AES Berlin 2014
Paper Session P2
P2 - Perception—Part 2
Saturday, April 26, 14:30 — 18:30 (Room Paris)
Chair:
Jürgen Herre, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen - Erlangen, Germany; Fraunhofer IIS - Erlangen, Germany
P2-1 An Approach to Quantifying the Latency Tolerance Range in Non-Collaborative Musical Performances—Jorge Medina Victoria, University of Applied Sciences - Darmstadt, Germany; Cork Institute of Technology - Cork, Ireland
Latency is a well-known issue in collaborative music performances over networks such as the Internet. The effects of latency in performances over networks has been researched for the last decade, however, relatively few researches deal with the question of how musicians cope with their own latency in non-collaborative performances (performing music solo). This paper introduces the new concept of Latency Tolerance Range (LTR) and describes a methodological approach in order to develop a listening test, the results of which may demonstrate the influence of the musicians’ performed instruments (chordophones, aerophones, and membranophones) on latency perception.
Convention Paper 9023 (Purchase now)
P2-2 Emotional Impact of Different Forms of Spatialization in Everyday Mediatized Music Listening: Placebo or Technology Effects?—Steffen Lepa, Technical University of Berlin - Berlin, Germany; Audio Communication Group; Stefan Weinzierl, Technical University of Berlin - Berlin, Germany; Hans-Joachim Maempel, Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz - Berlin, Germany; Technische Universität Berlin - Berlin, Germany; Elena Ungeheuer, Julius-Maximilians-Universität - Würzburg, Germany
Do the spatial cues conveyed by different audio playback technologies alter the affective experience of music listening or is this rather a matter of quality expectations leading to “placebo effects”? To find out, we conducted a 2-factorial between-subjects design study employing “spatialization type” (stereo headphones / stereo loudspeakers / live concert simulation) and “spatial quality expectations” (yes / no) as independent experimental factors. Three-hundred-six subjects rated the perceived intensity of emotional expression when listening to four different musical pieces as well as the overall audio quality. While we observed significant effects of spatialization type on perceived affective expressivity of music and spatial audio quality, expectation-related placebo effects affected perceived spatial audio quality only. Results are discussed in terms of their significance for music and media research.
Convention Paper 9024 (Purchase now)
P2-3 Data-Driven Modeling of the Spatial Sound Experience—Aki Härmä, Philips Research - Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Munhum Park, Philips Research Laboratories - Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Armin Kohlrausch, Philips Research Europe - Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Since the evaluation of audio systems or processing schemes is time-consuming and resource-expensive, alternative objective evaluation methods attracted considerable research interests. However, current perceptual models are not yet capable of replacing a human listener especially when the test stimulus is complex, for example, a sound scene consisting of time-varying multiple acoustic images. This paper describes a data-driven approach to develop a model to predict the subjective evaluation of complex acoustic scenes, where the extensive set of listening test results collected in the latest MPEG-H 3-D audio initiative was used as training data. The results showed that a few selected outputs of various auditory models may be a useful set of features, where linear regression and multilayer perceptron models reasonably predicted the overall distribution of listening test scores, estimating both mean and variance.
Convention Paper 9025 (Purchase now)
P2-4 Investigation into Vertical Stereophonic Localization in the Presence of Interchannel Crosstalk—Rory Wallis, University of Huddersfield - Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK; Hyunkook Lee, University of Huddersfield - Huddersfield, UK
Listening tests were carried out on 12 subjects, using stereophonic loudspeakers arranged vertically in the median plane, to determine the threshold at which the amplitude of a delayed upper loudspeaker had to be reduced in order for stimuli to be fully localized at a lower loudspeaker. The test stimuli used were seven octave bands of noise (125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, and 8000 Hz) and one broadband source (125 ¬ 8000 Hz). The effect of frequency on the threshold was found to be significant (with the 1000 and 2000 Hz bands having the lowest thresholds) while the effect of delay time was non-significant. The threshold for the broadband stimulus was found to be significantly lower compared to each of the noise bands.
