视觉刺激条件下的听感差别阈限测量

视听交互的重要性日益突出,但视觉刺激对听觉感知的影响尚缺乏全面深入的研究。以视觉刺激下人耳对声音的主观听感差别阈限变化为研究对象,在主观听觉实验中施加颜色、质量、亮度、运动状态四个不同属性视觉刺激,同时测量纯音信号的响度、主观音长和音高的听感差别阈限。通过与无视觉刺激下相应差别阈限的比较,分析不同视觉条件对响度感知、主观音长感知、音高感知能力的影响。实验数据显示,施加视觉刺激后主观听觉感知的差别阈限值增大,主观音长、音高和响度的差别阈限值平均分别提高了45.1%,14.8%和12.3%。进一步分析的结果表明,施加视觉刺激后基本的听觉感知能力呈下降趋势。同一视觉属性的不同水平视觉条件对听觉感知的影响程度不同,主观听感的变化呈现出一定的规律性,即视觉刺激越舒适,听感的差别阈限变化越小。      

头相关传输函数幅度谱的听觉空间分辨阈值的分析

提出一种分析头相关传输函数(head-related transfer function,HRTF)幅度谱的听觉空间分辨阈值模型。采用数值计算得到的高空间分辨率HRTF数据,计算了声源空间位置变化引起的HRTF幅度谱的变化,进一步利用Moore响度模型分析双耳响度级差、双耳响度级谱和总响度级等三个听觉感知量的变化。根据现有的3个听觉感知量最小可察觉差异,模型利用双耳响度级差和双耳响度级谱的变化得到的估计结果与心理声学实验一致,因此是一种有效预测听觉空间分辨阈值的方法,可用于为简化虚拟听觉信号处理和数据储存。      

头相关传输函数幅度谱的听觉空间分辨阈值的分析

提出一种分析头相关传输函数(head-related transfer function,HRTF)幅度谱的听觉空间分辨阈值模型。采用数值计算得到的高空间分辨率HRTF数据,计算了声源空间位置变化引起的HRTF幅度谱的变化,进一步利用Moore响度模型分析双耳响度级差、双耳响度级谱和总响度级等三个听觉感知量的变化。根据现有的3个听觉感知量最小可察觉差异,模型利用双耳响度级差和双耳响度级谱的变化得到的估计结果与心理声学实验一致,因此是一种有效预测听觉空间分辨阈值的方法,可用于为简化虚拟听觉信号处理和数据储存。     

Ambisonics声捡拾与重放音色的双耳听觉模型分析与实验

提出用双耳听觉模型对空间声音色进行分析的普遍方法,并以Ambisonics为例进行了分析。Ambisonics是基于物理声场重构的空间声系统,其最终重构声场误差以及音色改变是由传声器捡拾和重放空间混叠误差共同引起的。采用修正的Moore双耳响度模型计算了Ambisonics重构声场的双耳响度级谱并和目标声场的情况比较,从而定量评价重构声场的音色改变。结果表明,在理想捡拾信号的情况下,无音色改变重放的上限频率和区域大小随Ambisonics的阶数而增加。而对于传声器阵列捡拾的情况,只要阵列的上限频率大于Ambisonics重放的上限频率,在重放的上限频率以下,传声器阵列空间混叠误差对最终重构声场及其感知音色的影响就可以忽略。在此基础上,提出了一种综合考虑捡拾与重放性能的Ambisonics系统优化设计方法。心理声学实验得到了和双耳听觉模型一致的结果,从而也验证了模型分析的有效性。     

Ambisonics声捡拾与重放音色的双耳听觉模型分析与实验

提出用双耳听觉模型对空间声音色进行分析的普遍方法,并以Ambisonics为例进行了分析。Ambisonics是基于物理声场重构的空间声系统,其最终重构声场误差以及音色改变是由传声器捡拾和重放空间混叠误差共同引起的。采用修正的Moore双耳响度模型计算了Ambisonics重构声场的双耳响度级谱并和目标声场的情况比较,从而定量评价重构声场的音色改变。结果表明,在理想捡拾信号的情况下,无音色改变重放的上限频率和区域大小随Ambisonics的阶数而增加。而对于传声器阵列捡拾的情况,只要阵列的上限频率大于Ambisonics重放的上限频率,在重放的上限频率以下,传声器阵列空间混叠误差对最终重构声场及其感知音色的影响就可以忽略。在此基础上,提出了一种综合考虑捡拾与重放性能的Ambisonics系统优化设计方法。心理声学实验得到了和双耳听觉模型一致的结果,从而也验证了模型分析的有效性。      

