AES 143RD CONVENTION PROGRAM OCTOBER 18–21, 2017 JAVITS CONVENTION CENTER, NY, USA The Winner of the 143rd AES Convention To be presented on Friday, Oct. 20, Best Peer-Reviewed Paper Award is: in Session 15—Posters: Applications in Audio A Statistical Model that Predicts Listeners’ * * * * * Preference Ratings of In-Ear Headphones: Session P1 Wednesday, Oct. 18 Part 1—Listening Test Results and Acoustic 9:00 am – 11:00 am Room 1E11 Measurements—Sean Olive, Todd Welti, Omid Khonsaripour, Harman International, Northridge, SIGNAL PROCESSING CA, USA Convention Paper 9840 Chair: Bozena Kostek, Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland To be presented on Thursday, Oct. 18, in Session 7—Perception—Part 2 9:00 am P1-1 Generation and Evaluation of Isolated Audio Coding * * * * * Artifacts—Sascha Dick, Nadja Schinkel-Bielefeld, The AES has launched an opportunity to recognize student Sascha Disch, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated members who author technical papers. The Student Paper Award Circuits IIS, Erlangen, Germany Competition is based on the preprint manuscripts accepted for the Many existing perceptual audio codec standards AES convention. define only the bit stream syntax and associated decod- A number of student-authored papers were nominated. The er algorithms, but leave many degrees of freedom to the excellent quality of the submissions has made the selection process encoder design. For a systematic optimization of encod- both challenging and exhilarating. er parameters as well as for education and training of The award-winning student paper will be honored during the experienced test listeners, it is instrumental to provoke Convention, and the student-authored manuscript will be consid- and subsequently assess individual coding artifact types ered for publication in a timely manner for the Journal of the Audio in an isolated fashion with controllable strength. The Engineering Society. approach presented in this paper consists of a pre-selec- Nominees for the Student Paper Award were required to meet tion of suitable test audio content in combination with the following qualifications: forcing a specially modified encoder into non-common (a) The paper was accepted for presentation at the AES 143rd operation modes to willingly generate controlled coding Convention. artifacts. In conclusion, subjective listening tests were (b) The first author was a student when the work was conducted conducted to assess the subjective quality for different and the manuscript prepared. parameters and test content. (c) The student author’s affiliation listed in the manuscript is an Convention Paper 9809 accredited educational institution. (d) The student will deliver the lecture or poster presentation at the Convention. 9:30 P1-2 Enhancement of Voice Intelligibility for Mobile Speech * * * * * Communication in Noisy Environments—Kihyun 1 2 3 Choo, Anton Porov, Maria Koutsogiannaki, Holly The Winner of the 143rd AES Convention 3 1 1 1 Student Paper Award is: Francois, Jonghoon Jeong, Hosang Sung, Eunmi Oh 1Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea Modeling the Effects of Rooms on Frequency 2Samsung R&D Institute Russia, Moscow, Russia Modulated Tones—Sarah R. Smith, Mark F. Bocko, 3Samsung R&D Institute UK, London, UK University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA One of the biggest challenges still encounter with speech Convention Paper 9885 communication via a mobile phone is that it is sometimes 1 Audio Engineering Society 143rd Convention Program, 2017 Fall very difficult to understand what is said when listening 9:00 in a noisy place. In this paper a novel approach based on two models is introduced to increase speech intelligibili- P2-1 Audio Education: Audio Recording Production Students ty for a listener surrounded by environmental noise. One Report Skills Learned or Focused on in Their Programs is to perceptually optimize the speech when considering —Doug Bielmeier, Purdue School of Engineering and simultaneous background noise, the other is to modify Technology, IUPUI, Indianapolis, IN, USA the speech towards a more intelligible, naturally elicited Previous research polled employers, new hires, and edu- speaking style. The two models are combined to provide cators in the audio industry to identify what skills were more understandable speech even in a loud noisy environ- most important, what skills new hires had, and what skills ment, even in the case where we are unable to increase educators focused on in Audio Recording Production the speech volume. The improvements in perceptual qual- (ARP) Programs. The Skills Students Learned (SSL) Sur- ity and intelligibility are shown by Perceptual Objective vey used in this study, polled 40 students from the U.S. Listening Quality Assessment and Listening Effort