Rational Acoustics Appoints Michael Smithers as Director of R&DRational Acoustics announces the appointment of Michael Smithers as director of research and development. In addition to his role with Rational Acoustics, Smithers serves as principal of Eclipse Audio, the creator of FIR Designer and other widely adopted DSP development tools used across the professional audio industry. Smithers brings over two decades of experience in audio signal processing, measurement and electroacoustics. He spent 25 years with Dolby Laboratories in senior research roles, contributing to technologies spanning perceptual audio coding, audio watermarking, loudness measurement, automotive audio, and cinema systems including Dolby Atmos. His work has been recognized with two Technical & Engineering Emmy Awards. His career also includes substantial contributions to loudspeaker and DSP workflow development, reflected in more than forty patents and eleven published papers across the AES and IEEE (ICASSP). His academic foundation includes a bachelor of engineering in electrical engineering (signal processing) from the University of Wollongong. A long-standing technology alignment exists between Rational Acoustics and Eclipse Audio, including code licensing for Rational's Smaart Data Modeler product and shared adoption among system measurement and loudspeaker processing professionals. "Michael's expertise aligns seamlessly with our strategic direction," says Jamie Anderson, president of Rational Acoustics. "We're thrilled to welcome him into a leadership role that will expand the capabilities and future roadmap of Smaart." Smithers adds: "There is strong alignment between the needs of measurement workflows and loudspeaker DSP development, and I'm looking forward to advancing both toolsets in ways that benefit the broader audio engineering community." 
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