Evaluation of multichannel reproduced sound: scaling auditory attributes underlying listener preference

A study was conducted with the goal of quantifying auditory attributes that underlie listener preference for multichannel reproduced sound. Short musical excerpts were presented in mono, stereo, and several multichannel formats to a panel of 40 selected listeners. Scaling of auditory attributes, as well as overall preference, was based on consistency tests of binary paired-comparison judgments and on modeling the choice frequencies using probabilistic choice models. As a result, the preferences of nonexpert listeners could be measured reliably at a ratio scale level. Principal components derived from the quantified attributes predict overall preference well. The findings allow for some generalizations within musical program genres regarding the perception of and preference for certain spatial reproduction modes, but for limited generalizations across selections from different musical genres.     

Comparative measurements of loudspeakers in a listening situation

Comparison of loudspeakers is a major concern during design or product selection. There are several standards for the measurement of loudspeaker characteristics, but none of them provides hints for a rigorous comparison between devices. In this study, different ways of evaluating acoustical dissimilarity between loudspeakers were compared. Several methods of signal analysis were used, and for each method a metric evaluating the dissimilarity between two signals was defined. The correlation between the different dissimilarity evaluations over a significant panel of loudspeakers led to identified classes of measurements. A specific aspect of this work is that measurements were performed in a standard listening environment, rather than in an anechoic or reverberant one. It allowed the use of the recorded signals for a simple listening test, providing a perceptual metric which was compared to the acoustical ones. It also allowed the introduction of auditory models in the computation of some acoustical metrics, so defining a new class of measurements which gave results close to the perceptual ones.     

Manipulations of listeners' echo perception are reflected in event-related potentials

To gain information from complex auditory scenes, it is necessary to determine which of the many loudness, pitch, and timbre changes originate from a single source. Grouping sound into sources based on spatial information is complicated by reverberant energy bouncing off multiple surfaces and reaching the ears from directions other than the source's location. The ability to localize sounds despite these echoes has been explored with the precedence effect: Identical sounds presented from two locations with a short stimulus onset asynchrony (e.g., 1-5 ms) are perceived as a single source with a location dominated by the lead sound. Importantly, echo thresholds, the shortest onset asynchrony at which a listener reports hearing the lag sound as a separate source about half of the time, can be manipulated by presenting sound pairs in contexts. Event-related brain potentials elicited by physically identical sounds in contexts that resulted in listeners reporting either one or two sources were compared. Sound pairs perceived as two sources elicited a larger anterior negativity 100-250 ms after onset, previously termed the object-related negativity, and a larger posterior positivity 250-500 ms. These results indicate that the models of room acoustics listeners form based on recent experience with the spatiotemporal properties of sound modulate perceptual as well as later higher-level processing.     

Perception of acoustic scale and size in musical instrument sounds

There is size information in natural sounds. For example, as humans grow in height, their vocal tracts increase in length, producing a predictable decrease in the formant frequencies of speech sounds. Recent studies have shown that listeners can make fine discriminations about which of two speakers has the longer vocal tract, supporting the view that the auditory system discriminates changes on the acoustic-scale dimension. Listeners can also recognize vowels scaled well beyond the range of vocal tracts normally experienced, indicating that perception is robust to changes in acoustic scale. This paper reports two perceptual experiments designed to extend research on acoustic scale and size perception to the domain of musical sounds: The first study shows that listeners can discriminate the scale of musical instrument sounds reliably, although not quite as well as for voices. The second experiment shows that listeners can recognize the family of an instrument sound which has been modified in pitch and scale beyond the range of normal experience. We conclude that processing of acoustic scale in music perception is very similar to processing of acoustic scale in speech perception.     

Localization in speech mixtures by listeners with hearing loss

The ability of listeners with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss to localize a speech source in a multitalker mixture was measured. Five simultaneous words spoken by different talkers were presented over loudspeakers in a small room, and listeners localized one target word. Errors were significantly larger in this group compared to a control group with normal hearing. Localization of the target presented alone was not different between groups. The results suggest that hearing loss does not impair spatial hearing per se, but degrades the spatial representation of multiple simultaneous sounds.     

Auditory discrimination of force of impact

The auditory discrimination of force of impact was measured for three groups of listeners using sounds synthesized according to first-order equations of motion for the homogenous, isotropic bar [Morse and Ingard (1968). Theoretical Acoustics pp. 175-191]. The three groups were professional percussionists, nonmusicians, and individuals recruited from the general population without regard to musical background. In the two-interval, forced-choice procedure, listeners chose the sound corresponding to the greater force of impact as the length of the bar varied from one presentation to the next. From the equations of motion, a maximum-likelihood test for the task was determined to be of the form Δlog A + αΔ log f > 0, where A and f are the amplitude and frequency of any one partial and α = 0.5. Relative decision weights on Δ log f were obtained from the trial-by-trial responses of listeners and compared to α. Percussionists generally outperformed the other groups; however, the obtained decision weights of all listeners deviated significantly from α and showed variability within groups far in excess of the variability associated with replication. Providing correct feedback after each trial had little effect on the decision weights. The variability in these measures was comparable to that seen in studies involving the auditory discrimination of other source attributes.     

