无顶空间内混响感特性的研究

混响时间是反映时间域内声能衰变率的参量,它大体上可反映扩散空间内的主观混响感。但是,对于庭院等无顶空间而言是否适用,值得研究。因为在这些空间内,声能衰变过程中缺失了大量来自顶面的反射声,虽然混响时间可能变化不大,但会显著影响主观听觉上混响的感受。本文通过模拟声场的主观试听实验,发现反射声的方向性因素不可忽略,其对混响感有明显影响。由于混响时间是以单声道收录为界定的,因此,它不能充分反映无顶空间内的主观混响感。      

混响感知的听觉心理

综述了中国传媒大学传播声学研究所近年来在混响的主观感知机理上的研究工作和进展,涉及混响感的语意调查与分析,音乐听闻的混响偏爱度实验,混响感的差别阈限,混响感的因素分析,以及混响处理与音乐情感之间的相互影响等研究结果。对混响感知的研究对进一步探究在有界空间中主观听感的生理心理机制是十分有启发的。     

民乐片段混响感主观偏爱度的初步实验

为了探讨不同受试人群、不同实验素材对民乐片段混响感主观偏爱度的影响，以民族器乐中典型的弹拨乐器、拉弦乐器、吹奏乐器独奏作品片段为实验素材，以有经验的音响技师和普通大学生为受试人，采用对偶比较法对实验素材混响处理的主观偏爱度进行了实验测量。实验得出了两组受试对不同实验素材所偏爱的混响时间，验证了同一受试组对不同素材偏爱的混响感不同；发现不同受试组对同一实验素材实验结果的差别不显著。     

强背景下混响时间的非线性滤波M序列相关测量

本文提出采用非线性滤波抑制在强背景噪声环境中用Ｍ－序列相关法得到的房间脉冲响应中的残余噪声影响，以扩大混响衰减曲线的动态范围，从而达到能够在强背景噪声环境下准确测量混响时间的目的。首先讨论了影响Ｍ序列相关法测量混响时间的几个因素。其次，采用非线性滤波进一步抑制背景噪声的影响。结果表明，非线性滤波的效果相当显著。本文还在非白噪声背景条件下用该法进行强背景下的混响时间测量，结果与传统测量结果符合得很好     

音乐厅音质设计中响度评价参量的讨论

强感级(G,dB)是评价音乐厅音质设计中重要客观参量之一,它由厅内声级按标准声源的声功率级归一化得出.我们不仅考察厅内的总强感级G,还得分别考虑其早期声和后期声的G早和G后,因为它们的成因和主观效果是不同的.近年从主观试验结果中获得一个意外发现,即最低频段的G低值与中频G中值之比,将是决定厅内低音感的主要因素,而不是过去所说的低频和中频混响时间之比. 10年前,人们认为环绕感LEV只由到达听者耳际的侧向声能所决定,如今则了解到后期总声能G后这一因素也很重要.并提出由G和侧向比值LF来估算LEV的新公式,便于设计考虑.本文对音乐厅最佳G值作了讨论.近年的一个重要发现是,音乐厅内听者响度判断主要由混响声决定,或认为因视听综合心理效应使听者的响度判断与离舞台距离几乎无关,或两者兼具.后者涉及视觉信息输入影响听觉响度体验,即所谓多维感知综合效果的心理学问题.近年有人认为G参量不能直接反映音乐厅内听众听到的绝对声压级为由,提出以音乐片段中乐队齐奏强音标志段声级Lpf作为评价音乐厅响度的新物理指标.作者对此作了全面评析,说明其存在问题和不可行性.     

结合卷积神经网络与混响时间注意力机制的混响抑制

提出一种结合卷积神经网络的编解码器模型和混响时间注意力机制的混响抑制算法,该算法通过编解码器模型实现混响抑制,并利用混响时间注意力机制克服混响环境变化对混响抑制效果的影响。该算法在编码器中使用具有不同大小的卷积核来处理混响语音幅度谱,从而获得包含多尺度上下文信息的编码特征;通过引入注意力模块,实现在不同的混响时间环境中选择性地使用不同权重的编码特征生成加权特征;最后,在解码器中使用加权特征来重建混响抑制后的语音信号幅度谱。在模拟和真实的混响环境下,该算法相对于基线系统在语音混响调制能量比上分别取得了0.36 dB和0.66 dB的提升。实验结果表明,该算法可以适应不同混响环境的变化,相对基线系统在真实混响环境下具有更高的鲁棒性。      

浅海混响的垂直相干性

浅海混响垂直相干特性是海洋混响研究中一个重要的课题。在射线简正波混响理论的基础上,给出了浅海混响垂直相关的一般表达式,并推导出了在均匀层浅海中混响垂直相关的简化解析表达式。同时,通过对数值计算及实验结果的讨论,研究了浅海混响垂直相关与混响时间、频率、声源深度、接收器深度、海底衰减特性及海底散射系数等参数的变化关系。研究表明,在海底散射满足可分离性的条件下,浅海海底混响的垂直相关与声源位置无关,随着混响时间和海底衰减的增加、或随频率、接收器间隔和海深的减小,混响的垂直相关增大。     

