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The Development of SAALTS: A Spatial Audio Attribute Listener Training System

Summary

Rafael Kassier BMus (Hons) (Tonmeister)

Rafael Kassier completed his PhD at the Institute of Sound Recording in 2008, having graduated from the Tonmeister Music and Sound Recording degree course at the University of Surrey in 1998.

Objectives

The aim of Raf's project was the development and validation of an ear training system for spatial audio evaluation. The work included the determination and validation of a suitable spatial attribute paradigm and creation of demonstrative stimuli having clearly defined perceptual characteristics. Suitable training methodologies were then selected and validated.

Details

The Development of SAALTS: A Spatial Audio Attribute Listener Training System

Rafael Kassier
Tim Brookes
Francis Rumsey

Following the work of Berg and Rumsey and the work of Neher into spatial audio attributes and semantic analysis of spatial audio scenes, the need for training tools has arisen. Such tools can be used in the preparation of subjects for sensory evaluation tasks and in quality evaluation of spatial sound systems.

Previously Raf worked on a research project investigating sound quality trade-offs in consumer multichannel audio and video delivery systems.

Publications

  • "Training Versus Practice in Spatial Audio Attribute Evaluation Tasks", R.Kassier, T.Brookes & F.Rumsey, 122nd Audio Engineering Society Convention, May 2007, Vienna, Convention Paper 7117
  • "A Comparison between Spatial Audio Listener Training and Repetitive Practice", R.Kassier, T.Brookes & F.Rumsey, 121st Audio Engineering Society Convention, October 2006, San Francisco
  • "Designing a Spatial Audio Attribute Listener Training System for Optimal Transfer", R.Kassier, T.Brookes & F.Rumsey, 120th Audio Engineering Society Convention, May 2006, Paris, France
  • "A pilot study into listener training for spatial audio evaluation" Rafael Kassier, Tim Brookes & Francis Rumsey,DMRN Summer Conference 2005 23-25 July.
  • "Relationships between experienced listener ratings of multichannel audio quality and naïve listener preferences" Francis Rumsey, Slawek K. Zielinski, Rafael Kassier & Søren Bech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 117 (6), pp 3832-3840. 2005 June
  • "An Informal Comparison between Surround Sound Microphone Techniques" Rafael Kassier, Hyun-Kook Lee, Tim Brookes & Francis Rumsey. Presented at the AES 118th Convention, Preprint No. 6429. 2005 May 28-31
  • "Comparison of Basic Audio Quality and Timbral and Spatial Fidelity Changes Caused by Limitation of Bandwidth and by Down-mix Algorithms in 5.1 Surround Audio Systems" Slawek K. Zielinski, Francis Rumsey, Rafael Kassier & Søren Bech. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Vol 53 (3), pp 174-192. 2005 March
  • "Development and Initial Validation of a Multichannel Audio Quality Expert System" Slawek K. Zielinski, Francis Rumsey, Rafael Kassier & Søren Bech. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, Vol 53 (1/2), pp 4-21. 2005 January/February
  • "A Simplified Scene-Based Paradigm for Use in Training Applications" Rafael Kassier, Tim Brookes & Francis Rumsey. Presented at the AES 117th Convention, Preprint No. 6292. 2004 Oct 28-31
  • "Quality Adviser - A Multichannel Audio Quality Expert System" Slawek K. Zielinski, Francis Rumsey, Rafael Kassier & Søren Bech. Presented at the AES 116th Convention, Preprint No. 6140. 2004 May 8-11
  • "Computer Games and Multichannel Audio Quality Part II - Evaluation of Time-Variant Audio Degradations under Divided and Undivided Attention" Rafael Kassier, Slawek K. Zielinski & Francis Rumsey. Presented at the AES 115th Convention, Preprint No. 5856 2003 October 10-13
  • "Computer games and multichannel audio quality - the effect of division of attention between auditory and visual modalities" Slawek K. Zielinski, Francis Rumsey, Søren Bech, Bart de Bruyn & Rafael Kassier. Presented at AES 24th International Conference, Banff, Canada. 2003 June 26 - 28

Personal webpage - including links to PDF versions of publications