Audio-Visual Blink Comparison in Acoustic Signal Analysis

Radzishevsky A, Goldin A, Berkovich I, Dicky D. Audio-Visual Blink Comparison in Acoustic Signal Analysis. In: 2026 AES 6th International Automotive Audio Conference. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 7. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23401

@inproceedings{Radzishevsky2026_23401,
  author = {Radzishevsky, Alex and Goldin, Alexander and Berkovich, Ishay and Dicky, Dmitry},
  title = {{Audio-Visual Blink Comparison in Acoustic Signal Analysis}},
  booktitle = {2026 AES 6th International Automotive Audio Conference},
  note = {Paper 7},
  year = {2026},
  month = jul,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23401}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Audio-Visual Blink Comparison in Acoustic Signal Analysis
AU  - Radzishevsky, Alex
AU  - Goldin, Alexander
AU  - Berkovich, Ishay
AU  - Dicky, Dmitry
T2  - 2026 AES 6th International Automotive Audio Conference
M1  - Paper 7
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/29
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23401
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Automotive audio systems rely on complex signal processing noise reduction, acoustic echo cancellation, beamforming, and in-car communication that must be tuned across vehicle platforms and their microphone and loudspeaker layouts. Tuning hinges on evaluating where and how parameter changes alter the output, yet no existing tool is designed for such fine-grained comparison. We adapt the blink comparator an astronomical instrument, famous for the discovery of Pluto to spectrograms of automotive audio: it rapidly alternates between aligned spectrograms of processing variants in a spatially stable display, making differences in time, frequency, and intensity readily visible even when scalar metrics such as Echo Return Loss Enhancement or wideband signal-to-noise ratio improvement agree. We add spectral difference masking to highlight local deviations, and extend the classical visual comparator with synchronized audio-playback switching so the engineer sees and hears a difference at once. We demonstrate the method on automotive case studies in noise-reduction tuning, echo-cancellation artifacts, and beamformer comparison.
ER  -