Convention Paper 9026 (Purchase now)
P2-5 The Perceptual Effects of Horizontal and Vertical Interchannel Decorrelation Using the Lauridsen Decorrelator—Christopher Gribben, University of Huddersfield - Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK; Bedford, Bedfordshire, UK; Hyunkook Lee, University of Huddersfield - Huddersfield, UK
The perceptual effects of interchannel decorrelation, using a method proposed by Lauridsen, have been investigated subjectively, looking specifically at the frequency dependency of decorrelation. Twelve subjects graded the perceived auditory image width of a pink noise sample that had been decorrelated by a Lauridsen decorrelator algorithm, varying the frequency-band, time-delay, and decorrelation factor for each sample. The same test has been carried out in both the horizontal and vertical planes. Results generally indicate that decorrelation is more effective horizontally than vertically. For horizontal decorrelation, the higher the frequency, the more effective the decorrelation, with a longer time-delay required for lower frequencies. In contrast, the vertical width produced by vertical decorrelation is better perceived at lower frequencies than higher ones.
Convention Paper 9027 (Purchase now)
P2-6 The Effect of Auditory Memory on the Perception of Timbre—Cleopatra Pike, University of Surrey - Guildford, Surrey, UK; Russell Mason, University of Surrey - Guildford, Surrey, UK; Tim Brookes, University of Surrey - Guildford, Surrey, UK
Listeners are more sensitive to timbral differences when comparing stimuli side-by-side than temporally-separated. The contributions of auditory memory and spectral compensation to this effect are unclear. A listening test examined the role of auditory memory in timbral discrimination, across retention intervals (RIs) of up to 40 s. For timbrally complex music stimuli discrimination accuracy was good across all RIs, but there was increased sensitivity to onset spectrum, which decreased with increasing RI. Noise stimuli showed no onset sensitivity but discrimination performance declined with RIs of 40 s. The difference between program types may suggest different onset sensitivity and memory encoding (categorical vs non-categorical). The onset bias suggests that memory effects should be measured prior to future investigation of spectral compensation.
Convention Paper 9028 (Purchase now)
P2-7 Investigation of a Random Radio Sampling Method for Selecting Ecologically Valid Music Program Material—Jon Francombe, University of Surrey - Guildford, Surrey, UK; Russell Mason, University of Surrey - Guildford, Surrey, UK; Martin Dewhirst, University of Surrey - Guildford, Surrey, UK; Søren Bech, Bang & Olufsen a/s - Struer, Denmark; Aalborg University - Aalborg, Denmark
When performing subjective tests of an audio system, it is necessary to use appropriately selected program material to excite that system. Program material is often required to be wide-ranging and representative of commonly consumed audio, while having minimal selection bias. A random radio sampling procedure was investigated for its ability to produce such a stimulus set. Nine popular stations were sampled at six different times of day over a number of days to produce a 200-item pool. Musical and signal-based characteristics were examined; the items were found to span a wide range of genres and years, and physical similarities were found between items in the same genre. The proposed method is beneficial for collecting a wide and representative stimulus set.
Convention Paper 9029 (Purchase now)
P2-8 Criticality of Audio Stimuli for Listening Tests – Listening Durations During a Ranking Task—Jonas Ekeroot, Luleå University of Technology - Piteå, Sweden; Jan Berg, Luleå University of Technology - Piteå, Sweden; Arne Nykänen, Luleå University of Technology - Luleå, Sweden
The process of selecting critical audio stimuli for listening tests is known from the literature to be both labor-intensive and time-consuming, and has been described as more of art than science. Explicit accounts of systematic procedures are not the most commonly encountered. In a previous study a ranking-by-elimination method was investigated, resulting in a rank order that could be used as a guide for critical stimuli selection. This paper presents a further exploratory analysis of data on the subjects’ listening durations, both as a function of number of stimuli left on screen and individually per stimulus. A strong negative correlation was found between the rank order of criticality and playing duration.
Convention Paper 9030 (Purchase now)