《空间声原理》

正谢菠荪著科学出版社,北京,2019年6月,818页,定价:249元听觉是我们感知外界信息的重要途径之一。人的听觉中,除了对声音的响度、音调和音色等主观属性的感觉外,还包括对声音的空间听觉,也就是对声音空间属性或特性的感知。这赋予了我们的听觉系统在一定的条件下,可以对声源进行定位,可以产生对周围声学环境的空间印象的可能。空间声的目的是重放声场的空间信息,给倾听者产生特定的空间听觉事件或感知。近年来,其应用已由传统的影院和家用声重放等文化娱乐领域,拓展到听觉心理和生理、室内声学设计、通信、互联网与计算机、多媒体与虚拟现实、医学等科学研究及工程技术领域。可见应用价值之重要。     

水下噪声音色属性回归模型及其在目标识别中的应用

通过对声音的主观评价与客观分析而建立的主观感受数学模型,在许多领域都有重要的应用. 本文采用多元线性回归分析手段对水下噪声音色属性建立回归模型,提取音色特征并改善水下目标的识别效果. 首先,在前期水下噪声音色属性主观评价实验的基础上,将构成音色属性空间的5个成分的评价分值作为回归分析中的因变量,提取大量与听觉感知相关的听觉特征作为自变量;然后,通过相关分析和改进的逐步筛选法,挑选出反映音色属性的“最优”自变量子集;最后,利用向后剔除回归分析和水下目标识别实验,确定适当的音色模型,并通过假设检验证明该线性模型不仅正确有效,而且能改善水下目标识别效果.     

等离子体显示大面积闪烁的客观评价

针对等离子体显示普遍存在的大面积闪烁现象,提出了一种基于时变光信号亮度测量系统的大面积闪烁客观评价方法。时变光信号亮度测量系统利用光电管和亮度计,实现了对显示屏输出光信号亮度值随时间变化的快速、准确记录。基于阴极射线管显示临界闪烁频率估算模型,通过主观视觉感知实验,利用测量系统得到亮度随时间的变化关系,建立了平均感知闪烁程度估算模型。估算模型输出结果与视觉感知实验数据相关系数达到0.98。该测量系统与估算模型实现了对等离子体显示大面积闪烁的客观度量,并与主观视觉感知实验结果相吻合,是等离子体显示屏优化设计和显示行业标准建立的有效工具。     

水下噪声音色属性回归模型及其在目标识别中的应用

通过对声音的主观评价与客观分析而建立的主观感受数学模型,在许多领域都有重要的应用. 本文采用多元线性回归分析手段对水下噪声音色属性建立回归模型,提取音色特征并改善水下目标的识别效果. 首先,在前期水下噪声音色属性主观评价实验的基础上,将构成音色属性空间的5个成分的评价分值作为回归分析中的因变量,提取大量与听觉感知相关的听觉特征作为自变量;然后,通过相关分析和改进的逐步筛选法,挑选出反映音色属性的“最优”自变量子集;最后,利用向后剔除回归分析和水下目标识别实验,确定适当的音色模型,并通过假设检验证明该线性模型不仅正确有效,而且能改善水下目标识别效果. 关键词： 音色 多元线性回归 主观评价     

自适应听觉感知时频分析模型

提出了一种具有强度自适应机制的仿听觉感知时频分析模型—Adaptive Ear Wig Distribution(AEWD),该模型是O'Donovan的Ear Wig Distribution(EWD)模型的扩展。AEWD的主要改进在于使用Patterson等近几年来提出的Cascade Compressive Gammachirp(Cascade cGC)模型,替换原有模型使用的Gammatone(GT)模型构造频域平滑窗,从而使AEWD模型具有了随输入信号功率而自适应调整的能力。相较于EWD模型,AEWD描述的时频分布更加符合听觉感知实际。最后,文中给出了一些典型信号的计算实例,说明了AEWD模型的有效性。      

Musical intervals and relative pitch: frequency resolution, not interval resolution, is special

Pitch intervals are central to most musical systems, which utilize pitch at the expense of other acoustic dimensions. It seemed plausible that pitch might uniquely permit precise perception of the interval separating two sounds, as this could help explain its importance in music. To explore this notion, a simple discrimination task was used to measure the precision of interval perception for the auditory dimensions of pitch, brightness, and loudness. Interval thresholds were then expressed in units of just-noticeable differences for each dimension, to enable comparison across dimensions. Contrary to expectation, when expressed in these common units, interval acuity was actually worse for pitch than for loudness or brightness. This likely indicates that the perceptual dimension of pitch is unusual not for interval perception per se, but rather for the basic frequency resolution it supports. The ubiquity of pitch in music may be due in part to this fine-grained basic resolution.     

