PADVA was @ ICSV22 and 42nd AIA meeting

AIA_EricaLast week we were in Florence for two scientific events:

  • the 22nd edition of the International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV22), where Simone presented the invited paper Subjective evaluation of a low-order parametric filter model of the pinna for binaural sound rendering (S. Spagnol, S. Scaiella, M.Geronazzo, F. Avanzini) within the Special Session on Analysis, Perception and Render of 3D Spatial Sound;
  • the 42nd Italian Acoustic Association (AIA) meeting in Pisa where our student Erica Tavazzi presented the paper Discriminazione della distanza relativa tra sorgenti sonore virtuali [Relative distance discrimination of virtual sound sources] (E. Tavazzi, S. Spagnol, F. Avanzini), based on a follow-up of her Bachelor’s work.

Both works were quite well-received by the audience!

Journal article: On Distance Dependence of Pinna Spectral Patterns in Head-Related Transfer Functions

Year 2014 closes with good news for PADVA. The manuscript “On Distance Dependence of Pinna Spectral Patterns in Head-Related Transfer Functions” authored by Simone Spagnol  is published on the January 2015 issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA, check it here), Express Letters section.

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The aim of the article is to address a little understood question in sound source localization: Can the distance of a near sound source affect our own perception of its elevation? The issue is studied by means of an objective analysis of a database of distance-dependent head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) of a KEMAR mannequin with different pinnae on a dense spatial grid. Iso-directional HRTFs are compared through spectral error metrics; results indicate significant distance-dependent HRTF modifications due to the pinna occur when the source is close to the interaural axis.

Journal article: Synthetic Individual Binaural Audio Delivery by Pinna Image Processing

The manuscript “Synthetic individual binaural audio delivery by pinna image processing” authored by Simone Spagnol, Michele Geronazzo, Davide Rocchesso and Federico Avanzini is accepted for publication on the July 2014 issue of the International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications. The article is an extended version of the best MoMM 2013 poster award winner paper “Extraction of pinna features for customized binaural audio delivery on mobile devices”, presented at the 11th International Conference on Advances in Mobile Computing & Multimedia in December 2013, and includes results of a localization test conducted in early 2014.

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The manuscript presents a system for customized binaural audio delivery based on the extraction of relevant features from a 2-D representation of the listener’s pinna. The most significant pinna contours are extracted by means of multi-flash imaging, and they provide values for the parameters of a structural head-related transfer function (HRTF) model. The HRTF model spatializes a given sound file according to the listener’s head orientation, tracked by sensor-equipped headphones, with respect to the virtual sound source. A preliminary localization test shows that the model is able to statically render the elevation of a virtual sound source better than non-individual HRTFs. The whole model has low complexity and is suitable for implementation on mobile devices, thus showing that custom binaural audio can be deployed without the need of cumbersome subjective measurements.

PADVA @ AIA meeting 2014

PADVA @ AIA 2014

Yesterday we were at the annual Italian Acoustic Association (AIA) meeting in Pisa to present the PADVA-funded work Un nuovo approccio a modelli strutturali misti per la sintesi e la personalizzazione di HRTF [Mixed structural modeling: a new approach to synthesis and customization of HRTFs] (M. Geronazzo, S. Spagnol, F. Avanzini). We included a few pictures of the meeting (but not only) in the photo gallery section.

Visit and workshop @ Museo del Violino, Cremona

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On May 30 2014 teachers, researchers and students of the Sound and Music Computing (SMC) Group were invited for a visit to the exhibition and research laboratories of the Violin Museum of Cremona. A bilateral workshop led by Prof. Augusto Sarti of the Image and Sound Processing Group (Politecnico di Milano) followed, with Federico Avanzini presenting PADVA’s research. We included a couple of pictures of the event in the photo gallery section.

PADVA was @ ICASSP 2014!

Our ICASSP 2014 poster

Our ICASSP 2014 poster

On May 4-9 2014 Michele and Simone were at the 39th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing in Florence and presented the PADVA-funded work Enhancing vertical localization with image-guided selection of non-individual head-related transfer functions (M. Geronazzo, S. Spagnol, A. Bedin, F. Avanzini). We included a few pictures of the conference in the photo gallery section.