S3A: Future Spatial Audio for an Immersive Listener Experience at Home

Qualitative evaluation of media device orchestration for immersive spatial audio reproduction (2018)
Journal Article

The challenge of installing and setting up dedicated spatial audio systems can make it difficult to deliver immersive listening experiences to the general public. However, the proliferation of smart mobile devices and the rise of the Internet of Thin... Read More about Qualitative evaluation of media device orchestration for immersive spatial audio reproduction.

Automatic speech-to-background ratio selection to maintain speech intelligibility in broadcasts using an objective intelligibility metric (2018)
Journal Article

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.

An audio-visual system for object-based audio : from recording to listening (2018)
Journal Article

Object-based audio is an emerging representation for
audio content, where content is represented in a reproduction format-agnostic way and, thus, produced once for consumption on many different kinds of devices. This affords new opportunities for im... Read More about An audio-visual system for object-based audio : from recording to listening.

A non-intrusive method for estimating binaural speech intelligibility from noise-corrupted signals captured by a pair of microphones (2017)
Journal Article

A non-intrusive method is introduced to predict binaural speech intelligibility in noise directly from signals captured using a pair of microphones. The approach combines signal processing techniques in blind source separation
and localisation, with... Read More about A non-intrusive method for estimating binaural speech intelligibility from noise-corrupted signals captured by a pair of microphones.

A study on the relationship between the intelligibility and quality of algorithmically-modified speech for normal hearing listeners (2017)
Journal Article
Tang, Y., Arnold, C., & Cox, T. (2017). A study on the relationship between the intelligibility and quality of algorithmically-modified speech for normal hearing listeners. Journal of Otorhinolaryngology, Hearing and Balance Medicine, 1(1), https://doi.org/10.3390/ohbm1010005

This study investigates the relationship between the intelligibility and quality of modified speech in noise and in quiet. Speech signals were processed by seven algorithms designed to increase speech intelligibility in noise without altering speech... Read More about A study on the relationship between the intelligibility and quality of algorithmically-modified speech for normal hearing listeners.

A user-centered taxonomy of factors contributing to the listener experience of reproduced audio (2017)
Journal Article
Woodcock, J., Davies, W., & Cox, T. (2017). A user-centered taxonomy of factors contributing to the listener experience of reproduced audio. ˜The œJournal of the Acoustical Society of America (Online), 141(5), 3464-3464. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4987193

The traditional paradigm for the assessment of audio quality is that of a listener positioned in the geometric center of a standardized loudspeaker setup, fully attending to the reproduced sound scene. However, this is not how listeners generally int... Read More about A user-centered taxonomy of factors contributing to the listener experience of reproduced audio.

Evaluation of spatial audio reproduction methods (part 2) : analysis of listener preference (2017)
Journal Article
Francombe, J., Brookes, T., Mason, R., & Woodcock, J. (2017). Evaluation of spatial audio reproduction methods (part 2) : analysis of listener preference. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 65(3), 212-225. https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2016.0071

A paired-comparison preference rating experiment was performed in combination with a free-elicitation task for eight reproduction methods (consumer and professional systems with a wide range of expected quality) and seven program items (representativ... Read More about Evaluation of spatial audio reproduction methods (part 2) : analysis of listener preference.

Object-based reverberation for spatial audio (2017)
Journal Article
Coleman, P., Franck, A., Jackson, P., Hughes, R., Remaggi, L., & Melchior, F. (2017). Object-based reverberation for spatial audio. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 65(1/2), 66-77. https://doi.org/10.17743/jaes.2016.0059

Object-based audio is gaining momentum as a means for future audio content to be more immersive, interactive, and accessible. Recent standardization developments make recommendations for object formats; however, the capture, production, and reproduct... Read More about Object-based reverberation for spatial audio.

A cognitive framework for the categorisation of auditory objects in urban soundscapes (2017)
Journal Article

Categorisation is a fundamental cognitive process that plays a central role in
everyday behaviour and action. Whereas previous studies have investigated the
categorisation of isolated everyday sounds, this paper presents an experiment to
investiga... Read More about A cognitive framework for the categorisation of auditory objects in urban soundscapes.

A metric for predicting binaural speech intelligibility in stationary noise and competing speech maskers (2016)
Journal Article

One criterion in the design of binaural sound scenes in audio production is the extent to which the intended speech message is correctly understood. Object-based audio broadcasting systems have permitted sound editors to gain more access to the metad... Read More about A metric for predicting binaural speech intelligibility in stationary noise and competing speech maskers.