Measurement on just noticeable difference of auditory perception with visual stimuli

This paper addresses the JND（Just Noticeable Difference）change of auditory perception with synchronous visual stimuli.Through psychoacoustics experimentS,loudness JND,subjective duration JND and pitch JND of pure tone were measured in auditory-only mode and visual_auditory mode with different visual stimuli which have different attributes such as color,illumination,quality and moving state.Statistical analyses of the experimental data indicare that,comparing with JND in auditory-only mode,the amount of JND with visual stimuli is often larger.The JND＇S average increment of subjective duration,pitch and loudness are 45.1%,14.8%and 12.3%,respectively.The conclusion is that the ability of JNDbased auditory perception often decreases with visual stimuli.The incremental amount of JND is afiected bv the attributes of visual stimuli.If the visual stimuli make subjects feel more comfortable,the JND of auditory perception will change smaller.     

Dissimilarity and the Classification of Male Singing Voices

Traditionally, timbre has been defined as that perceptual attribute that differentiates two sounds when pitch and loudness are equal, and thus is a measure of dissimilarity. By such a definition, each voice possesses a set of timbres, and the ability to identify any voice or voice category across different pitch-loudness-vowel combinations must be due to an ability to "link" these timbres by abstracting the "timbre transformation," the manner in which timbre subtly changes across pitch and loudness for a specific voice or voice category. Using stimuli produced across the singing range by singers from different voice categories, this study sought to examine how timbre and pitch interact in the perception of dissimilarity in male singing voices. This study also investigated whether or not listener experience affects the perception of timbre as a function of pitch. The resulting multidimensional scaling (MDS) representations showed that for all stimuli and listeners, dimension 1 correlated with pitch, while dimension 2 correlated with spectral centroid and separated vocal stimuli into the categories baritone and tenor. Dimension 3 appeared highly idiosyncratic depending on the nature of the stimuli and on the experience of the listener. Inexperienced listeners appeared to rely more heavily on pitch in making dissimilarity judgments than did experienced listeners. The resulting MDS representations of dissimilarity across pitch provide a glimpse of the timbre transformation of voice categories across pitch.     

Dissimilarity and the Classification of Female Singing Voices: A Preliminary Study

Traditionally, timbre has been defined as that perceptual attribute that differentiates two sounds when pitch and loudness are equal and thus is a measure of dissimilarity. By such a definition, each voice possesses a set of timbres, and the identity of any voice or voice category across different pitch-loudness-vowel combinations must be due to an abstraction of the pattern of timbre transformation. Using stimuli produced across the singing range by singers from different voice categories, this study sought to examine how timbre and pitch interact in the perception of dissimilarity. This study also investigated whether listener experience affects the perception of timbre as a function of pitch. The resulting multidimensional scaling (MDS) representations showed that for all stimuli and listeners, dimension 1 correlated with pitch, whereas dimension 2 correlated with spectral centroid and separated vocal stimuli into the categories mezzo-soprano and soprano. Dimension 3 appeared highly idiosyncratic depending on the nature of the stimuli and on the experience of the listener. Inexperienced listeners appeared to rely more heavily on pitch in making dissimilarity judgments than did experienced listeners. The resulting MDS representations of dissimilarity across pitch provide a glimpse of the timbre transformation of voice categories across pitch.     

Influence of pitch, loudness, and timbre on the perception of instrument dynamics

The effect of variations in pitch, loudness, and timbre on the perception of the dynamics of isolated instrumental tones is investigated. A full factorial design was used in a listening experiment. The subjects were asked to indicate the perceived dynamics of each stimulus on a scale from pianissimo to fortissimo. Statistical analysis showed that for the instruments included (i.e., clarinet, flute, piano, trumpet, and violin) timbre and loudness had equally large effects, while pitch was relevant mostly for the first three. The results confirmed our hypothesis that loudness alone is not a reliable estimate of the dynamics of musical tones.     

