Born in Ontario in 1947, Barry Truax, is the director of the Sonic Research Studio and Professor Emeritus in the School of Communication at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in British Colombia, where he taught acoustic communication and electroacoustic composition,

He received an education in science at Queens University in Kingston (Canada), and studied music at the University of British Colombia. He undertook further study with Koenig and Laske at the Utrecht Institute of Sonology, and with R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University. He also participated in the World Soundscape Project, which sparked a long-term interest in sonic environments. In 1972, he created PODX, a digital synthesis and composition system, which he has used—in combination with traditional and other electronic techniques— in most of his works since then.

His output may be divided into works for fixed media and those for electronics and performers.

His music has been widely presented in European festivals, computer music conferences and on radio in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. In 1977, Sonic Landscape No. 3 was awarded first prize in the computer-aided composition category of the Fifth Bourges International Electro-acoustic Composition Competition; his work Arras received an honourable mention in the same competition in 1980. In 1985, he was Director of the International Computer Music Conference in Vancouver. In the same year, his CD, Sequence of Earlier Heaven, was released by Cambridge Street Records. Five of his works appeared on the CD Digital Soundscapes, distributed by SCR and Wergo.