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2005 | Buch

Analysis and Synthesis of Auditory Scenes Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Communication Acoustics

herausgegeben von: Prof. em. Dr.-Ing. Dr. techn. h.c. Jens Blauert

Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

Communication Acoustics deals with the fundamentals of those areas of acoustics which are related to modern communication technologies. Due to the advent of digital signal processing and recording in acoustics, these areas have enjoyed an enormous upswing during the last 4 decades. The book chapters represent review articles covering the most relevant areas of the field. They are written with the goal of providing students with comprehensive introductions. Further they offer a supply of numerous references to the relevant literature. Besides its usefulness as a textbook, this will make the book a source of valuable information for those who want to improve or refresh their knowledge in the field of communication acoustics – and to work their way deeper into it. Due to its interdisciplinary character Communication Acoustics is bound to attract readers from many different areas, such as: acoustics, cognitive science, speech science, and communication technology.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
1. Analysis and Synthesis of Auditory Scenes
Summary
Audition is the most important human sensory modality in interindividual communication. Consequently, acoustics has always dealt with communication. Yet recently, due to the high amount of computing power available, communication-acoustical systems become increasingly complex and sophisticated. In particular, they become more intelligent and knowledgeable. This trend will be discussed in this chapter by taking two complementary research streams as examples which have been pursued at the Institute of Communication Acoustics at Bochum during the past three decades, namely, (a) analysis of auditory scenes with the goal of arriving at parametric representations and, complementary, (b) synthesis of auditory scenes from parametric representations. The discussion is based on two software systems which have been developed for research purposes, namely, a binaural-analysis system and an auditory-virtual-environment generator — both of which will be roughly explained. It is, however, not the aim of the chapter to introduce scientific or technological details, but rather to bring a trend to the fore which may well coin the profile of communication acoustics in the years to come.
Jens Blauert
2. Evolutionary Adaptations for Auditory Communication
Summary
Many organisms have evolved efficient means for acoustic communication. Adaptations can be found concerning all components of the communication system: signal generation at the sender is optimised, signal characteristics are tailored to the transmission channel, and receivers have evolved elaborate mechanisms for segregating the signals from separate sources and for analysing signal characteristics. The acoustics of the environment often imposes similar demands on the mechanisms for auditory analysis in different animal species. Thus, mechanisms of auditory analysis show many similarities in different animal species ranging from insects to mammals. These similarities result either from convergent evolution of auditory systems that are selected to achieve a similar performance or they are the consequence of the preservation of structures in evolutionary history. Examples for both types of traits are provided that have evolved as adaptations for auditory communication.
Georg Klump
3. A Functional View on the Peripheral Human Hearing Organ
Summary
The human hearing organ is a signal processor par excellence. Its amazing abilities are often described in terms of psycho-acoustic models. However, in this chapter the focus is laid on the physical background, particularly on the physics of the peripheral hearing organ. The peripheral system can be looked at as a signal conditioner and preprocessor which stimulates the central nervous system. It comprises acoustic, mechanic, hydro-acoustic, and electric components which, in total, realize a sensitive receiver and high-resolution spectral analyzer. For daily life it is extremely important that the hearing organ can also work under adverse conditions. This includes the need for general robustness and low sensitivity with respect to varying external and internal working conditions. In the hearing organ several strategies are found which noticeably differ from technical solutions.
Herbert Hudde
4. Modelling of Binaural Hearing
Summary
In many everyday listening situations, humans benefit from having two ears. For more than a century, research has been conducted to understand which acoustic cues are resolved by the auditory system to localize sounds and to separate concurrent sounds. Since Jeffress proposed the first lateralization model in 1948, binaural models have become increasingly popular to aid in understanding the auditory system and to solve engineering tasks related to the localization and detection of acoustic signals. In the following chapter, a number of binaural models will be described — starting from the classical coincidence model to recent approaches which simulate human localization in three dimensions. The equalization-cancellation model will be also addressed, as a classical example to predict binaural detection experiments.
Jonas Braasch
5. Audio—Visual Interaction in the Context of Multi-Media Applications
Summary