庭院空间的音质

中国传统戏场有不少是庭院式的。在这种顶面敞开的空间中,混响很少,声场基本上是非扩散的,故其声学性能与全封闭房间有很大不同。经典的室内声学例如赛宾混响公式在此不再适用。且由于缺失了大量来自顶面的反射声,使反射声序列的精细结构有很大变化,在仅仅表征声音衰变速率的混响时间参量中却反应不出来。致使虽具有与封闭房间相同3D混响时间的庭院空间中,其混响感可能明显不同。本文分析了庭院空间内声场的若干特征,对庭院式戏场音质作了初步探讨。     

一种基于最大似然的混响时间盲估计方法*

混响是室内声学中的重要现象,在室内设计与音频信号处理中都需要测量或估计混响时间。本文改进了一种基于最大似然估计的混响时间盲估计方法,即采用说话人在房间中自然说话时发出的混响语音信号来估计混响时间的方法。该方法首先确定语音衰减段的最优边界,其次计算该衰减段的两个额外参数,据此筛选出符合条件的语音段,最后将满足条件的语音段采用最大似然估计得到混响时间估计值。在五个不同混响时间条件下的仿真表明,与已有方法相比,改进方法估计的混响时间同真实混响时间的偏差更小,方差更低,估计准确性较高。     

浅海混响建模的声束跟踪理论

研究建立了基于声束跟踪理论的浅海混响强度计算方法和混响时间序列仿真方法。给出了混响强度计算的简要理论推导,并进行了模型计算值与实验值的比较。建立了一种混响时间序列仿真模型,给出了其实现框架和方法。结合实验数据与文献研究结果,进行了混响序列相关特性的检验与分析。结果表明:建立的混响强度计算模型能很好地进行浅海混响强度的预报,混响序列仿真模型能仿真具有不同包络分布的混响序列,且其相关特性符合实验与文献研究结果。      

Effect of listening level and background noise on the subjective decay rate of room impulse responses: Using time-varying loudness to model reverberance

Room impulse responses (RIRs) are used very widely to characterize the acoustic conditions of rooms, such as in the derivation of reverberation time, early decay time and clarity index. This study investigates the subjective decay rate (or reverberance) of RIRs when directly listened to (rather than convolved with a dry signal such as speech or music). Through a subjective experiment, it investigates the effects of gain (or listening level) and background noise level on the reverberance of RIRs that had been measured in three concert auditoria. The task of the experiment was to match the decay rate of RIRs to that of a reference RIR by ear, by adjusting the RIRs’ exponential decay rate. Based on objective loudness modeling, gain should have a positive effect on reverberance, and background noise has a negative effect. This is confirmed in the results of the experiment. Furthermore, the objectively calculated loudness decay function provides an effective predictor of subjective decay rate, which performs better than conventional early decay time or reverberation time for the RIRs tested.     

The effect of loudness on the reverberance of music: reverberance prediction using loudness models

This study examines the auditory attribute that describes the perceived amount of reverberation, known as "reverberance." Listening experiments were performed using two signals commonly heard in auditoria: excerpts of orchestral music and western classical singing. Listeners adjusted the decay rate of room impulse responses prior to convolution with these signals, so as to match the reverberance of each stimulus to that of a reference stimulus. The analysis examines the hypothesis that reverberance is related to the loudness decay rate of the underlying room impulse response. This hypothesis is tested using computational models of time varying or dynamic loudness, from which parameters analogous to conventional reverberation parameters (early decay time and reverberation time) are derived. The results show that listening level significantly affects reverberance, and that the loudness-based parameters outperform related conventional parameters. Results support the proposed relationship between reverberance and the computationally predicted loudness decay function of sound in rooms.     

Monaural room acoustic parameters from music and speech

This paper compares two methods for extracting room acoustic parameters from reverberated speech and music. An approach which uses statistical machine learning, previously developed for speech, is extended to work with music. For speech, reverberation time estimations are within a perceptual difference limen of the true value. For music, virtually all early decay time estimations are within a difference limen of the true value. The estimation accuracy is not good enough in other cases due to differences between the simulated data set used to develop the empirical model and real rooms. The second method carries out a maximum likelihood estimation on decay phases at the end of notes or speech utterances. This paper extends the method to estimate parameters relating to the balance of early and late energies in the impulse response. For reverberation time and speech, the method provides estimations which are within the perceptual difference limen of the true value. For other parameters such as clarity, the estimations are not sufficiently accurate due to the natural reverberance of the excitation signals. Speech is a better test signal than music because of the greater periods of silence in the signal, although music is needed for low frequency measurement.     

