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19.01.2012 Report of SAB Meeting 05.12.2011

The ARI is an Institute that is unique in Austria and quite possibly in Europe
because of the way that it conducts high-level, cutting-edge interdisciplinary research into
so many facets of acoustics.

 

Report from the Scientific Advisory Board on the Activities of the Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (December, 2011)

Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 January 2012 )
 
01.01.2012 Peter Balazs appointed Director
Dr. Peter Balazs has been appointed Director of the Acoustics Research Institute as of 1st January 2012. Dr. Peter Balazs
Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 January 2012 )
 
01.11.2011 Time-Frequency Implementation of HRTFs (HRTF-Imp)

http://www.kfs.oeaw.ac.at/research/projects/project_descriptions/43.66.Qp_TF-VA-Design/etc.png The FWF project "Time-Frequency Implementation of HRTFs" as started.

Principal Investigator: Damian Marelli

Co-Applicants: Peter Balazs , Piotr Majdak

Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 January 2012 )
 
06.12.2011 Project granted: LocaPhoto: Virtual Acoustics: Localization Model & Numeric Simulations,

The FWF project granted LocaPhoto: Virtual Acoustics: Localization Model & Numeric Simulations, From Geometric Reconstruction to 3-D Virtual Acoustics has been granted. 

Principal Investigator: Piotr Majdak

Co-Applicants: Wolfgang Kreuzer , Bernhard Laback

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 18 January 2012 )
 
03.10.2011 Project granted:“Binaural Hearing and the Cochlear Phase Response (BiPhase)”

The FWF project “Binaural Hearing and the Cochlear Phase Response (BiPhase)” has been granted.

Pricipial Investigator: Bernhard Laback

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 18 January 2012 )
 
01.07.2011 START Prize for Peter Balazs

Peter Balazs has received a START Prize by the FWF (2011-2016) for the project  Frames and Linear Operators for Acoustical Modeling and Parameter Estimation (FLAME).

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 18 January 2012 )
 
Aims and Mission

Acoustics Research Institute

 

The Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is active in five major areas – (1) Physical Acoustics (Computational Acoustics) , (2) Physiological and Psychological Acoustics (Computational Hearing, Psychoacoustics), (3) Acoustic Phonetics, (4) Experimental Audiology and Psychoacoustics and (5) Mathematics and Signal Processing in Acoustics .

(1) Computational Acoustics deals with the simulation of structure and fluid dynamics, sound field modeling, and associated signal processing tasks. Tasks performed in this field include simulation, mathematical calculation, signal analysis, re-synthesis, and dedicated software development. Research in human and animal auditory perception requires profound knowledge of the physical structures of sound sources and sound fields over a wide range of frequencies. The picture compares the result of a classical Boundary Element Method (BEM) with the Multilevel Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM). The Fast Multipole Method considerably reduces the computational effort without a loss of accuracy.

Computational Acoustics

In the field of (2) Psychoacoustics acoustic measurements, numerical simulations, and Psycho-Physiological Models are applied to specify and explain the function of hearing. The effect of acoustic signals is complex, encompassing daily speech and music listening, environmental noise, motor vehicle acoustics, and audio engineering. One of the main auditory functions concerns masking. The institute's own software package, STx, provides the modeling of simultaneous masking on natural sounds. This masking separates audible spectral components from inaudible ones by computing the so-called "irrelevance threshold."

Psychoacoustics

The Acoustic Model of Speech Production provides the basis of analyzing speech sounds. (3) Acoustic Phonetics, in combination with Phonology, enables the study of articulatory and phonological differences between languages and speakers. Speech parameters, such as fundamental frequency contours, formant frequency tracking, and timing measures support the generation of phoneme and vowel systems as well as relevant linguistic speech sound classifications.

Acoustic Phonetics

(4) Experimental Audiology and Psychoacoustics: We investigate the link between acoustic signals and auditory perception. This includes loudness and pitch perceptions, speech perception in noise, time-frequency masking, sound localization, spectral profiling, and auditory scene analysis. We study the auditory perception in acoustic hearing (both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners) and electric hearing (cochlear-implant listeners) focusing on spatial hearing.

Hearing with Cochlear Implants

(5) Mathematics and Signal Processing in Acoustics focuses on application-oriented mathematics. It develops theoretical results and new mathematical concepts, motivated by application, in contrast to "applied mathematics" focusing on providing and applying mathematical tools for the applied sciences. The application-oriented approach allows results significant both for mathematics and the applied sciences. In this context we develop new mathematical concepts motivated by signal processing and acoustical applications.

Mathematics and Acoustical Signal Processing
Software Development: S TOOLS-STx

The areas of basic and applied research are highly complementary. Many of the different approaches within the two research fields use similar methods. For example, they apply almost the same algorithms of time-frequency representation, digital filters, signal parameter, feature extraction, and common mathematics (Digital Signal Processing and Software Development –S_TOOLS-STx, Mathematics). The framework implemented utilizes the synergistic effects in theoretical and applied fields with the aim to handle the complex interaction between acoustics and auditory perception.

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 10 January 2012 )
 
News
Upcoming Events

DAGA 2012

19 - 22 March, 2012, in Darmstadt, Germany

 

inter.noise 2013

September 15th to 18th 2013 in Congress Centre Innsbruck

 
© 2012 - Austrian Academy of Sciences - Acoustics Research Institute
Saturday, 28 January 2012