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Listening Room & Lab

The ITU-R BS.1116 critical listening room and audio laboratory (designed and built by Munro Associates) provide facilities for students and researchers to undertake experimental work involving audio measurement and subjective listening tests.

The ITU-R standard is the most critical international standard for listening rooms, with strict criteria for low noise, controlled reflections, dimension ratios and reverberation time. The Surrey listening room is air conditioned to provide a comfortable working environment and is equipped with five Genelec 1032 monitor loudspeakers, together with a Genelec 1094 sub-woofer, enabling listening tests on multichannel surround sound to be carried out effectively.

The audio laboratory is equipped with a dedicated sound control area for research work, enabling multichannel recordings to be edited, processed and compiled. Listening tests can be executed from the equipment in this area, connected via remote interfaces to the listening room.

TB7 lab The Institute runs the custom-written ALEX automated listening experiment system, based around a Silicon Graphics 02 workstation. This enables a wide range of subjective test types to be rapidly assembled and executed, with convenient data export to statistical analysis software. Custom MAX/MSP patches running on an Apple Mac are also used for some experiments. The audio lab is equipped with a sound control area for research work, enabling multichannel recordings to be edited, processed and compiled. Listening tests can be executed from the equipment in this area, connected via remote interfaces to the listening room.


The sound control area is equipped with:

  • Yamaha 02R digital mixer
  • Silicon Graphics 02 workstation
  • Rogers LS3/5a monitoring
  • Yamaha DSP surround amplifier with DTS and Dolby Digital decoding
  • Tascam DA-88 digital 8-track recorder
  • DAR OMR-8 multichannel audio editing system
  • CD and DAT replay

The audio lab is equipped with: KEMAR dummy head

  • Prism DScope digial audio test set (running on PC)
  • MLSSA measurement equipment (running on PC)
  • B&K 2033 real time audio analyser
  • Neutrik MK1 binaural recording & measurement system
  • B&K acoustic test equipment and microphones
  • Neutrik Acoustilyzer acoustical analysis system
  • A selection of scopes, oscillators, audio test sets

On loan from BBC Research Department:

  • Kemar Head and Torso simulator with B&K half-inch measuring mics.

Enquiries

Enquiries from external bodies or individuals regarding use of the ITU listening room should be directed to:

Dr. Tim Brookes
t.brookes@surrey.ac.uk
+44 (0)1483 686539