AES San Francisco 2010
Poster Session P23
Sunday, November 7, 9:30 am — 11:00 am (Room 226)
Poster: P23 - Perception and Subjective Evaluation of Audio
P23-1 Toward an Algorithm to Simulate Ensemble Rhythmic Interaction Based on Quantifiable Strategy Functions—Nima Darabi, U. Peter Svensson, Norwegian University of Science and Telecommunications - Trondheim, Norway; Chris Chafe, Stanford University - Stanford, CA, USA
This paper studies the strategy taken by a pair of ensemble performers under the influence of delay. A general quantifiable measure of strategy taken by performers in an interactive rhythmic performance is represented in a form of a single-parameter strategy function. This is done by imposing an assumption about a decision-making process for “onset generation” by a participant, with one degree of freedom, to the observed data. We present specific examples of such strategy functions, suitable for different scenarios of rhythmic collaboration. By perpendicular projection of strategy functions of an ensemble performing trail onto Cartesian axis a nominal trial was transformed to a “strategy path” to show how the performers change their strategies during the course of a trial. By mathematical induction it was proven that this transformation from the time domain to a “strategy domain” is conditionally reversible, i.e., time vectors of an ensemble trial can be reconstructed by a domino effect having its time-free strategy path and given an initial state. This algorithm is considered to be a means to simulate the ensemble trials based on the overall strategies leading them.
Convention Paper 8292 (Purchase now)
P23-2 Hearing Threshold of Pure Tones and a Fire Alarm Sound for People Listening to Music with Headphones—Kaori Sato, Shogo Kiryu, Tokyo City University - Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Kaoru Ashihara, Advanced Industrial Science and Technology - Tsukuba, Japan
When listening to music through headphones, the listeners may be less sensitive to environmental sounds. The sound pressure level of the fire alarm bell sound was measured in an actual internet cafe. The hearing thresholds of pure tones and the fire alarm bell sound were measured for the subjects with headphones. The minimum sound pressure level of the fire alarm bell sound recorded in the cafe was about 40 dB under the worst condition. When the subjects listened to pseudo-music signals through headphones, the hearing threshold of the fire alarm sound increased to about 80 dB.
Convention Paper 8293 (Purchase now)
P23-3 Psychoacoustic Measurement and Auditory Brainstem Response in the Frequency Range between 10 kHz and 30 kHz—Motoi Koubori, Tokyo City University - Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Kaoru Ashihara, Advanced Industrial Science and Technology - Tsukuba, Japan; Mizuki Omata, Masaki Kyoso, Shogo Kiryu, Tokyo City University - Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan
High-frequency components above 20 kHz can be recorded in recent high-resolution audio media. However, it is argued whether such components can be perceived or not. In this paper a psychoacoustic measurement and auditory brainstem response in the high-frequency range are reported. In the psycho-acoustic measurement, some subjects could perceive the high-frequency sounds above 20 kHz and the auditory brainstem response could be measured for one subject at the frequency of 22 kHz. However, the sound pressure levels of the thresholds were beyond 80 dB in the both measurements. The results were unremarkable. Because auditory brainstem response is a direct signal from the auditory nerve, the nerve seems not to be stimulated by weak high-frequency sounds.
Convention Paper 8294 (Purchase now)
P23-4 Acoustical Design of Control Room for Stereo and Multichannel Production and Reproduction—A Novel Approach—Bogic Petrovic, Zorica Davidovic, BoZo Electronics, MyRoom Acoustics - Beograd, Serbia
This paper describes a new method of acoustic adaptation of control rooms with a goal to satisfy the necessary conditions for a quality control room, able to provide a better mix translation to other systems, with less need for the engineer to adapt, which is compatible for stereo as well as for surround monitoring. Two practical examples of control rooms will be described, which are realized by using the new principles, along with the descriptions and experiences of sound engineers who have worked in them.