中西方典型乐器音高响度与音色明亮度的研究

为了客观地评价民族乐器与西洋乐器在听觉感知方面的差异,本文利用15种典型的中西方乐器声样本,建立了与音色、响度和音色明亮度有关的15种乐器的感知空间模型,通过这些模型可以预测不同乐器在音高、响度一定时,音色明亮度的感知情况。此外,根据已建立的感知空间模型分别对比弹拨乐器、拉弦乐器和不同类型的吹奏乐器中三种听觉感知属性的变化差异。结果表明,对于中西方典型乐器,音色明亮度随响度的增加而增大,但是响度对音色明亮度的影响程度受到音域和响度范围的影响。民族乐器的音色明亮度随音高的增加而增大,但是西洋乐器的音色明亮度并没有随音高的增加而发生明显的变化。     

Perceived sound quality of sound-reproducing systems.

Perceived sound quality of loudspeakers, headphones, and hearing aids was investigated by multivariate techniques from experimental psychology with the purpose (a) to find out and interpret the meaning of relevant dimensions in perceived sound quality, (b) find out the positions of the investigated systems in these dimensions, (c) explore the relations between the perceptual dimensions and the physical characteristics of the systems, and (d) explore the relations between the perceptual dimensions and overall evaluations of the systems. The resulting dimensions were interpreted as "clearness/distinctness," "sharpness/hardness softness," "brightness-darkness," "fullness-thinness," "feeling of space," "nearness," "disturbing sounds," and "loudness." Their relations to physical variables were explored by studying the positions of the investigated systems in the respective dimensions. Their relations to overall evaluations were studied, and the implications of the investigations for continued research are discussed.     

Design optimization of wide-band Tonpilz piezoelectric transducer with a bending piezoelectric disk on the radiation surface

There is a need for a model that identifies underlying dimensions of soundscape perception, and which may guide measurement and improvement of soundscape quality. With the purpose to develop such a model, a listening experiment was conducted. One hundred listeners measured 50 excerpts of binaural recordings of urban outdoor soundscapes on 116 attribute scales. The average attribute scale values were subjected to principal components analysis, resulting in three components: Pleasantness, eventfulness, and familiarity, explaining 50, 18 and 6% of the total variance, respectively. The principal-component scores were correlated with physical soundscape properties, including categories of dominant sounds and acoustic variables. Soundscape excerpts dominated by technological sounds were found to be unpleasant, whereas soundscape excerpts dominated by natural sounds were pleasant, and soundscape excerpts dominated by human sounds were eventful. These relationships remained after controlling for the overall soundscape loudness (Zwicker's N(10)), which shows that 'informational' properties are substantial contributors to the perception of soundscape. The proposed principal components model provides a framework for future soundscape research and practice. In particular, it suggests which basic dimensions are necessary to measure, how to measure them by a defined set of attribute scales, and how to promote high-quality soundscapes.     

The detection of differences in the cues to distance by elderly hearing-impaired listeners

This experiment measured the capability of hearing-impaired individuals to discriminate differences in the cues to the distance of spoken sentences. The stimuli were generated synthetically, using a room-image procedure to calculate the direct sound and first 74 reflections for a source placed in a 7 x 9 m room, and then presenting each of those sounds individually through a circular array of 24 loudspeakers. Seventy-seven listeners participated, aged 22-83 years and with hearing levels from -5 to 59 dB HL. In conditions where a substantial change in overall level due to the inverse-square law was available as a cue, the elderly hearing-impaired listeners did not perform any different from control groups. In other conditions where that cue was unavailable (so leaving the direct-to-reverberant relationship as a cue), either because the reverberant field dominated the direct sound or because the overall level had been artificially equalized, hearing-impaired listeners performed worse than controls. There were significant correlations with listeners' self-reported distance capabilities as measured by the "Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing" questionnaire [S. Gatehouse and W. Noble, Int. J. Audiol. 43, 85-99 (2004)]. The results demonstrate that hearing-impaired listeners show deficits in the ability to use some of the cues which signal auditory distance.     

