PE-1 | Perception & Aesthetics | R3 | 2018-11-14 | 16:30 - 18:00
moderated by David Griesinger
Circles of Confusion in Pro Audio
PE-1-1 | Start 16:30 | Duration 90 min. | Thomas Lund |
Thomas Sporer, David Griesinger | Roundtable Discussion (English)
30.000 year old cave paintings are among human beings' most impressive cultural heritage, while we don't even know how music by excellent 300 year old composers sounded. Within the last couple of generations we acquired the technical skills to record sound. However, that asset is now degenerating because of cognitive limitations and the circles of confusion in production, addressed by this panel.
Without proper anchoring of spectral balance and level, drifting over time is inevitable in self-referenced systems, thereby putting legacy recordings at the risk of sounding dated for no good reason, or causing irreversible distortion to be added to pieces of art.
The panel will discuss baseline listening requirements for in-room and headphone spectral balance and level that stand the test of time, putting our interests as a species above commercial trivialities.
PE-2 | Perception & Aesthetics | R3 | 2018-11-15 | 09:00 - 11:00
moderated by David Griesinger
On Human Perceptual Bandwidth and Slow Listening
PE-2-1 | Start 09:00 | Duration 30 min. | Thomas Lund |
Aki Mäkivirta | AES Reviewed Paper (English)
Seventy-four recent physiological and psychological studies revolving around human perception and its bandwidth were reviewed. The brain has ever only learned about the world through our five primary senses. With them, we receive a fraction of the information actually available, while we perceive far less still. A fraction of a fraction: The perceptual bandwidth. Conscious perception is furthermore influenced by long-term experience and learning, to an extent that it might be more accurately understood and studied as primarily a reach-out phenomena. Considering hearing, time is found to be a determining factor on several planes. It is discussed how such sentient observations could be taken into account in pro audio, for instance when conducting subjective tests; and the term “slow listening” is devised.
Ear signals are bodily signals: Binaural Audio as a form of engineering at the human body
PE-2-2 | Start 09:30 | Duration 30 min. | Martin Rumori | Talk (English)
Binaural audio is based on ear signals, that is, acoustic signals as they occur at our outer hearing apparatus such as the ear canals or the eardrums. Ear signals are sought to be captured or synthesised for reproducing them at the same location, usually by means of headphones. If the reproduction is sufficiently accurate with respect to the reference situation, the same auditory impression shall be evoked. In practice, several factors impede the realisation of this assumption, among them technical, psychoacoustic and aesthetic ones.
From a bodily perspective, ear signals represent an intermediate step in the processing chain of human hearing: they result from the outer hearing apparatus, which, by its physical properties, transforms the acoustic surrounding into a signal pair that contains spatial information to be evaluated by the brain. Capturing and reproducing ear signals therefore means to interfere with the bodily function of listening, to decouple the outer ear temporally and spatially, or to replace it, e.g., by the pinnae of a dummy head or another person. I regard this interference as a form of engineering at the human body, albeit subtle and non-invasive.
The dummy head microphone is not a pictorial representation of the human outer hearing apparatus but it is designed to take over its function: it is supposed to actually perform a partial act of hearing. In the paper, I will relate binaural audio to the human faculty of mimesis in the sense of convergence to nature by techné, leading to aesthetically effective categories such as the magic and the uncanny.
On the localization of auditory objects created by directional sound sources in a virtual room
PE-2-3 | Start 10:00 | Duration 30 min. | Florian Wendt |
Matthias Frank, Franz Zotter | Talk (English)
A directional sound source can produce auditory objects at distinct locations in a room by varying its directivity pattern and orientation. Recent perceptual studies could show that the direct-to-reverberant energy ratio is the most relevant cue for their distance from the listening position. The lateralization, on the other hand, is affected by the precedence effect. Thus, the azimuthal angle of auditory objects depends on signal type and time/strength of single wall reflections compared to the direct sound.
This contribution evaluates the perception of auditory objects in a virtual room regarding both distance and azimuth angle relative to the listening position. In the evaluation, listeners were asked to match the position of an omnidirectional sound source in a virtual room with the position of auditory objects created by a directional sound source in the same room. The omnidirectional source could be positioned freely on a map of the room and additional sliders for distance and azimuth angle provided simple means for fine adjustment. The evaluation examines the influence of directivity pattern and beam orientation of the directional source, as well as the signal type.
How the perception of moving sound beams is influenced by masking and reflector setup
PE-2-4 | Start 10:30 | Duration 30 min. | Julian Linke |
Florian Wendt, Franz Zotter, Matthias Frank | Talk (English)
The icosahedral loudspeaker array (IKO) uses strongly focused sound beams to ”orchestrate” reflecting surfaces resulting in the perception of auditory objects at distinct locations in the room. Previous studies revealed that stationary sounds are localized more distant from the IKO in comparison to transient sounds due to the precedence effect. Nevertheless, we could show in a direct comparison using static sound beams that the application of maskers can partly suppress the precedence effect resulting in an increased distance for transient sounds. This contribution extends the study towards trajectories of moving sound beams.
Two basic staging constellations of the IKO have been shown to be feasible in artistic practice: (1) a concave setup of approx. 5 reflectors around the IKO and (2) a simpler setup without additional reflectors, typically used in smaller, rectangular rooms. A comparison of these two setups is also included in the present study of moving sound beams.
PE-3 | Perception & Aesthetics | R3 | 2018-11-15 | 18:00 - 19:00
moderated by David Griesinger
ENTFALL wegen Krankheit // Klangnarrative im Raum: Was ist Akustische Szenografie?
Spätestens seit den 2000er Jahren und der Expo in Hannover erfreuen sich aufwendige multimediale Rauminszenierungen in Museen, Messen, Verkaufsräumen oder im öffentlichen Raum wachsender Beliebtheit. Selbstredend spielt dabei auch Klang eine herausragende Rolle. Mit dem Begriff der „Akustischen Szenografie“ scheinen gegenwärtig alle Maßnahmen bezeichnet zu werden, die sich mit der Gestaltung räumlicher Klangnarrative im Sinne einer „expanded scenography“ beschäftigen. Eine Klangszenografie unterliegt ganz spezifischen Konstruktionsprinzipien, beispielsweise einer Zeitlichkeit der Inszenierung, die maßgeblich vom Besucher bestimmt wird. Diese Prinzipien, die damit verbundenen Gestaltungsparameter und das Arbeitsfeld der Akustischen Szenografie sind jedoch noch nicht umfassend definiert worden. Unterscheiden sich beispielsweise Klanginstallation und Akustische Szenografie? Wenn ja, worin? Die präzise Erfassung der Dimensionen des Begriffs ist dabei nicht nur von theoretischer Relevanz, sondern muss in Hinblick auf den effizienten Einsatz und die gezielte Entwicklung von Audiotechnologie verstanden werden. Nur wenn klar ist, wie räumliche Klangnarrative funktionieren, können etwa räumliche Klangwiedergabeverfahren nachhaltig gestaltet werden. Der Workshop möchte anhand von Arbeitsbeispielen eine Definition zur Diskussion stellen und damit einen regen Austausch zum Problemfeld der Akustischen Szenografie initiieren.