Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (103)

The First Cadenza Signal Processing Challenge: Improving Music for Those With a Hearing Loss (2023)
Conference Proceeding
Dabike, G. R., Bannister, S., Firth, J., Graetzer, S., Vos, R., Akeroyd, M. A., …Whitmer, W. (2023). The First Cadenza Signal Processing Challenge: Improving Music for Those With a Hearing Loss.

The Cadenza project aims to improve the audio quality of music for those who have a hearing loss. This is being done through a series of signal processing challenges, to foster better and more inclusive technologies. In the first round, two common li... Read More about The First Cadenza Signal Processing Challenge: Improving Music for Those With a Hearing Loss.

Stress Detection And Alleviation Via Electrodermal Activity And Generative Music (2023)
Thesis
Corradine, C. (2023). Stress Detection And Alleviation Via Electrodermal Activity And Generative Music. (Thesis). University of Salford

Accurate psychological stress detection systems have been created using a variety of methodologies and can provide users with real-time stress monitoring. Such systems can aid with providing early intervention and therapies for alleviation on order t... Read More about Stress Detection And Alleviation Via Electrodermal Activity And Generative Music.

Spatial aspects of auditory salience (2020)
Thesis
Podwinska, Z. Spatial aspects of auditory salience. (Thesis). University of Salford

Models of auditory salience aim to predict which sounds attract people’s attention, and their proposed applications range from soundscape design to machine listening systems and object-based broadcasting. A few different types of models have been pro... Read More about Spatial aspects of auditory salience.

Modelling the perception of percussive low frequency instruments in rooms (2020)
Thesis
Howard, M. Modelling the perception of percussive low frequency instruments in rooms. (Dissertation). University of Salford

Throughout the study of room acoustics, adverse effects and methods of controlling and mitigating modal behaviour are a well researched topic. However, despite this, a gap between objective metrics and subjective results is still prevalent, thus re... Read More about Modelling the perception of percussive low frequency instruments in rooms.

Using scale modelling to assess the prehistoric acoustics of stonehenge (2020)
Journal Article
Cox, T., Fazenda, B., & Greaney, S. (2020). Using scale modelling to assess the prehistoric acoustics of stonehenge. Journal of Archaeological Science, 122, 105218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105218

With social rituals usually involving sound, an archaeological understanding of a site requires the acoustics to be assessed. This paper demonstrates how this can be done with acoustic scale models. Scale modelling is an established method in archite... Read More about Using scale modelling to assess the prehistoric acoustics of stonehenge.

On performance and perceived effort in trail runners using sensor control to generate biosynchronous music (2020)
Journal Article
Williams, D., Fazenda, B., Williamson, V., & Fazekas, G. (2020). On performance and perceived effort in trail runners using sensor control to generate biosynchronous music. Sensors, 20(16), e4528. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20164528

Music has been shown to be capable of improving runners’ performance in treadmill and laboratory-based experiments. This paper evaluates a generative music system, namely HEARTBEATS, designed to create biosignal synchronous music in real-time accordi... Read More about On performance and perceived effort in trail runners using sensor control to generate biosynchronous music.

Misleading description of first and second order ambisonic systems (2020)
Journal Article
Fazenda, B. (2020). Misleading description of first and second order ambisonic systems. Building and Environment, 179, 106981. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2020.106981

With regards to the paper Llopis, H. S., Pind, F., & Jeong, C. H. (2020). Development of an auditory virtual reality system based on pre-computed B-format impulse responses for building design evaluation. Building and Environment, 169, 106553. (https... Read More about Misleading description of first and second order ambisonic systems.

Personality and cognitive factors in the assessment of multimodal stimuli in immersive virtual environments (2019)
Thesis
Bailey, J. Personality and cognitive factors in the assessment of multimodal stimuli in immersive virtual environments. (Thesis). University of Salford

Literature in the study of human response to immersive virtual reality systems often deals with the phenomenon of presence. It can be shown that audio and imagery with spatial information can interact to affect presence in users of immersive virtual... Read More about Personality and cognitive factors in the assessment of multimodal stimuli in immersive virtual environments.

Pupil dilation reveals changes in listening effort due to energetic and informational masking (2019)
Presentation / Conference
Woodcock, J., Fazenda, B., Cox, T., & Davies, W. (2019, September). Pupil dilation reveals changes in listening effort due to energetic and informational masking. Presented at ICA 2019, Aachen, Germany

Pupil dilation has previously been shown to be a useful involuntary marker of listening effort. An inverse relationship between pupil diameter and signal to noise ratio has been shown when speech is energetically masked by noise. The work reported he... Read More about Pupil dilation reveals changes in listening effort due to energetic and informational masking.

Adding the room to the mix : perceptual aspects of modal resonance in live audio (2019)
Presentation / Conference
Fazenda, B., Bolla, C., & Palladini, A. (2019, September). Adding the room to the mix : perceptual aspects of modal resonance in live audio. Presented at 5th Workshop on Intelligent Music Production, Birmingham, UK

The problem of room acoustics correction in live sound is still an open one. In particular, the audible artefacts caused by low frequency resonances are still a major factor in determining the perceived quality of a live show. Despite many years of... Read More about Adding the room to the mix : perceptual aspects of modal resonance in live audio.

User-guided rendering of audio objects using an interactive genetic algorithm (2019)
Journal Article
Wilson, A., & Fazenda, B. (2019). User-guided rendering of audio objects using an interactive genetic algorithm. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 67(7/8), 522-530. https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2019.0035

Object-based audio allows for personalisation of content, perhaps to improve accessibility or to increase quality of experience more generally. This paper describes the design and evaluation of an interactive audio renderer, which is used to optimi... Read More about User-guided rendering of audio objects using an interactive genetic algorithm.

