Rational Acoustics welcomes Michael Smithers

Michael Smithers has joined Rational Acoustics as director of research and development, bringing over two decades of experience in audio signal processing, measurement and electroacoustics.

In addition to his position at Rational Acoustics, he serves as principal of Eclipse Audio, the creator of FIR Designer and other widely adopted DSP development tools used across the professional audio industry.

Previously, 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 recognised with two Technical & Engineering Emmy Awards.

Throughout his career, he has also made significant contributions to loudspeaker and DSP workflow development, reflected in more than 40 patents and 11 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.

Rational Acoustics and Eclipse Audio share a long-standing technology alignment, 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,” remarked 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 commented: “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.”