Dr Randall Ali
About
Biography
Randall Ali (Randy) received a B.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of the West Indies in 2007, an M.S. degree in acoustics from the Pennsylvania State University in 2013, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from KU Leuven in 2020. He has been active in both teaching and research in signal processing and acoustics, focusing on a variety of topics including room acoustic modelling, signal enhancement for assistive hearing devices, musical acoustics, and thermoacoustics.
ResearchResearch interests
Room acoustic modelling, musical instrument synthesis, auralization, bioacoustics, and anything that lies at the intersection of acoustics, signal processing, and music.
Research interests
Room acoustic modelling, musical instrument synthesis, auralization, bioacoustics, and anything that lies at the intersection of acoustics, signal processing, and music.
Publications
The steelpan is a percussive idiophone whose sound is generated by striking an arrangement of dome-shaped notes within the sunken top of a steel drum (open on the other end) with a mallet. The instrument originated in Trinidad and has its roots in the early twentieth century that can be traced back to post-emancipation traditions. As the steelpan has permeated the wider cultural space of the Caribbean in complex ways, it is important, within Caribbean cultural heritage, that it is safeguarded and its associated traditions are appropriately documented. In particular, tuning techniques of pioneer steelpan tuners from the early to mid-twentieth century are being lost to time as the majority of these tuners are already (or soon to be) deceased. This paper discusses a mathematical model of the steelpan that can be discretized and digitally synthesized, highlighting the role that sound synthesis models can play within the domain of cultural heritage. It is shown how the model can be used to understand the timbres of various steelpans and also demonstrates its potential as a point of reference for defining the object of the steelpan as a form of intangible cultural heritage.
Additional publications
- Ali R., Dietzen T., Scerbo M., Vinceslas L., van Waterschoot T., De Sena E., "Relating wave-based and geometric acoustics using a stationary phase approximation", Proc. in 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association Forum Acusticum 2023.
- Ali R., van Waterschoot T., "A frequency tracker based on a Kalman filter update of a single parameter adaptive notch filter",Proc. 26th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects DAFX 2023.
- Dietzen T., Ali R., Taseska M., van Waterschoot T., "MYRiAD: A Multi-Array Room Acoustic Database", EURASIP J. Audio Speech Music Process., vol. 2023, no. 17, Apr. 2023, pp. 1--14.
- Blochberger M., Elvander F., Ali R., Ostergaard J., Jensen J., Moonen M., van Waterschoot T., "Distributed Adaptive Norm Estimation For Blind System Identification in Wireless Sensor Networks", ICASSP 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Rhodes Island, Greece, 2023
- Rocco G., Bernardi G., Ali R., van Waterschoot T., Polo E.M., Barbieri R., Paglialonga A., "Characterization of the Intelligibility of Vowel-Consonant-Vowel (VCV) Recordings in Five Languages for Application in Speech-in-Noise Screening in Multilingual Settings", Applied Sciences, vol. 13, no. 5344, 2023, pp. 1-13.
- Cakmak B., Dietzen T., Ali R., Naylor P., van Waterschoot T., "A distributed steered response power approach to source localization in wireless acoustic sensor networks", Internal Report 22-50, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2022. Accepted for publication in 17th International Workshop on Acoustic Signal Enhancement (IWAENC 2022), Bamberg, Germany, September 5.-8. 2022.
- Blochberger M., Elvander F., Ali R., Moonen M., Astergaard J., Jensen J., van Waterschoot T., "Distributed Cross-Relation-Based Frequency-Domain Blind System Identification using Online-ADMM", Internal Report 22-46, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2022. Accepted for publication in 17th International Workshop on Acoustic Signal Enhancement (IWAENC 2022), Bamberg, Germany, September 5.-8. 2022.
- Ali R., van Waterschoot T., Moonen M., “An integrated MVDR beamformer for speech enhancement using a local microphone array and external microphones'', EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, no. 10, Feb. 2021, pp. 1-20.
- Ali R., Bernardi G., van Waterschoot T., Moonen M., “Methods of extending a generalised sidelobe canceller with external microphones'', IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, vol. 27, no. 9, Sep. 2019, pp. 1349-1364.
- Ali R., van Waterschoot T., Moonen M., “Integration of and estimated constraints into an MVDR beamformer for speech enhancement'', IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, vol. 27, no. 12, dec 2019, pp. 2288-2300.
- Ali R., van Waterschoot T., Moonen M., ``Using partial a priori knowledge of relative transfer functions to design an MVDR beamformer for a binaural hearing assistive device with external microphones'', in Proc. of the 23rd International Congress on Acoustics (ICA), Aachen, Germany, Sep. 2019,
- Elvander F., Ali R., Jakobsson A., van Waterschoot T., ``Offline Noise Reduction Using Optimal Mass Transport Induced Covariance Interpolation'', in Proc. of the 27th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), A Coruña, Spain, Sep. 2019, pp. 1-5.
- Ali R., van Waterschoot T., Moonen M., ``MWF-based speech dereverberation with a local microphone array and an external microphone'', in Proc. of the 27th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO), A Coruña, Spain, Sep. 2019, pp. 1-5.
- Ali R., van Waterschoot T., Moonen M., ``Completing the RTF vector for an MVDR beamformer as applied to a local microphone array and an external microphone'', in Proc. of the International Workshop on Acoustic Signal Enhancement (IWAENC), Tokyo, Japan, Sep. 2018, 5 p.
- Ali R., van Waterschoot T., Moonen M., ``Generalised Sidelobe Canceller for Noise Reduction in Hearing Devices using an external microphone'', in Proc. of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Calgary, Canada, Apr. 2018.
- Ali R., Moonen M., ``A contingency multi-microphone noise reduction strategy based on linearly constrained multi-channel wiener filtering'', in Proc. of the 2016 IEEE International Workshop on Acoustic Echo and Noise Control (IWAENC 2016), Xi'an, China, Sept. 2016, 4 p.
- Ali R., Garrett S. L., Smith J. A. , and Kotter D. K., “Thermoacoustic thermometry for nuclear reactor monitoring,” IEEE J. Instrumentation and Measurement 16(3), 18-25 (2013).
- Ali R., Garrett S. L., Smith J. A., and Kotter D. K. , “Thermoacoustic sensor for nuclear fuel temperature monitoring and heat transfer enhancement,” NDCM 13th International Symposium on Nondestructive Characterization of Materials (NDCM-XIII) (2013).
- Ali R. and Garrett S. L. , “Heat transfer enhancement through thermoacoustically-driven streaming,” Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Vol. 19, 030001 (2013).