Dynamic-range compression affects the lateral position of sounds

Dynamic-range compression acting independently at each ear in a bilateral hearing-aid or cochlear-implant fitting can alter interaural level differences (ILDs) potentially affecting spatial perception. The influence of compression on the lateral position of sounds was studied in normal-hearing listeners using virtual acoustic stimuli. In a lateralization task, listeners indicated the leftmost and rightmost extents of the auditory event and reported whether they heard (1) a single, stationary image, (2) a moving/gradually broadening image, or (3) a split image. Fast-acting compression significantly affected the perceived position of high-pass sounds. For sounds with abrupt onsets and offsets, compression shifted the entire image to a more central position. For sounds containing gradual onsets and offsets, including speech, compression increased the occurrence of moving and split images by up to 57 percentage points and increased the perceived lateral extent of the auditory event. The severity of the effects was reduced when undisturbed low-frequency binaural cues were made available. At high frequencies, listeners gave increased weight to ILDs relative to interaural time differences carried in the envelope when compression caused ILDs to change dynamically at low rates, although individual differences were apparent. Specific conditions are identified in which compression is likely to affect spatial perception.     

Characterizing the sound quality of air-conditioning noise

The aim of the psychoacoustic study presented here was to characterize listeners' preferences for a set of sounds produced by different brands and models of indoor air-conditioning units. In addition, some synthetic sounds, created by interpolation between recorded sound samples, were integrated into the set. The multidimensional perceptual space and the corresponding physical space representative of the sound set were determined with multidimensional scaling (MDS). Then the preferences for different classes of listeners were related to the physical space. The best spatial model yielded by the MDS had three common dimensions and specificities. The three dimensions are correlated with the ratio of the noisy part of the spectrum to the harmonic part (NHR), with the spectral center of gravity (SC) and with loudness (N). Two classes of listeners can be distinguished in terms of preference. For one, preference varied primarily with loudness, whereas for the other it varied more with SC and NHR. However, for one class the preference grew with the parameter NHR, while it decreased for the other class. The results replicate under different laboratory conditions and indicate the usefulness of this sound quality assessment approach for characterizing appliance noises.     

Reduced order modeling of head related impulse responses for virtual acoustic displays

This study investigated the use of reduced order head related impulse response (HRIR) models to improve the computational efficiency in acoustic virtual displays. State space models of varying order were generated from zero-elevation HRIRs using a singular value decomposition technique. A source identification experiment was conducted under anechoic conditions in which three subjects were required to localize sounds in the front horizontal plane. The sounds were either (1) real sources (emitted by individual loudspeakers in a semi-circular array), (2) virtual sources generated from the original HRIRs, or (3) virtual sources generated using reduced order state space models. All virtual sources were created by simultaneous activation of two loudspeakers at +/- 30 degrees using a virtual source imaging technique based on either the measured or modeled HRIRs. The errors in the perceived direction of the virtual sources generated from the reduced order models were compared to errors in localization using the original HRIRs. The results demonstrate that a very significant reduction in model size can be achieved without significantly affecting the fidelity of the virtual display of horizontally placed sources.     

Influences of multiple memory systems on auditory mental image acuity

The influence of different memory systems and associated attentional processes on the acuity of auditory images, formed for the purpose of making intonation judgments, was examined across three experiments using three different task types (cued-attention, imagery, and two-tone discrimination). In experiment 1 the influence of implicit long-term memory for musical scale structure was manipulated by varying the scale degree (leading tone versus tonic) of the probe note about which a judgment had to be made. In experiments 2 and 3 the ability of short-term absolute pitch knowledge to develop was manipulated by presenting blocks of trials in the same key or in seven different keys. The acuity of auditory images depended on all of these manipulations. Within individual listeners, thresholds in the two-tone discrimination and cued-attention conditions were closely related. In many listeners, cued-attention thresholds were similar to thresholds in the imagery condition, and depended on the amount of training individual listeners had in playing a musical instrument. The results indicate that mental images formed at a sensory/cognitive interface for the purpose of making perceptual decisions are highly malleable.     

Auditory-nerve responses predict pitch attributes related to musical consonance-dissonance for normal and impaired hearing

Human listeners prefer consonant over dissonant musical intervals and the perceived contrast between these classes is reduced with cochlear hearing loss. Population-level activity of normal and impaired model auditory-nerve (AN) fibers was examined to determine (1) if peripheral auditory neurons exhibit correlates of consonance and dissonance and (2) if the reduced perceptual difference between these qualities observed for hearing-impaired listeners can be explained by impaired AN responses. In addition, acoustical correlates of consonance-dissonance were also explored including periodicity and roughness. Among the chromatic pitch combinations of music, consonant intervals/chords yielded more robust neural pitch-salience magnitudes (determined by harmonicity/periodicity) than dissonant intervals/chords. In addition, AN pitch-salience magnitudes correctly predicted the ordering of hierarchical pitch and chordal sonorities described by Western music theory. Cochlear hearing impairment compressed pitch salience estimates between consonant and dissonant pitch relationships. The reduction in contrast of neural responses following cochlear hearing loss may explain the inability of hearing-impaired listeners to distinguish musical qualia as clearly as normal-hearing individuals. Of the neural and acoustic correlates explored, AN pitch salience was the best predictor of behavioral data. Results ultimately show that basic pitch relationships governing music are already present in initial stages of neural processing at the AN level.     

