Joe Powers is a sound designer and audio mixer for Discovery Inc in the Washington D.C. area. For over 20 years, he has mixed long and short form projects for National Geographic, PBS and PBS Kids, Smithsonian, TNT, NBC, Dreamworks, Icebreaker Films, Technicolor Sound, The Weather Channel, and many independent filmmakers.  He spent much of his early career at Clean Cuts Music in Baltimore and in DC where he received an Emmy nomination for sound mixing for the Discovery documentary, “Krakatoa:Volcano of Destruction”. Powers also helped develop the spatial audio workflow for Discovery VR, which peaked his interest in ambisonics.

At Duquesne University, Powers earned his Bachelors of Music in Bass Performance and Recording Arts and Sciences. This is where the DC native first had the chance to explore his love of music and technology together. Soon after leaving Pittsburgh, he took an assistant engineering job at Clean Cuts Music in Baltimore where he honed his skills as a sound designer and audio mixer for Television and Film Post Production over the next 15 years.  It gave him the opportunity to learn ADR, gaming audio, surround mixing, and the chance to contribute his own music compositions to their needledrop library. After a couple of years as a freelancer, Powers joined his current audio team at Discovery.

In the past few years, Powers has lectured at the School of Audio Engineering in Vancouver, taught an “Intro to Spatial Audio” class at the NAB convention in Las Vegas, and presented at the VRTO virtual reality conference in Toronto. These engagements have been fulfilling to teach the next generations of audio professionals.