AES San Francisco 2012
Paper Session P9
P9 - Auditory Perception
Saturday, October 27, 9:00 am — 12:00 pm (Room 122)
Chair:
Scott Norcross, Dolby Laboratories - San Francisco, CA, USA
P9-1 Subjective Evaluation of Personalized Equalization Curves in Music—Weidong Shen, The Institute of Otolaryngology, Department of Otolaryngology, PLA Genera Hospital - Beijing, China; Tiffany Chua, University of California, Irvine - Irvine, CA, USA; Kelly Reavis, Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center - Portland, OR, USA; Hongmei Xia, Hubei Zhong Shan Hospital - Wuhan, Hubei, China; Duo Zhang, MaxLinear Inc. - Carlsbad, CA, USA; Gerald A. Maguire, University of California, Irvine - Irvine, CA, USA; David Franklin, University of California, Irvine - Irvine, CA, USA; Vincent Liu, Logitech - Irvine, CA, USA; Wei Hou, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. - Shenzhen, Guangdong, China; Hung Tran, AuralWare LLC - Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, USA
This paper investigated the subjective quality of equalized music in which equalization (EQ) curves were tailored to the individuals’ preferences. Listeners subjectively rated a number of pre-selected psychoacoustic-based EQ curves over three test sessions. The personalized EQ curve was the curve that had the highest rating among the pool of pre-selected equalization curves. Listeners were instructed to rate music quality according to the ITU-R BS 1284 scale. Statistical analysis showed that listeners consistently rated music to which personalized EQ curves were applied significantly higher than the original CD-quality music.
Convention Paper 8738 (Purchase now)
P9-2 Thresholds for the Discrimination of Tonal and Narrowband Noise Bursts—Armin Taghipour, International AudioLabs Erlangen - Erlangen, Germany; Bernd Edler, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen - Erlangen, Germany; Masoumeh Amirpour, International Audiolabs Erlangen - Erlangen, Germany; Jürgen Herre, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen - Erlangen, Germany; Fraunhofer IIS - Erlangen, Germany
Several psychoacoustic models used in perceptual audio coding take into account the difference in masking effects of tones and narrowband noise and therefore incorporate some kind of tonality estimation. For possible optimization of these estimators for time-varying signals it is desirable to know the duration above which the auditory system is able to discriminate between tone bursts and narrowband noise bursts. There is some knowledge that this duration is frequency, bandwidth, and loudness dependent, but up to now no systematic studies have been performed. Therefore this paper presents the setup and the results of experiments for determining frequency dependent thresholds.
Convention Paper 8739 (Purchase now)
P9-3 Identification and Evaluation of Target Curves for Headphones—Felix Fleischmann, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS - Erlangen, Germany; Andreas Silzle, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS - Erlangen, Germany; Jan Plogsties, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS - Erlangen, Germany
Generally, loudspeakers are designed to have a flat frequency response. For headphones there is no consensus about the optimal transfer function and equalization. In this study several equalization strategies were tested on commercially available headphones. The headphones were measured on an artificial head and equalization filters were designed in the frequency domain consisting of two parts: The first part of the filter is specific to each headphone, flattening the magnitude response of the headphone at the entrance of the blocked ear-canal. The second part of the filter is generic target curve for headphones. Different target curves were tested on the three headphones during a formal listening test using binaural signals. A target curve designed by expert listeners comparing loudspeaker with binaural headphone reproduction was preferred.
Convention Paper 8740 (Purchase now)
P9-4 Consistency of Balance Preferences in Three Musical Genres—Richard King, McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Brett Leonard, McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Grzegorz Sikora, Bang & Olufsen Deutschland GmbH - Pullach, Germany
Balancing the level of different sound sources is the most basic task performed in the process of mixing. While this task forms a basic building block of music mixing, very little research has been conducted to objectively study mixing habits and balance preferences. In this study data is collected from 15 highly-trained subjects performing simple mixing tasks on multiple musical excerpts spanning three musical genres. Balance preference is examined over musical genre, and the results exhibit more narrow variances in balance for certain genres over others.
Convention Paper 8741 (Purchase now)
P9-5 The Effect of Acoustic Environment on Reverberation Level Preference—Brett Leonard, McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Richard King, McGill University - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology - Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Grzegorz Sikora, Bang & Olufsen Deutschland GmbH - Pullach, Germany
Reverberation plays a very important role in modern music production. The available literature is minimal concerning the interaction between reverberation preference and the listening environment used during critical balancing tasks. Highly trained subjects are tasked with adding reverberation to a fixed stereo mix in two different environments: a standard studio control room and a highly reflective mix room. Distributions of level preference are shown to be narrower for more reflective mixing environments, and the mean level is below those set in a less reverberant environment.
Convention Paper 8742 (Purchase now)
P9-6 Localization of a Virtual Point Source within the Listening Area for Wave Field Synthesis—Hagen Wierstorf, Technische Universität Berlin - Berlin, Germany; Alexander Raake, Technische Universität Berlin - Berlin, Germany; Sascha Spors, Universität Rostock - Rostock, Germany
One of the main advantages of Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) is the existence of an extended listening area contrary to the sweet spot in stereophony. At the moment there is little literature available on the actual localization properties of WFS at different points in the listening area. One reason is the difficulty to place different subjects reliably at different positions. This study systematically investigates the localization performance for WFS at many positions within the listening area. To overcome the difficulty to place subjects, the different listening positions and loudspeaker arrays were simulated by dynamic binaural synthesis. In a pre-study it was verified that this method is suitable to investigate the localization performance in WFS.
Convention Paper 8743 (Purchase now)
