AES Paris 2016
Paper Session P10
P10 - Audio Quality
Sunday, June 5, 12:45 — 16:15 (Room 352B)
Chair:
Robin Reumers, Sonic City Studios - Amsterdam, The Netherlands
P10-1 Subjective Evaluation of High Resolution Audio through Headphones—Mitsunori Mizumachi, Kyushu Institute of Technology - Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, Japan; Ryuta Yamamoto, Digifusion Japan Co., Ltd. - Hiroshima, Japan; Katsuyuki Niyada, Hiroshima Cosmopolitan University - Hiroshima, Japan
Recently, high resolution audio (HRA) can be played back through portable devices and spreads across musical genres and generation. It means that most people listen to HRA through headphones and earphones. In this study perceptual discrimination among audio formats including HRA has been invested using a headphones. Thirty-six subjects, who have a variety of audio and musical experience in the wide age range from 20s to 70s, participated in listening tests. Headphone presentation is superior in discriminating the details to the loudspeaker presentation. It is, however, found that the headphone presentation is weak in reproducing presence and reality. Audio enthusiasts and musicians could significantly discriminate audio formats than ordinary listeners in both headphone and loudspeaker listening conditions.
Also a poster—see session P15-6]
Convention Paper 9529 (Purchase now)
P10-2 A Headphone Measurement System Covers both Audible Frequency and beyond 20 kHz (Part 2)—Naotaka Tsunoda, Sony Corporation - Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Takeshi Hara, Sony Video & Sound Products Inc. - Tokyo, Japan; Koji Nageno, Sony Video and Sound Corporation - Tokyo, Japan
A new scheme consists of measurement by wide range HATS, and the free-field HRTF correction was proposed to enable entire frequency response measurement from audible frequency and higher frequency area up to 140 kHz and for direct comparison with free field loud speaker frequency response. This report supplements the previous report [N. Tsunoda et al., “A Headphone Measurement System for Audible Frequency and Beyond 20kHz,” AES Convention 139, October 2015, convention paper 9375] that described system concept by adding ear simulator detail and tips to obtain reliable data with much improved reproducibility.
Also a poster—see session P15-8]
Convention Paper 9530 (Purchase now)
P10-3 Methodologies for High-dimensional Objective Assessment of Spatial Audio Quality—Dan Darcy, Dolby Laboratories, Inc. - San Francisco, CA, USA; Kent Terry, Dolby Laboratories Inc. - San Francisco, CA, USA; Grant Davidson, Dolby Laboratories, Inc. - San Francisco, CA, USA; Rich Graff, Dolby Laboratories, Inc. - San Francisco, CA, USA; Alex Brandmeyer, Dolby Laboratories - San Francisco, CA, USA; Poppy Crum, Dolby Laboratories - San Francisco, CA, USA
Traditional methods of subjective assessment of sound, such as ratings scales and forced-choice tasks, can be limited and time intensive in their ability to reflect the depth of experiential qualities associated with spatial hearing. Attempts to report localization of sound can be challenging when confounds or noise are introduced by constrained motions of head turning or pointing, and these approaches do not all record higher-dimensional features of sound like dispersion and trajectory. We propose a structured method of testing to reliably capture the quality of experience of spatial sound. Feature extraction of the high-dimensional representation of reported experiences converts to robust metrics used to tune and drive system performance toward desired perceptual attributes and optimal experiential performance.
Convention Paper 9531 (Purchase now)
P10-4 Objective Measures of Voice Quality for Mobile Handsets—Holly Francois, Samsung Electronics R&D Institute UK - Staines-Upon Thames, Surrey, UK; Scott Isabelle, Knowles Inc. - Mountain View, CA, USA; Eunmi Oh, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. - Seoul, Korea
Mobile phones include noise suppression to facilitate use in noisy environments; therefore listening tests in accordance with ITU-T P.835 are appropriate for comparing handset performance. Objective speech quality measures are an often used cheaper alternative; however the results can be misleading, as rank order compared to listening tests is not always preserved. We compare the outputs of PESQ, POLQA, and 3Quest with the results of P.835 listening tests. As expected, measures intended for use with noise suppression perform that task better than tools that were not initially designed to do so. However, improved measures, that aim to preserve rank order while minimizing both maximum error and RMSE, would improve the reliability of comparative evaluations in background noise.
Convention Paper 9532 (Purchase now)
P10-5 The Difference between Stereophony and Wave Field Synthesis in the Context of Popular Music—Christoph Hold, Technische Universität Berlin - Berlin, Germany; Hagen Wierstorf, Technische Universität Ilmenau - Ilmenau, Germany; Alexander Raake, Technische Universität Ilmenau - Ilmenau, Germany
Stereophony and Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) are capable of providing the listener with a rich spatial audio experience. They both come with different advantages and challenges. Due to different requirements during the music production stage, a meaningful direct comparison of both methods has rarely been carried out in previous research. As stereophony relies on a channel- and WFS on a model-based approach, the same mix cannot be used for both systems. In this study mixes of different popular-music recordings have been generated, each for two-channel stereophony, surround stereophony, and WFS. The focus is on comparability between the reproduction systems in terms of the resulting sound quality. In a paired-comparison test listeners rated their preferred listening experience.
(Also a poster—see session P15-10)
Convention Paper 9533 (Purchase now)
P10-6 Accelerometer Based Motional Feedback Integrated in a 2 3/4" Loudspeaker—Ruben Bjerregaard, Technical University of Denmark - Kongens Lyngby, Denmark; Anders N. Madsen, Technical University of Denmark - Kongens Lyngby, Denmark; Henrik Schneider, Technical University of Denmark - Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark; Finn T. Agerkvist, Technical University of Denmark - Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark; Michael A. E. Andersen, Technical University of Denmark - Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
It is a well known fact that loudspeakers produce distortion when they are driven into large diaphragm displacements. Various methods exist to reduce distortion using forward compensation and feedback methods. Acceleration based motional feedback is one of these methods and was already thoroughly described in the 1960s showing good results at low frequencies. In spite of this, the technique has mainly been used for closed box subwoofers to a limited extent. In this paper design and experimental results for a 23 /4 " acceleration based motional feedback loudspeaker are shown to extend this feedback method to a small full range loudspeaker. Furthermore, the audio quality from the system with feedback is discussed based on measurements of harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, and subjective evaluation.
Also a poster session—see session P15-7]
Convention Paper 9534 (Purchase now)
P10-7 Visualization Tools for Soundstage Tuning in Cars—Delphine Devallez, Arkamys - Paris, France; Alexandre Fénières, Arkamys - Paris, France; Vincent Couteaux, Telecom ParisTech - Paris, France
In order to improve the spatial fidelity of automotive audio systems by means of digital signal processing, the authors investigated means to objectively assess the spatial perception of reproduced stereophonic sound in car cabins. It implied choosing a convenient binaural microphonic system representative of real listening situations and metrics to analyze interaural time differences under 1.5~kHz in those binaural recordings. Frequency-dependent correlation correctly showed the frequencies at which the fidelity was improved and allowed to quantify the improvement. The time-domain correlation seemed to be a good indicator of the apparent source width, but failed at giving the perceived azimuth of the virtual sound source. Therefore that metric must be refined to be used efficiently during audio tunings.
(Also a poster—see session P15-9)
Convention Paper 9536 (Purchase now)