The acoustical characterization of orchestra platforms and uncertainty estimation of the results

Measurements have been carried out on furnished orchestra platforms in four concert halls in Italy in order to describe the sound field perceived by musicians. The heterogeneous nature of the orchestra suggested a procedure able to take into account the mutual hearing between instrumental sections. The measured parameters were the early, late and total support, the reverberation time, the early decay time and the clarity index. A part of the study has been devoted to the measurement uncertainty estimation. The source directivity and the small displacements of the microphone influence the early decay time to a great extent while the on-platform spatial variability affects both the early decay time and the clarity index. Per-section early support shows differences that render the overall spatial mean inappropriate to describe the stage as a whole. For the other parameters an overall mean platform value can instead be suitable, even though, for the case of clarity a more evident group variability is observed. The values of late support, reverberation time, early decay time and clarity index, proposed in literature as suitable measures of reverberance for musicians, are not all intercorrelated, indicating that not all these parameters can be associated to the same subjective impression.     

Non-auditory factors affecting urban soundscape evaluation

The aim of this study is to characterize urban spaces, which combine landscape, acoustics, and lighting, and to investigate people's perceptions of urban soundscapes through quantitative and qualitative analyses. A general questionnaire survey and soundwalk were performed to investigate soundscape perception in urban spaces. Non-auditory factors (visual image, day lighting, and olfactory perceptions), as well as acoustic comfort, were selected as the main contexts that affect soundscape perception, and context preferences and overall impressions were evaluated using an 11-point numerical scale. For qualitative analysis, a semantic differential test was performed in the form of a social survey, and subjects were also asked to describe their impressions during a soundwalk. The results showed that urban soundscapes can be characterized by soundmarks, and soundscape perceptions are dominated by acoustic comfort, visual images, and day lighting, whereas reverberance in urban spaces does not yield consistent preference judgments. It is posited that the subjective evaluation of reverberance can be replaced by physical measurements. The categories extracted from the qualitative analysis revealed that spatial impressions such as openness and density emerged as some of the contexts of soundscape perception.     

A study on the optimal English speech level for Chinese listeners in classrooms

Speech intelligibility in classrooms affects the learning efficiency of students directly, especially for the students who are using a second language. The speech intelligibility value is determined by many factors such as speech level, signal to noise ratio, and reverberation time in the rooms. This paper investigates the contributions of these factors with subjective tests, especially speech level, which is required for designing the optimal gain for sound amplification systems in classrooms. The test material was generated by mixing the convolution output of the English Coordinate Response Measure corpus and the room impulse responses with the background noise. The subjects are all Chinese students who use English as a second language. It is found that the speech intelligibility increases first and then decreases with the increase of speech level, and the optimal English speech level is about 71 dBA in classrooms for Chinese listeners when the signal to noise ratio and the reverberation time keep constant. Finally, a regression equation is proposed to predict the speech intelligibility based on speech level, signal to noise ratio, and reverberation time.     

Experimental investigation of the effects of the acoustical conditions in a simulated classroom on speech recognition and learning in children

The potential effects of acoustical environment on speech understanding are especially important as children enter school where students' ability to hear and understand complex verbal information is critical to learning. However, this ability is compromised because of widely varied and unfavorable classroom acoustics. The extent to which unfavorable classroom acoustics affect children's performance on longer learning tasks is largely unknown as most research has focused on testing children using words, syllables, or sentences as stimuli. In the current study, a simulated classroom environment was used to measure comprehension performance of two classroom learning activities: a discussion and lecture. Comprehension performance was measured for groups of elementary-aged students in one of four environments with varied reverberation times and background noise levels. The reverberation time was either 0.6 or 1.5 s, and the signal-to-noise level was either +10 or +7 dB. Performance is compared to adult subjects as well as to sentence-recognition in the same condition. Significant differences were seen in comprehension scores as a function of age and condition; both increasing background noise and reverberation degraded performance in comprehension tasks compared to minimal differences in measures of sentence-recognition.     

Effect of noise and occupancy on optimal reverberation times for speech intelligibility in classrooms

The question of what is the optimal reverberation time for speech intelligibility in an occupied classroom has been studied recently in two different ways, with contradictory results. Experiments have been performed under various conditions of speech-signal to background-noise level difference and reverberation time, finding an optimal reverberation time of zero. Theoretical predictions of appropriate speech-intelligibility metrics, based on diffuse-field theory, found nonzero optimal reverberation times. These two contradictory results are explained by the different ways in which the two methods account for background noise, both of which are unrealistic. To obtain more realistic and accurate predictions, noise sources inside the classroom are considered. A more realistic treatment of noise is incorporated into diffuse-field theory by considering both speech and noise sources and the effects of reverberation on their steady-state levels. The model shows that the optimal reverberation time is zero when the speech source is closer to the listener than the noise source, and nonzero when the noise source is closer than the speech source. Diffuse-field theory is used to determine optimal reverberation times in unoccupied classrooms given optimal values for the occupied classroom. Resulting times can be as high as several seconds in large classrooms; in some cases, optimal values are unachievable, because the occupants contribute too much absorption.