Mean and aboard to identify skills learned at ARP programs. Stu- Opinion Score evaluation. dents reported their skill level before and after attending a Convention Paper 9810 formal ARP program via an online mixed methods survey instrument. In the quantitative section, students reported 10:00 an improvement in all skill levels upon completing their ARP training. In the qualitative section, students report- P1-3 Application of Spectral-Domain Matching and Pseudo ed communication skills and in-depth technical skills Non-Linear Convolution to Down-Sample-Rate missing from their programs and personal skill sets. This Conversion (DSRC)—Malcolm O. J. Hawksford, study recommends infusion of these skills into existing University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK ARP curriculum. A method of down-sample-rate conversion is discussed Convention Paper 9814 that exploits processes of spectral-domain matching and pseudo non-linear convolution applied to discrete 9:30 data frames as an alternative to conventional convo- lutional filter and sub-sampling techniques. Spectral- P2-2 Audio Archive Preservation Challenges and domain matching yields a complex sample sequence that Pedagogical Opportunities: School of Music RePlayed— can subsequently be converted into a real sequence using Samantha Bennett, Australian National University, the Discrete Hilbert Transform. The method is shown to Canberra, ACT, Australia result in substantially reduced time dispersion compared This paper considers the various challenges, implica- to the standard convolutional approach and circumvents tions and pedagogical opportunities presented via a filter symmetry selection such as linear phase or min- small-scale audio archiving project: School of Music imum phase. The formal analytic process is presented RePlayed. Housed in the Australian National Universi- and validated through simulation then adapted to digital- ty’s School of Music, this historical archive of more than audio sample-rate conversion by using a multi-frame 1200 recital and concert tape recordings features multiple overlap and add process. It has been tested in both LP- recordings of historical significance, yet presents with a CM-to-LPCM and DSD-to-LPCM applications where the number of issues pertaining to storage and tape deterio- latter can be simplified using a look-up code table. ration. This paper first considers the challenges present- Convention Paper 9811 ed in the digitization of such an archive before focusing on the pedagogical opportunities afforded by such a 10:30 unique project. Developed and run in conjunction with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, this P1-4 Detection of Piano Pedaling Techniques on the Sustain unique project addresses both technological and peda- Pedal—Beici Liang, György Fazekas, Mark Sandler, gogical matters of preservation, heritage and digitization. Queen Mary University of London, London, UK Convention Paper 9815 Automatic detection of piano pedaling techniques is chal- 10:00 lenging as it is comprised of subtle nuances of piano tim- P2-3 The Education of the Next Generation of Pro-Audio bres. In this paper we address this problem on single notes Professionals—Curig Huws, University of South Wales, using decision-tree-based support vector machines. Fea- Cardiff, UK tures are extracted from harmonics and residuals based on physical acoustics considerations and signal observations. Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, the changing nature We consider four distinct pedaling techniques on the sus- of the music industry has led to the demise of recording tain pedal (anticipatory full, anticipatory half, legato full, studios, which have decreased dramatically in number. and legato half pedaling) and create a new isolated-note This decline has led to a corresponding disappearance of dataset consisting of different pitches and velocities for the “teaboy” route, the traditional route whereby engi- each pedaling technique plus notes played without pedal. neers, producers, and mixers (EPM) learned their craft. In Experiment shows the effectiveness of the designed fea- the training vacuum that the demise of recording studios tures and the learned classifiers for discriminating pedal- creates, how do EPM professionals now learn the skills ing techniques from the cross-validation trails. and knowledge necessary to succeed in the music indus- Convention Paper 9812 try? Through primary research and indepth interviews with leading EPM professionals and online education Session P2 Wednesday, Oct. 18 providers, this paper assesses the skills needed to become 9:00 am – 10:30 am Room 1E12 a successful EPM and explores whether the internet can ever replace the traditional teaboy route in educating the AUDIO EDUCATION next generation of professionals. It concludes that