Connecting design, emotion, and behaviour in urban soundscape (2019)
Presentation / Conference
Carvalho, M., Davies, W., & Fazenda, B. (2019, July). Connecting design, emotion, and behaviour in urban soundscape. Poster presented at SPARC 2019 Fake News and Home Truths, MediaCity UK, Salford

With the purpose of assisting developments in urban soundscape design, the present research investigates how soundscapes can influence emotions and behaviours in public spaces aiming to find healthy reactions to “exciting” sonic environments. In the... Read More about Connecting design, emotion, and behaviour in urban soundscape.

Testing spatial aspects of auditory salience (2019)
Presentation / Conference
Podwinska, Z., Fazenda, B., & Davies, W. (2019, June). Testing spatial aspects of auditory salience. Presented at The 25th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2019), Northumbria University, UK

Auditory salience describes the extent to which sounds attract the listener’s attention. So far, there have not been any published studies testing if the location of sound relative to the listener influences its salience. In fact, not many experiment... Read More about Testing spatial aspects of auditory salience.

Acoustic Event Detection from Weakly Labeled Data Using Auditory Salience (2019)
Presentation / Conference
Podwinska, Z., Sobieraj, I., Fazenda, B., Davies, W., & Plumbley, M. (2019, May). Acoustic Event Detection from Weakly Labeled Data Using Auditory Salience. Presented at 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Brighton, UK

Acoustic Event Detection (AED) is an important task of machine listening which, in recent years, has been addressed using common machine learning methods like Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) or deep learning. However, most of these approaches... Read More about Acoustic Event Detection from Weakly Labeled Data Using Auditory Salience.

Background adaptation for improved listening experience in broadcasting (2019)
Presentation / Conference
Tang, Y., Cox, T., Fazenda, B., Liu, Q., & Wang, W. (2019, May). Background adaptation for improved listening experience in broadcasting. Presented at 44th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2019, Brighton, UK

The intelligibility of speech in noise can be improved by modifying the speech. But with object-based audio, there is the possibility of altering the background sound while leaving the speech unaltered. This may prove a less intrusive approach, affor... Read More about Background adaptation for improved listening experience in broadcasting.

A hybrid intelligent agent for notification of users distracted by mobile phones in an urban environment (2019)
Presentation / Conference
Gelaim, T., Langer, G., Santos, E., Silveira, R., O'Hare, J., Kendrick, P., & Fazenda, B. (2019, February). A hybrid intelligent agent for notification of users distracted by mobile phones in an urban environment. Presented at 11th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART), Prague, Czech Republic

Mobile devices are now ubiquitous in daily life and the number of activities that can be performed using them is continually growing. This implies increased attention being placed on the device and diverted away from events taking place in the surr... Read More about A hybrid intelligent agent for notification of users distracted by mobile phones in an urban environment.

Personality and listening sensitivity correlates of the subjective response to real and simulated sound sources in virtual reality (2018)
Presentation / Conference
Bailey, W., & Fazenda, B. (2018, August). Personality and listening sensitivity correlates of the subjective response to real and simulated sound sources in virtual reality. Presented at 2018 AES International Conference on Spatial Reproduction - Aesthetics and Science, Tokyo, Japan

It has been reported that personality traits, such as empathy and the tendency to become immersed in tasks, correlate with increased experience of presence in virtual reality. However, it is not clear whether this translates directly to the experienc... Read More about Personality and listening sensitivity correlates of the subjective response to real and simulated sound sources in virtual reality.

The effect of visual cues and binaural rendering method on plausibility in virtual environments (2018)
Presentation / Conference
plausibility in virtual environments. Presented at 144th International Pro Audio Convention, Milan, Italy

Immersive virtual reality is by its nature a multimodal medium and the use of spatial audio renderers for VR development is widespread. The aim of this study is to assess the performance of two common audio rendering methods and the effect of the p... Read More about The effect of visual cues and binaural rendering method on plausibility in virtual environments.

Speech-to-screen : spatial separation of dialogue from noise towards improved speech intelligibility for the small screen (2018)
Presentation / Conference
Demonte, P., Tang, Y., Hughes, R., Cox, T., Fazenda, B., & Shirley, B. (2018, May). Speech-to-screen : spatial separation of dialogue from noise towards improved speech intelligibility for the small screen. Presented at 144th International Pro Audio Convention (AES Milan 2018), Milan, Italy

Can externalizing dialogue when in the presence of stereo background noise improve speech intelligibility? This has been investigated for audio over headphones using head-tracking in order to explore potential future developments for small-screen dev... Read More about Speech-to-screen : spatial separation of dialogue from noise towards improved speech intelligibility for the small screen.

Automatic speech-to-background ratio selection to maintain speech intelligibility in broadcasts using an objective intelligibility metric (2018)
Journal Article
Tang, Y., Fazenda, B., & Cox, T. (2018). Automatic speech-to-background ratio selection to maintain speech intelligibility in broadcasts using an objective intelligibility metric. Applied Sciences, 8(1), 59. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8010059

While mixing, sound producers and audio professionals empirically set the speech-to-background ratio (SBR) based on rules of thumb and their own perception of sounds. There is no guarantee that the speech content will be intelligible for the general... Read More about Automatic speech-to-background ratio selection to maintain speech intelligibility in broadcasts using an objective intelligibility metric.