Convention Paper 8295 (Purchase now)
P23-5 New 10.2-Channel Vertical Surround System (10.2-VSS); Comparison Study of Perceived Audio Quality in Various Multichannel Sound Systems with Height Loudspeakers—Sunmin Kim, Young Woo Lee, Samsung Electronics - Suwon, Korea; Ville Pulkki, Aalto University School of Science and Technology - Aalto, Finland
This paper presents the listening test results of perceived audio quality with several loudspeaker arrangements in order to find the optimal configuration of loudspeakers for a next-generation multichannel sound system. We compare new reproduction formats with NHK 22.2-channel and 7.1-channel setup of Recommendation ITU-R BS.775-2. The subjective evaluations focused on the loudspeaker configurations at the top layer were carried out with test materials generated with different methods, by mixing, and by reproducing B-format recordings. The results show that the perceptual difference in the overall quality achieved with the new 10.2-channel vertical surround system with 3 top loudspeakers and the NHK 22.2-channel system was imperceptible in a grading scale used in the experiment.
Convention Paper 8296 (Purchase now)
P23-6 Perceptually Motivated Scoring of Musical Meter Classification Algorithms—Matthias Varewyck, Jean-Pierre Martens, Ghent University - Ghent, Belgium
In this paper perceived confusions between the four most popular meters 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, and 6/8 in Western music are examined. A theoretical framework for modeling these confusions is proposed and translated into a perceptually motivated objective score that can be used for the evaluation of meter classification algorithms with respect to meter labels that were elicited from a single annotator. Experiments with three artificial and two real algorithms showed that the new score is preferable over the traditional accuracy since the score rewards algorithms that make reasonable errors and seems to be more robust against different annotators.
Convention Paper 8297 (Purchase now)
P23-7 Classification of Audiovisual Media Content—Ulrich Reiter, Norwegian University of Science and Technology - Trondheim, Norway
This paper describes a qualitative experiment designed to ultimately derive a set of meaningful attributes for the classification of audiovisual media content. Whereas such attributes are available for the classification of video only content, they are missing for audiovisual content. Based on the suggestions made by Woszczyk et al. in their 1995 AES Convention paper [Preprint 4133], we have taken a closer look in a combined set of experiments, one consisting in a quality trade-off decision, and one consisting in a relevance sorting task with respect to these attributes.
Convention Paper 8298 (Purchase now)
P23-8 The Influence of Texture and Spatial Quality on the Perceived Quality of Blindly Separated Audio Source Signals—Thorsten Kastner, University of Erlangen - Erlangen, Germany, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Erlangen, Germany
Blind Audio Source Separation (BASS) algorithms are often employed in applications where the aim is the acoustic reproduction of the separated source signals. The perceived quality of the reproduced signals is therefore a crucial criterion. Two different factors can be roughly distinguished that have influence on the perceived quality of blindly separated source signals. First, the quality of the separation of a desired target source from a signal mixture. Second, the preservation of the spatial image of the source, the spatial position of the target source in the signal mixture as it is perceived by the listener. Based on extensive MUSHRA-style listening tests, results are presented reflecting the influence of both factors on the overall basic audio quality of BASS signals. Further, a nonlinear regression model is set up to parametrize the influence of both factors on the subjective audio quality. A correlation of 0.98 between predicted and measured subjective quality and a root mean square prediction error of 2.7 on a [0,100] MUSHRA-scale was achieved for predicting the basic audio quality from an unknown listening test.
Convention Paper 8299 (Purchase now)
P23-9 Perceptual Evaluation of Spatial Audio Quality—Hwan Shim, Eunmi Oh, Sangchul Ko, Samsung Electronics - Gyeonggi-do, Korea; Sang Ha Park, Seoul National University - Seoul, Korea
With rapid development in multimedia devices, realistic spatial audio is of interest. In this paper we discuss how to evaluate realistic audio experience and then determine major perceptual attributes to deliver realistic audio experience to listeners. We propose eight attributes in the three categories such as “timbre,” “localization,” and “spaciousness.” Each perceptual attribute is evaluated by subjective listening tests using different surround reproduction systems including 10.2 and 22.2 channel systems. The experimental results show which spatial audio attribute is influential for realistic audio experience and which attribute is difficult to reproduce by using current reproduction systems.
Convention Paper 8300 (Purchase now)
