesign for the main document, Illustrator for all eps files, Photoshop for other images

I believe that taking a document from technical draft to its final publication version can only be truly effective if the copy editor/graphic designer is aligned with both the author/s and the intended readers. That means implicitly understanding the content. It's one thing for the authors to know what they meant to say but it can be another for the reader to understand it as intended. Sometimes just misplacing a diagram that should accompany specific text can be enough to cause reader confusion. It takes great care and attention. That's what I do. Upon its launch at CEDIA Expo 2023, RP22 quickly became the most downloaded document that CEDIA has ever produced. And not just by a bit; multiples more. The incredible working group that were so generous in sharing their time and expertise deserve the credit for what is an incredible document, but I am proud for doing my part in doing justice to their extraordinary work. CEDIA/CTA-RP22 Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice is available to download from CEDIA: https://cedia.org/en-au/smart-home-professionals/advocacy/standards-best-practices/immersive-audio-design-excellence/