François Becker

Engineer in Signal Processing and Information Technologies

Engineering double-degree ENSEA (France) and TU-Darmstadt (Germany).

Audio & Image expertise domains.

Work Experience

Since 2015: Coronal Audio

Cofounder.

Immersive Audio Technologies.

• ARCADE Spatial Audio Codec: embedding periphonic (3D) audio in an analog or digital stereo-compatible stream.
• DuoMic technology: capturing immersive audio with only 2 microphone capsules.
• Leapwing Audio's CenterOne audio plug-in: technology provided by Coronal Audio.
• Other undisclosed technologies.
• 2 patents (inventor).

2017 - 2018 (part-time): Undisclosed stealth start-up

Development Engineer.

• R&D in image processing, software development.

2008 - 2015: Longcat 3D Audio Technologies

Workforce: 3 - 7

Development Engineer.

2D and 3D immersive audio technologies: capture, analysis, synthesis, transport, rendering; software products for media post-production, video games; consulting, development partnerships.

• Software development:
  • AudioStage, a 3D Audio Workstation that connects to Digital Audio Workstations: real-time interprocess audio communication (lock-free and wait-free mechanisms and synchronization).
  • H3D, a binaural 3D audio plug-in.
  • Other undisclosed audio software built for or built in partnership for other companies.
• Technology development: 2 patents, including 3D audio space rendering with room coupling, undisclosed technologies developed for other companies.
• Listening tests.
• References: Auro, SRS, Rovio, Saint-Gobain, Peugeot, + undisclosed.

2006 - 2008: Signoptic Technologies

Workforce: 7 - 10 at the time

Development Engineer.

Biometry of the Matter solutions for secure traceability, fight against counterfeiting and parallel market (regulated markets) in the fiduciary sector, identity sector, pharmaceutical industry, tobacco industry, wines and spirits industry, luxury industry.

• Software Development:
  • Development environment setup.
  • Image Registration library development.
• Production network setup & management.
• 1 patent in the Optical & Machine Vision field.
• Customer demonstrations.
• On site & remote monitoring, abroad.
• References are undisclosed, except:
  • Royal Canadian Mint coin security. The World's Most Advanced Coin Authentication System (en).

Publications & Patents

• Phase Continuity in Amplitude-Phase Spatial Audio Coding, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, CARRON Clément, Conference Paper & Poster, Audio Engineering Society Conference 143, Los Angeles, USA, October 2017.
• Three-part soundfield decomposition for stereo encoding, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, CARRON Clément, Conference Paper & Poster, ICSA 2017 4th International Conference on Spatial Audio, Graz, Austria, September 2017.
• ARCADE 3D-audio codec: an implementation for the web, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, CARRON Clément, Conference Poster, Web Audio Conference 2017, London, UK, August 2017.
• Undisclosed Pending Patent, 2017.
• Method For Conversion, Stereophonic Encoding, Decoding And Transcoding Of A Three-Dimensional Audio Signal, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, 2016, Patent WO2018059742.
• Device And Method For Capturing And Processing A Three-Dimensional Acoustic Field, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, Patent, 2016, WO2018050292.
• Non-Linear Extraction of a Common Signal for Upmixing Stereo Sources, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, Conference Paper & Poster, AES 140th Convention, Paris, France, May 2016.
• Stereo Panning Law Remastering Algorithm Based on Spatial Analysis, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, Conference Paper & Poster, AES 140th Convention, May 2016.
• Method for sound signal processing, and computer program for implementing the method, BECKER François, BERNARD Benjamin, Patent EP2552130.
• Optical device for observing millimetric or submillimetric structural details of an object with specular behaviour, BECKER François, Patent WO2009056571.

Education & Training

• 2005 - 2006 (6 months): Diplomarbeit at the Technical University of Darmstadt: research in digital audio signal processing (Honda ASIMO robot).
• 2005 (6 months): Studienarbeit at the Fraunhofer IGD Institute: state of the art of the semantic visual information techniques (low-level descriptors), in a specific use case (Video Retrieval - AXMEDIS).
• 2004 (3 months): trainee at the University of Saint-Étienne, France. R&D in image processing, Information Theory. Development of a demonstrator software.

• 2004 - 2006: Double-degree ENSEA & TUD (École Nationale Supérieure de l'Électronique et de ses Applications, Cergy-Pontoise, France; Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany) student. Field of studies: Datentechnik ~ I.T. in the broader sense.
• 2002 - 2004: ENSEA student, 1st and 2nd years. Fields of studies: Electrical Engineering in the broader sense.
• 2000 - 2002: Preparatory classes for the French Grandes Écoles at the Lycée Claude Fauriel, Saint-Étienne, France. Majors: Mathematics, Physics; minor: Computer Science.
• 2000: Baccalauréat Scientifique, minors Mathematics, Computer Science, Music, Lycée Jean Monnet, Saint-Étienne.

Personal Skills

• Signal Processing: Signal Theory, Signal Transport Theory, Analog Signal Processing, Digital Signal Processing, Information Theory, Information Retrieval, PCA, ICA.
  • Image: Machine Vision, Image Registration, Image Retrieval.
  • Audio: multichannel audio, multidimensional audio, VBAP, Binaural, XTC, Ambisonic, Reverberation, Spatial Analysis, Upmixing, good hearing capabilities.
• Software development:
  • Software Engineering: development process management, quality management, Agile software development (scrum), Unit Tests, Git, Subversion, Trac, Jira, Redmine, API & SDK design.
  • Software Configuration: Cmake, Make, Projucer.
  • Software Packaging: packaging for macOS with Packages.app.
  • Languages: C, C++, Objective-C, Python, Swift, Matlab/Octave, Mathematica, NodeJS, PHP, SQL, Shell (bash).
  • IDEs: Visual Studio, Xcode, PyCharm CE, Qt Creator, Projucer.
  • Compilers: LLVM/Clang, GCC, MSVC.
  • Libraries: Boost, Qt, wxWidgets, JUCE, gettext (i18n, unicode), WildMagic, Ogre3D, OpenGL, Intel IPP, OpenCV, FFTW, KissFFT, nlohmann::json, pybind11.
  • Audio software development: audio plug-in design, VST2.4, VST3, RTAS, AAX, Audio Unit, VST hosting.
  • Web: PHP, MySQL, JS, WebSockets, NodeJS, DNS, HTTPS.
• Open Source: patches contribution, symbiosis of commercial licencing and open source community.
• Operating Systems & Networking: OS infrastructure (GNU/Linux, MS Windows, Mac OS X), network infrastructure (OSI model layers), server administration, database administration & replication, virtualization (VirtualBox), high availability (software & hardware RAID, UPS), backup policy.
• Electronics: analog, digital, microprocessor structure, assembly languages for m68k & DLX, FPGA/Xilinx Foundation.
• IP: patents, competitive intelligence.
• Product design — at a small scale but with great iteration speed: market analysis, specifications, prototyping, industrial design, support & feedback analysis.
• Languages: French (mother tongue), English (professional capabilities, TOEIC 875 in 2003 — probably a better score nowadays), German (limited capabilities).
• Misc: LaTeX, Attestation de formation aux premiers secours (AFPS, certificate of first aid), Certificat de fin d'études de solfège (music theory diploma), REAPER, Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic Pro X, driving license B, 3D printing, OpenSCAD.

Creations

See the Projets page.

More Informations

For more informations, please refer to my Viadeo profile ou my Linkedin profile. I have got also a ResearchGate profile.