AES Budapest 2012
Paper Session P22
P22 - Quality Evaluation
Sunday, April 29, 14:00 — 16:30 (Room: Lehar)
Chair:
György Wersényi
P22-1 Evaluating Spatial Congruency of 3-D Audio and Video Objects—Kristina Kunze, Judith Liebetrau, Thomas Korn, Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, IDMT - Ilmenau, Germany
In this paper we demonstrate the evaluation of spatial congruency of object based audio and 3-D video reproduction. With current developments in 3-D video representation we are able to introduce a depth dimension. Furthermore, audio reproduction systems like Wave Field Synthesis are able to reproduce the sound field of virtual sound sources at various positions in the room, also in front of or behind a video screen. When combing these technologies audio objects can be placed at the positions of 3-D video objects. Subjective evaluations are needed to investigate the quality of such combinations. In our experiment we displaced the audio and video objects with respect to certain angles and evaluated the noticeable displacement angle. Displacements of more than 5° are noticeable and become annoying above 10°.
Convention Paper 8679 (Purchase now)
P22-2 Some New Evidence that Teenagers and College Students May Prefer Accurate Sound Reproduction—Sean Olive, Harman International Industries Inc. - Northridge, CA, USA
A group of 18 high school and 40 college students with different expertise in sound evaluation participated in two separate controlled listening tests that measured their preference choices between music reproduced in (1) MP3 (128 kbp/s) and lossless CD-quality file formats, and (2) music reproduced through four different consumer loudspeakers. As a group, the students preferred the CD-quality reproduction in 70% of the trials and preferred music reproduced through the most accurate, neutral loudspeaker. Critical listening experience was a significant factor in the listeners’ performance and preferences. Together, these tests provide some new evidence that both teenagers and college students can discern and appreciate a better quality of reproduced sound when given the opportunity to directly compare it against lower quality options.
Convention Paper 8683 (Purchase now)
P22-3 Evaluation of Cultural Similarity in Playlist Generation—Mariusz Kleæ, Polish-Japanese Institute of Information Technology - Warsaw, Poland
Choosing appropriate songs that satisfy one’s needs is often frustrating, tiresome, and ineffective due to the increasing number of music collections and their sizes. Successive songs should fit the situation, our mood, or at least have common features. Consequently, there is a need to develop solutions that would enrich our experience of listening to music. In this paper musical similarity has been studied at the cultural level in playlist generation process. Also, an author’s program designed for testing different playlists will be described. It is used to perform an experiment examining quality of playlists created using a cultural similarity model.
Convention Paper 8681 (Purchase now)
P22-4 Toward an Unbiased Standard in Testing Laptop PC Audio Quality—Ravi Kondapalli, Ben-Zhen Sung, CCRMA, Stanford University - Stanford, CA, USA
For a rapidly growing population, laptop PCs and tablet devices have become a primary means of watching and listening to electronic media. Nonetheless, form factor restrictions and placement of device functionality over audio quality have left a gap in the overall quality of the laptop listening experience. Multiple audio Post-processing solutions exist from audio DSP developers that aim to improve this. However, the quality of audio produced by pairing these post-processing solutions with PCs from a variety of manufacturers varies greatly. To date, there have been no blind and systematic comparisons of audio quality resulting from unique PC/post-processing algorithm pairings. Here we present an unbiased methodological approach for evaluating such combinations, looking at audio quality for three different commercially available post-processing solutions as implemented on laptop PCs from two different manufacturers.
Convention Paper 8682 (Purchase now)
P22-5 User Evaluation on Loudness Harmonization on the Web—Gerhard Spikofski, Peter Altendorf, Christian Hartmann, Institut für Rundfunktechnik - Munich, Germany
The problem of annoying loudness jumps occurring between different TV and radio stations or programs became generally known over the last decades. Since the publication of the recommendations ITU-R BS.1770-1 (in 2006) and EBU-R 128 (in 2010), and the actual version of the ITU Recommendation BS.1770-2 (2011), more and more tools have become available that allow loudness harmonization in broadcasting. The European research project NoTube integrates loudness harmonization in its research concepts in order to investigate the applicability of these tools in web environments where the situation is even worse. The user evaluation of different loudness and loudness range adaptations presented in this paper was carried out online and thus considers real web conditions. In particular the interdependence between parameters of the listening environment and the loudness/loudness range adaptations are highlighted based on the results of nearly 100 participants.
Convention Paper 8680 (Purchase now)
