AES E-Library

Perception-Based Audio Signal Mixing in Automotive Environments

For announcement and information signal presentation in noisy environments such as vehicles, dynamic adjustment of signals is required for optimal information audibility and speech intelligibility. Not only variant ambient noises make the task of presenting information difficult, but in combination with today’s vehicle infotainment systems ca-pability to reproduce a variety of entertainment signal sources, this task is quite challenging. Very different input level ranges as well as a variety of compression ratios of audio signals have to be considered. A further challenge is the dynamic, loudness dependent intelligibility level difference of the human auditory system. Word recognition decreases with increasing masker level when announcement level is held constant. The algorithm presented in this paper solves these issues by dynamically mixing information and announcement signals to entertainment signals. Entertainment signals are comfortably attenuated as less as possible, and information or announcement signals are added in a loudness as demanded. As a result optimal announcement intelligibility and information audibility are achieved.

Author: Hess, Wolfgang
Affiliation: Harman/Becker Automotive Systems, Karlsbad-Ittersbach, Germany
AES Convention:127 (October 2009) Paper Number:7900 Import into BibTeX
Subject:Sound in Real Spaces

Click to purchase paper or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member and would like to subscribe to the E-Library then Join the AES!

This paper costs $20 for non-members, $5 for AES members and is free for E-Library subscribers.

Learn more about the AES E-Library

E-Library Location: (CD 127Papers)   /127/7900.pdf

Start a discussion about this paper!