AES Dublin 2019
Poster Session P20
P20 - Poster Session 4
Saturday, March 23, 10:00 — 12:00 (The Liffey B)
P20-1 Quantitative Analysis of Streaming Protocols for Enabling Internet of Things (IoT) Audio Hardware—Marques Hardin, Anglia Ruskin University - Cambridge, UK; Rob Toulson, University of Westminster - London, UK
Given that traditional music production techniques often incorporate analog audio hardware, the Internet of Things (IoT) presents a unique opportunity to maintain past production workflows. For example, it is possible to enable remote digital connectivity to rare, expensive, and bespoke audio systems, as well as unique spaces for use as echo chambers. In the presented research quantitative testing is conducted to verify the performance of audio streaming platforms. Results show that using a high-speed internet connection, it is possible to stream lossless audio with low distortion, no dropouts and around 30 ms round-trip latency. Therefore, with future integration of audio streaming and IoT control protocols, a new paradigm for remote analog hardware processing in music production could be enabled.
Convention Paper 10204 (Purchase now)
P20-2 Automatic Detection of Audio Problems for Quality Control in Digital Music Distribution—Pablo Alonso-Jiménez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona, Spain; Luis Joglar-Ongay, SonoSuite - Barcelona, Spain; Xavier Serra, Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona, Spain; Dmitry Bogdanov, Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Barcelona, Spain
Providing contents within the industry quality standards is crucial for digital music distribution companies. For this reason an excellent quality control (QC) support is paramount to ensure that the music does not contain audio defects. Manual QC is a very effective and widely used method, but it is very time and resources consuming. Therefore, automation is needed in order to develop an efficient and scalable QC service. In this paper we outline the main needs to solve together with the implementation of digital signal processing algorithms and perceptual heuristics to improve the QC workflow. The algorithms are validated on a large music collection of more than 300,000 tracks.
Convention Paper 10205 (Purchase now)
P20-3 Investigation of an Encoder-Decoder LSTM Model on the Enhancement of Speech Intelligibility in Noise for Hearing Impaired Listeners—Iordanis Thoidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Thessaloniki, Greece; Lazaros Vrysis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Thessaloniki, Greece; Konstantinos Pastiadis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Thessaloniki, Greece; Konstantinos Markou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Thessaloniki, Greece; George Papanikolaou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Thessaloniki, Greece
Hearing impaired (HI) listeners often struggle to follow conversations when exposed in a complex acoustic environment. This is partly due to the reduced ability in recovering the target speech Temporal Envelope (ENV) cues from Temporal Fine Structure (TFS). This study investigates the enhancement of speech intelligibility in HI listeners by processing the ENV of speech signals corrupted by real-world environmental noise. An Encoder-Decoder Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) model is exploited after perceptually motivated processing stages to compensate for the important ENV characteristics of comprehensible speech for hearing impairment. The computational model is evaluated using the Short-Time Objective Intelligibility (STOI) measure for speech intelligibility. Finally, results indicate a 6% improvement in the mean STOI measure across different SNR values.
Convention Paper 10206 (Purchase now)
P20-4 Noise Exposure of PC Video Games Players—Gino Iannace, Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" - Aversa, Italy; Giuseppe Ciaburro, Università della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli - Aversa, Italy; Amelia Trematerra, Universitá della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli" - Aversa, Italy
Video games are a leisure activity that is being practiced by more and more people. Even the average age of the users is gradually increasing, representing a pleasant activity for any age. The literature has widely insinuated the doubt whether such widespread use could have negative consequences for the health of its users. This article describes noise exposure measurement activities for video game users. The damage caused by noise depends on both the acoustic power as well as the exposure time. For this reason, different noise exposure scenarios produced by video games have been simulated. The results of the study show that the daily level of noise exposure is close to the limits imposed by legislation, despite the hours of rest, and were performed in an environment with a low background noise (46.0 dBA).
Convention Paper 10207 (Purchase now)
P20-5 Key Benefits and Drawbacks of Surrounding Sound when Wearing Headphones or Hearing Protection—Oscar Kårekull, 3M Peltor - Värnamo, Sweden; Tech Lic, 3M Peltor Communications - Värnamo, Sweden; Magnus Johansson, 3M Peltor - Värnamo, Sweden
Reproduction of sound in headphones or hearing protectors is essentially a trade-off between sound from the signal source, e.g., a cellphone, and environmental sounds. Acceptable signal to noise ratios and the useful noise level range for communication can be determined by already available measurement methods. The attenuation of surrounding noise, e.g., measured according to ISO 4869-1, can determine the signal to noise ratio but also determine the detection threshold of surrounding sound. Speech intelligibility tests can determine the level of surrounding noise where communication with nearby people is possible. In between these limits, a product can be optimized for different situations. Examples of measured detection levels are presented and the in between performance to the speech intelligibility limit is discussed.
Convention Paper 10208 (Purchase now)
P20-6 The Assessment of Maximum and Peak Sound Levels of F3 Category Fireworks—Kamil Piotrowski, AGH University of Science and Technology - Kraków, Poland; Adam Szwajcowski, AGH University of Science and Technology - Kraków, Poland; Bartłomiej Kukulski, AGH University of Science and Technology - Kraków, Poland
Fireworks are widely discussed in the aspect of harming people. Apart from their spectacular effects, there is a serious danger of hearing loss caused by too close bursts when attending as an operator and also as a spectator. The unpleasant truth is that the documents regarding fireworks are usually not specific enough in terms of limiting the excessive noise exposure and the sound pressure levels generated by some fireworks can be simply too high. The paper presents the results of the examination on F3 class firecrackers impulsive noise. The authors measured two types of F3 explosive materials and analyzed the obtained maximum, peak, and exposure values in accordance with PN-EN 15947-4:2016-02. Pyrotechnic articles. Fireworks, Categories F1, F2 and F3. Test methods.
Convention Paper 10209 (Purchase now)
P20-7 A High Power Switch-Mode Power Audio Amplifier—Niels Elkjær Iversen, Technical University of Denmark - Kogens Lyngby, Denmark; Jóhann Björnsson, ICEpower A/S - Søborg, Denmark; Patrik Boström, ICEpower A/S - Helsingborg, Sweden; Lars Petersen, ICEpower A/S - Søborg, Denmark
Switch-mode power audio amplifiers, also known as class-D, have become the conventional choice for high power applications. This paper presents the considerations for designing a high power audio amplifier power stage. This includes an overview of loss mechanism including reverse recovery losses that are increasingly important at higher output powers. A 4 kW prototype amplifier is implemented. Absolute maximum ratings shows up to +/– 190 V output voltage swing and 6.5 kW for sine wave burst. THD+N levels go down to 0.003% for 100 Hz and are generally below 0.1% up to clipping at 4 kW in a 4 O load.
Convention Paper 10215 (Purchase now)