AES Budapest 2012
Paper Session P14
P14 - Listening Tests: Part 2
Friday, April 27, 16:30 — 18:00 (Room: Lehar)
Chair:
Thomas Sporer
P14-1 Determining the Threshold of Acceptability for an Interfering Audio Program—Jon Francombe, Russell Mason, Martin Dewhirst, University of Surrey - Guildford, Surrey, UK; Søren Bech, Bang & Olufsen - Struer, Denmark
An experiment was performed in order to establish the threshold of acceptability for an interfering audio program on a target audio program, varying the following physical parameters: target program, interferer program, interferer location, interferer spectrum, and road noise level. Factors were varied in three levels in a Box-Behnken fractional factorial design. The experiment was performed in three scenarios: information gathering, entertainment, and reading/working. Nine listeners performed a method of adjustment task to determine the threshold values. Produced thresholds were similar in the information and entertainment scenarios, however there were significant differences between subjects, and factor levels also had a significant effect: interferer program was the most important factor across the three scenarios, while interferer location was the least important.
Convention Paper 8639 (Purchase now)
P14-2 Signal Processing Framework for Virtual Headphone Listening Tests in a Noisy Environment—Jussi Rämö, Vesa Välimäki, Aalto University - Espoo, Finland
A signal processing framework is introduced to enable parallel evaluation of headphones in a virtual listening test. It is otherwise impractical to conduct a blind comparison of several headphones. The ambient noise isolation capability of headphones has become an important design feature, since the mobile usage of earphones takes place in noisy listening environments. Therefore, the proposed signal processing framework allows a noise signal to be fed through a filter simulating the ambient sound isolation at the same time when music is played. This enables the simultaneous evaluation of the timbre and background noise characteristics, which together define the total headphone listening experience. Methods to design FIR filters for compensating the reference headphone response and for simulating the frequency response and isolation curve of the headphones to be tested are presented. Furthermore, a real-time test environment implemented using Matlab and Playrec is described.
Convention Paper 8640 (Purchase now)
P14-3 Perceptual Evaluation of Stochastic-Event-Based Percussive Timbres for Use in Statistical Sonification—William Martens, Mark McKinnon-Bassett, Densil A. Cabrera, University of Sydney - Sydney, NSW, Australia
The results of statistical data analysis have typically been presented using visual displays, but the sonification of data for auditory display, particularly using sound varying along realistic timbral dimensions, can offer an attractive alternative means for rendering such results. It was hypothesized that stochastic-event-based percussive timbres could be useful in communicating the details of statistical data, and so a preliminary study was designed to investigate the use of these timbres in data sonification. This study examined the ability of listeners to estimate the variation in a physical parameter for stimuli selected from a set of recorded percussive events. Specifically, two experiments were executed to determine whether listeners are generally able to estimate the number of small pellets that were present inside a container based upon the sounds that were made when the container was shaken a few times. The experimental results showed that a 6-dB trial-to-trial variation in reproduction level had no significant effect on obtained estimates, whereas variation in spectral energy distribution did significantly affect estimates of the number of small pellets in the shaken container. While the capacity to discriminate between sonification system outputs has been established, investigation of system effectiveness in applications remains to be done.
Convention Paper 8642 (Purchase now)