In our natural environment, we simultaneously receive information through various sensory modalities. The properties of these stimuli are coupled by physical laws, so that, e. g., auditory and visual stimuli caused by the same event have a specific temporal, spatial and contextual relation when reaching the observer. In speech, for example, visible lip movements and audible utterances occur in close synchrony, which contributes to the improvement of speech intelligibility under adverse acoustic conditions. Research into multi-sensory perception is currently being performed in a number of different experimental and application contexts. This chapter provides an overview of the typical research areas dealing with audio—visual interaction3 and integration, bridging the range from cognitive psychology to applied research for multi-media applications. A major part of this chapter deals with a variety of research questions related to the temporal relation between audio and video. Other issues of interest are basic spatio-temporal interaction, spatio-temporal effects in audio—visual stimuli — including the ventriloquist effect, cross-modal effects in attention, audio—visual interaction in speech perception and interaction effects with respect to the perceived quality of audio—visual scenes.
Armin Kohlrausch, Steven van de Par
6. Psycho-Acoustics and Sound Quality
Summary
In this chapter psycho-physical methods which are useful for both psycho-acoustics and sound-quality engineering will be discussed, namely, the methods of random access, the semantic differential, category scaling and magnitude estimation. Models of basic psycho-acoustic quantities like loudness, sharpness and roughness as well as composite metrics like psycho-acoustic annoyance will be introduced, and their application to sound-quality design will be explained. For some studies on sound quality the results of auditory evaluations will be compared to predictions from algorithmic models. Further, influences of the image of brand names as well as of the meaning of sound on sound-quality evaluation will be reported. Finally, the effects of visual cues on sound-quality ratings will be mentioned.
Hugo Fastl
7. Quality of Transmitted Speech for Humans and Machines
Summary
This chapter provides an overview of quality aspects which are important for telecommunication speech services. Two situations are addressed, the telephone communication between humans and the task-oriented interaction of a human user with a speech-technology device over the phone, e. g., a spoken-dialogue system. A taxonomy is developed for each situation, identifying the relevant aspects of the quality of service. The taxonomies are used for classifying quality features, as perceived by the users of the service, as well as parameters and/or signals which can be measured instrumentally during the interaction. For conversations between humans, relationships can be established between the parameters/signals and the perceptive quality features, thus allowing for prediction of the quality for specific application scenarios. Finally, future efforts necessary for establishing similar prediction models for task-oriented human-machine interaction over the phone are identified.
Sebastian Möller
8. Assigning Meaning to Sounds — Semiotics in the Context of Product-Sound Design
Summary
Sound design constructs audibility of the world. Sounds carry information about the world. When listening to sounds, communication takes place. These are well-known facts for speech sounds, but it is also true for other types of sounds such as music or product sounds. In principle, each acoustic event can be perceived as a sign carrier through which information about the world is communicated. In its ultimate sense, sound designers are engineers of communication. To be successful, they have to take design decisions on the basis of how listeners perceive sounds and of what kind of communication takes place during this event. Suitable sound design requires a special view on acoustic/auditory communication. Among other sciences, semiotics deals with this field.
Ute Jekosch
9. Binaural Technique — Basic Methods for Recording, Synthesis, and Reproduction
Summary
The term “binaural technique” is used as a cover label here for methods of sound recording, synthesis and reproduction, where the signals in focus are the acoustic signals at the eardrums. If these are presented authentically to listeners, the listeners will obtain acoustic cues which are deemed sufficient for authentic auditory experience — including its spatial aspects. This chapter reviews the basic principles of binaural technique - putting a special focus on results of investigations which have been performed at Aalborg University. These basic principles form the foundation for current utilization of binaural technique at large. They include basic theory, investigations on sound transmission in the ear canal, measurements and post-processing of head-related transfer functions, HRTFs, transfer functions of headphones and their adequate equalization, and results from localization experiments in real life as well as with binaural recordings from real heads and artificial heads. Numerous applications to these methods exist. Some of them will be introduced exemplarily.
Dorte Hammershøi, Henrik Møller
10. Hearing-Aid Technology
Summary
