WHO WORKS HERE

People Staff Interview

• A peripatetic childhood

  I was born in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture, but moved around frequently from the age of 5 due to my father's work. I spent time in Papua New Guinea, Italy, India, and Uganda and started to use computers and the internet as I wanted to know more about Japanese anime and manga.

  In middle school, I became interested in music and listened to a lot of Green Day and Simple Plan. Around this time my parents bought me a guitar and I started a band with my friends, we would perform Avril Lavigne songs and such. In India, the music class was taught as part of a brass band, but learning elements of classical music was a good experience. I played the trumpet in the band. Looking back, I think the joy of being surrounded by 360-degree sound and gradually harmonising that sound is pretty unique to brass band players.

  I wanted to attend high school in Japan and so when I was 15 I came back and enrolled at a dormitory school. I continued to play the guitar every day without fail and hoped to become a guitarist in the future. Then one day, my homeroom teacher told me about an acoustic design course that the Department of Design, School of Design at Kyushu University was offering. I did some research and it appealed to me as you could study acoustics from both an art and an engineering perspective, so I made the decision to go for it. To be honest, when I first began studying for the entrance exam I didn't even understand factorization, but somehow I made it through and passed.

  

• Programming started during the final year

  At university, I studied the scientific aspects of sound such as acoustic theory along with the more artistic aspects like music theory and music history. Being able to acquire auditory sensitivity (training to intuitively connect sounds and acoustic parameters) was also a valuable experience. However, I still remained very much focused on my guitar playing and was also head of the band club.

  Around the time I was starting my senior thesis in 4th year, I needed to learn how to code. I'd had a little exposure to it in my classes, but it's safe to say I had almost zero programming skills at that point. Friends of mine in the research lab were all using Python, so I decided to learn it as well. Python is a versatile programming language that can be used not just for data analysis in research, but for other things as well and I gradually started to become interested in all aspects of software development. I decided then to go to graduate school.

  I continued my music research while in graduate school but I also wanted to study software development, so I started a long-term internship at an IT company in Fukuoka. While at the company I was involved with machine learning, web app, and smartphone app development. I learned all of the programming basics through this job and it was a really good experience.

• Life-changing competition

  During my first year of graduate school, I received a software engineering job offer from a company, I didn't feel right about taking a job that would be so far removed from the sound industry. Then around that time my PhD supervisor, who was on the board of an international academic society called AES (Audio Engineering Society), asked me if I'd like to participate in a student competition. I thought that if I could do well then it might lead to a job in the sound industry, and so I decided to give it a go.

  I decided to try and create a VST plug-in that could be used in DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). The acoustics of a concert hall can be created by connecting a guitar, but the thing I wanted to focus on was head tracking. Using the gyrosensor of a smartphone I was able to put together a setup so that the sound localization of the guitar amp followed the movement of the performer. As the reverberations would get longer I had to think about the processing burden this would incur. I read through some dissertations from overseas and wrote an algorithm to reduce the load.

  So, while my motives for entering the competition weren't entirely noble, I had started to take it very seriously, so much so that I was worrying that if I messed it up my career might be over. Also, despite thinking previously I could ignore it, I learned C++ from scratch and was able to apply it in the competition. Thanks to the effort and hard work I put in I was able to win silver in the competition.

• Looking at the company information and thought "That's me!"

  The timeline is going back and forth a little here, but when I was considering that job offer from before, I also found out that there was such a job as a sound programmer. It seemed to suit me perfectly so I looked on the internet and came across Polyphony Digital (PDI). There was a message by Yamauchi-san saying "Polyphony Digital is driven by the two wheels of 'design and technology" and I remember thinking, that's me!

  However, at the time I felt that I lacked the skills needed to be a sound programmer. It was only after the AES competition I had the confidence to finally apply, and I joined the company in April 2021.

  I joined the Sound Production Team here at PDI and I'm currently involved with in-game 'sound reflection'. While it wasn't possible to accurately simulate sound reflection up to 'Gran Turismo Sport', from PlayStation®️5 it's now possible and we are looking to extend this functionality going forward. We are also creating the tools used by sound designers. I want to increase the level of realism in the game and hope to make the sound reflections more realistic and create more variation with sound effects like the crowd noise.

  The fact that sound programmers at PDI need more than just programming skills is interesting. You have to improve your sensitivity to sounds to communicate with the Sound Designer. It combines programming and artistic tasks, so it really is my ideal job.

• Looking for people with a strong passion for sound

  Of course, a certain degree of code writing skills is needed for this role, but I think a strong passion for sound is much more important. I'd like to work with someone who has a real interest in sound and can visualize the kind of sounds they want to include while they code, and who can write those ideas down.

  The level of code written at PDI is pretty high, but you don't need to be able to write at that level from the very beginning. What is essential is the desire to improve by reading and writing lots of code and to be continuously looking to learn.

  VR and AR application is now also a hot topic in the sound industry. In the graphics industry, the term "photoreal" is often used for photorealistic CG, so we should make the term "phonoreal" for sound as well. I want to create immersive, realistic sounds with accurate sound fields and it would be great to work with someone who shares this aim.