Fidelity of three-dimensional-sound reproduction using a virtual auditory display

The fidelity of reproducing free-field sounds using a virtual auditory display was investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment, listeners directly compared stimuli from an actual loudspeaker in the free field with those from small headphones placed in front of the ears. Headphone stimuli were filtered using head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), recorded while listeners were wearing the headphones, in order to reproduce the pressure signatures of the free-field sounds at the eardrum. Discriminability was investigated for six sound-source positions using broadband noise as a stimulus. The results show that the acoustic percepts of real and virtual sounds were identical. In the second experiment, discrimination between virtual sounds generated with measured and interpolated HRTFs was investigated. Interpolation was performed using HRTFs measured for loudspeaker positions with different spatial resolutions. Broadband noise bursts with flat and scrambled spectra were used as stimuli. The results indicate that, for a spatial resolution of about 6 degrees, the interpolation does not introduce audible cues. For resolutions of 20 degrees or more, the interpolation introduces audible cues related to timbre and position. For intermediate resolutions (10 degrees - 15 degrees) the data suggest that only timbre cues were used.     

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.     

The perceptual nature of vocal register change

This study focuses on the perceptual nature of chest and falsetto registers as a function of various production tokens and methods of perceptual evaluation. Fifteen target tones, ranging from G#3 to A#4, were sung by a male and a female subject in the context of ascending and descending sequences on the vowels /a/ and /i/. Register transitions were elicited by setting strict constraints on production. Segments of 1-s duration were extracted from the target notes, digitized, and acoustically analyzed. These excerpts were presented to ten trained listeners in four different perceptual tasks. Identification and discrimination tasks yielded nearly identical results, suggesting that the primary registers are perceived as distinct entities. The marked change from chest to falsetto as well as the locus of the transition between these registers did not vary systematically as a function of production token or perceptual task. Mean register shift-point frequencies of the male and female subjects were perceived at 320 Hz and 353 Hz, respectively. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering analyses were utilized to capture the dimensionality and the internal structure of perceptual data sets derived from the pair-wise similarity ratings. Optimal spatial representation of these data required no more than two orthogonal dimensions, with the quality attribute represented by the dominant dimension. The representation of pitch differences was reflected only in the internal ordering of the stimuli within registers, but did not affect the perceptual discontinuity between registers.     

Auditory correlates of perceived mallet hardness for a set of recorded percussive sound events

A psychophysical investigation of timbre was undertaken with the intent of deriving quantitative results that could be useful in musical applications. Recordings of metal objects being struck with percussion mallets were rated by subjects on a unidimensional perceptual scale of perceived mallet hardness. Four acoustical parameters of the attack portion (first 325 ms) were defined and evaluated as predictors of perceived mallet hardness rating. To measure these parameters, a critical-band filter bank was employed. Two curves were extracted from the filter-bank output: (1) spectral level (log of area under spectrum) over time, and (2) spectral centroid over time. For each curve, two parameters were measured: the mean and the slope of the spectral level curve, and the mean and the time-weighted average of the spectral centroid curve. Multiple regression analysis was used to relate the perceptual ratings to these four acoustical parameters, and a good fit was achieved (multiple R-squared = 0.725, F = 1135.8, p less than 0.01). The resulting function is suitable for quantitatively predicting the perceptual dimension of perceived mallet hardness.     

Influence of structural variability upon sound perception: Usefulness of fractional factorial designs

The present paper introduces an efficient and time-saving approach for the evaluation of the consequences of structural uncertainties on sound perception. Its aim is to validate the use of fractional factorial designs for perceptual assessment of a model system. A test bench was used, which allowed to accurately control the variability of several structural design parameters. Sounds emitted by the bench were recorded with a dummy head and submitted to listeners during two experiments, in which they had to evaluate the dissimilarity of each sound to a reference, representing the nominal state of the device. In the first experiment, six factors, assumed to be independent, were used to define a fractional factorial design. As an analysis of variance showed that two interactions between factors should have been taken into account, a second experimental design was developed to quantify these interactions. These two experiments allowed to define an accurate model of sound perception, describing the effect of each factor on the perceived dissimilarity. Thus, it was possible to relate the variability of the structure to the perception of the sound emitted with few experimental effort.