Within the last 15 years, hearing instruments have strongly improved due to the application of modern technologies. This chapter provides a look at the possibilities and restrictions of the technologies used and at the signal-processing algorithms available today for the most advanced commercial hearing instruments. Due to ongoing development in semi-conductors the application of even more complex algorithms is expected for the near future. The first part of this chapter focuses on the different designs and chip technologies seen with today’s hearing instrument. Consequently, signal-processing algorithms are reviewed which are applied in digital hearing instruments. Finally, we deal with the components of hearing instruments and with methods for fitting the instruments to the individual’s hearing impairment.
Inga Holube, Volkmar Hamacher
11. Auditory Virtual Environments
Summary
A virtual environment aims at creating situations in which humans have perceptions that do not correspond to their physical environment but to a virtual one. The present chapter focuses on auditory virtual environments, i. e. on the auditory component of virtual environments as seen independently from the remaining modalities. Section 11.1 introduces and discusses concepts, such as auditory event and plausibility, required to the understanding of the remaining chapter. Section 11.2 presents the various components of a typical auditory virtual environment along with the techniques and models most often employed by each of them. Section 11.3 presents specific implementations of auditory virtual environments and addresses a selection of current research issues, namely, multi-modality, presence, quality and joint reality. Section 11.4 closes the chapter with a summary of the main conclusions.
Pedro Novo
12. The Evolution of Digital Audio Technology
Summary
Digital audio technology is allowing music and speech to be easily and readily accessible to most people, since these signals are treated as digital media and, hence, are significant components of the information-age revolution. From its commercial introduction via the audio Compact Disc, CD, approximately 20 years ago, this technology had a meteoric evolution which have seen the introduction of numerous methods, techniques, systems and formats and has allowed the users to benefit from reductions in the size of digital audio equipment and its cost. An overview of these developments is presented here with a critical assessment of their significance, along with a reference to many important publications and events. It is shown that this technology is mainly rooted on three constituent evolutionary components, namely, (a) digital electronics and computer technology, (b) DSP theory and techniques, (c) auditory modelling. Based on the analysis of these components, some conclusions are drawn, which allow the prediction of future trends concerning the evolution of this technology.
John N. Mourjopoulos
13. Speech Production — Acoustics, Models, and Applications
Summary
The mechanism of speech production is explained for the different speech sounds. The role of the most relevant articulators is discussed as well as, to a certain extent, sound excitation. The main cavities of the speech-production system are modelled by concatenation of short homogeneous acoustic tubes, interconnected by appropriate adaptors. Based on the concept of forward- and backward-travelling waves, signal-flow graphs are given, describing pressure, flow or power waves. Losses can be considered either by lumped impedances or distributed along the tube by properly designed filters. The estimation of a lossless un-branched tube system can easily be achieved by linear prediction from the speech signal. If losses are included and the tube system is branched, optimization algorithms can be applied for the parameter estimation. The termination at the glottis is assumed to be either fixed or time dependent according to the glottal opening. The mouth opening is described by a simple frequency-dependent termination. Applications in the fields of speech synthesis, source coding and recognition are briefly discussed.
Arild Lacroix
14. Speech and Audio Coding — Aiming at High Quality and Low Data Rates
Summary
The historic “coding gap” between high-rate coding of narrow- and wide-band speech on the one hand, and low-rate coding of narrow-band speech on the other hand, has been bridged more and more during the past 15 years. The GSM coder of 1990 was a very important milestone in this process, as it has prompted increasing research towards better quality and higher compression. These particular research efforts, together with other relevant activities worldwide, have helped closing the gap. In the following, the concepts behind this progress will be explained. A special focus will be put on the basis of this success, namely, on the fact that, finally, a break-through could be achieved for narrow-band speech, allowing for good quality at medium-to-low rates. For wide-band speech this holds true at medium rates. The same concepts as applied to speech coding were also applied to music, yet, ending up with some noticeable conceptual differences. While for speech time-domain approaches prevail, frequency-domain coding turned out to be more successful for audio. A characteristic, there, is extensive exploitation of psycho-acoustical phenomena.
Ulrich Heute
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Communication Acoustics
herausgegeben von
Prof. em. Dr.-Ing. Dr. techn. h.c. Jens Blauert
Copyright-Jahr
2005
Verlag
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Electronic ISBN
978-3-540-27437-7
Print ISBN
978-3-540-22162-3
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/b139075

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