Auditory analysis of the periodicity of sound and its envelope: A mathematical model

A mathematical model of the auditory analysis of periodicity of sound and its envelope is proposed. The model consists of a sequence of mathematical transformations that describe the signal processing stages. The following parameters and properties of the auditory system are taken into account: the crude analysis of the input acoustic signal accurate to the width of the aural critical band; the frequency dependence of the width of the aural critical band; the spectrum of the input signal analysis by a set of 3500 filters closely spaced in frequency; the absolute audibility thresholds at a given frequency; the time-domain analysis of both the output signals of each filter and the envelope profile with the help of the periodicity function; the pulsed activity of auditory neurons; the ability of the auditory system to memorize the spectral-time images of the signal and its individual parameters; the ability of the auditory system to form the perception of the loudness of sound, to memorize and compare the loudness of sound at different time moments, and to conclude which of them is higher or lower or whether they are equal accurate to a certain threshold; the dependence of the critical modulation bandwidth on the modulation frequency; and the dependence of the audibility thresholds of amplitude modulation on the modulation frequency. By an example of processing amplitude-modulated signals with various carrier-to-envelope frequency ratios, the model is shown to give a satisfactory explanation of their pitch and auditory estimate of the envelope period.     

Sensory and nonsensory influences on children's performance of dichotic pitch perception tasks

Dichotic pitch perception reflects the auditory system's use of binaural cues to perceptually separate different sound sources and to determine the spatial location of sounds. Several studies were conducted to identify factors that influence children's dichotic pitch perception thresholds. An initial study of school children revealed an age-related improvement in thresholds for lateralizing dichotic pitch tones. In subsequent studies potential sensory and nonsensory limitations on young children's performance of dichotic pitch lateralization tasks were examined. A training study showed that with sufficient practice, young children lateralize dichotic pitch stimuli as well as adults, indicating an age difference in perceptual learning of the lateralization task. Changing the task requirements so that young children made a judgment about the pitch of dichotic pitch tones, rather than the spatial location of the tones, also resulted in significantly better thresholds. These findings indicate that nonsensory factors limit young children's performance of dichotic pitch tasks.     

Objective Indices of Perceived Vocal Strain

BackgroundA limited number of experiments have investigated the perception of strain compared to the voice qualities of breathiness and roughness despite its widespread occurrence in patients who have hyperfunctional voice disorders, adductor spasmodic dysphonia, and vocal fold paralysis among others.ObjectiveThe purpose of this study is to determine the perceptual basis of strain through identification and exploration of acoustic and psychoacoustic measures.MethodsTwelve listeners evaluated the degree of strain for 28 dysphonic phonation samples on a five-point rating scale task. Computational estimates based on cepstrum, sharpness, and spectral moments (linear and transformed with auditory processing front-end) were correlated to the perceptual ratings.ResultsPerceived strain was strongly correlated with cepstral peak prominence, sharpness, and a subset of the spectral metrics. Spectral energy distribution measures from the output of an auditory processing front-end (ie, excitation pattern and specific loudness pattern) accounted for 77–79% of the model variance for strained voices in combination with the cepstral measure.ConclusionsModeling the perception of strain using an auditory front-end prior to acoustic analysis provides better characterization of the perceptual ratings of strain, similar to our prior work on breathiness and roughness. Results also provide evidence that the sharpness model of Fastl and Zwicker (2007) is one of the strong predictors of strain perception.     

Perceptual differences between low and high rates of stimulation on single electrodes for cochlear implantees

Previous research has shown that increases in the rate of stimulation on a single electrode yield changes in pitch perception until the rate is increased beyond a given critical rate, after which changes in rate are only perceived as changes in loudness. The critical rate beyond which a rate increase no longer elicits a pitch change in most subjects is approximately 300 Hz, although a small number of subjects have been observed to have critical rates up to approximately 1000 Hz. In this article, we sought to determine if increasing the rate of stimulation beyond the critical rate (up to 12.8 kHz) would eventually result in new changes of perception (other than loudness.) Our data replicate the previously observed results that rates between approximately 300 and 1500 Hz are indistinguishable from each other. However, we observed the finding that a rate of stimulation well above the critical rate (starting between 1500 Hz and 12.8 kHz, depending on electrode and subject) can elicit changes in perception. The perceptual differences between these high rates were sometimes but not always labeled as pitch changes. This phenomenon needs further research to assess its potential relevance to speech perception using high rates of stimulation.