Journal of the Audio Engineering Society

The Journal of the Audio Engineering Society — the official publication of the AES — is the only peer-reviewed journal devoted exclusively to audio technology. Published 10 times each year, it is available to all AES members and subscribers.

The Journal contains state-of-the-art technical papers and engineering reports; feature articles covering timely topics; pre and post reports of AES conventions and other society activities; news from AES sections around the world; Standards and Education Committee work; membership news, patents, new products, and newsworthy developments in the field of audio.

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最新月刊 Current Issue

2012 July/August - Volume 60 Number 7/8第60卷第7/8期

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Guest Editors’ Note: Special Issue on Auditory Display

Author:Tony Stockman, Agnieszka Roginska, Bruce Walker, and Oussama Metatla
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Papers 论文

Effect of Spatial Location and Presentation Rate on the Reaction to Auditory Displays

Author:Roginska, Agnieszka
Affiliation:Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL), New York University, New York, NY

The way in which auditory displays are presented can significantly influence the experience of listeners. Spatio-temporal factors influence and redirect the attention toward such displays. These factors include presentation speed, stimulus externalization, and location in the three dimensional space. Results show that stimuli perceived inside the head resulted in a more accurate and faster response than those that were externalized. For externalized auditory displays, those presented in the frontal hemisphere were attended to faster. Response times did not change linearly with presentation speed; there was an optimal presentation rate at which the response time is fastest without compromising accuracy.

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Auditory Menus Are Not Just Spoken Visual Menus: A Case Study of “Unavailable” Menu Items

Authors:Jeon, Myounghoon; Gupta, Siddharth; Davison, Benjamin K.; Walker, Bruce N.
Affiliation:Sonification Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

When a visual menu, such as in a computer, needs to be presented with sound, there is a question about how to best communicate an item that is unavailable. This question was explored in three studies that showed that using a whispered voice for unavailable items was favored over an attenuated voice, saying “unavailable,” or skipping such items. In general, participants preferred a female voice over a male voice. Results are discussed in terms of acoustic theory, cognitive menu selection theory, and user interface accessibility. The authors asserted that designers should go beyond a naïve translation from text into speech when creating auditory systems, thereby creating subjective satisfaction.

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Guidelines for NextGen Auditory Displays

Author:Begault, Durand R.
Affiliation:Human Systems Integration Division, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA

The author reviews the requirements and design approaches for auditory displays in flight decks and air traffic control workstations as part of NextGen, the major reconfiguration of the National Airspace System. The design philosophy includes: filtering information to reduce the burden on mental resources; integrate, categorize, and prioritize information to enable mentally economic processing; and embed information in alerting signal to facilitate efficient allocation of attention.The quality of an auditory display can be viewed in terms of how each message hierarchically satisfies four general principles: detection, discrimination, intelligibility, and familiarity.

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Balancing Salience and Unobtrusiveness in Auditory Monitoring of Evolutionary Optimization

Authors:Grond, Florian; Kramer, Oliver; Hermann, Thomas
Affiliation:Ambient Intelligence group, CITEC Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany; Carl von Ossietzky Universität Computational Intelligence Group, Oldenburg

Sonification, which is the conversion of physical data (temperature, network traffic, or an electrocardiogram) into sound, is very suitable for augmenting task monitoring. The challenge to the sound designer is to create a monitoring display that maximizes the conveyed information while at the same time remaining unobtrusive. In this article an auditory augmentation approach was developed for monitoring evolutionary optimization algorithms. In order to augment short interaction sounds effectively with the information about the high-dimensional search space, a sonification method known as data sonograms was applied. Various mappings of data to sound features have been investigated, where the delay of the signal has been shown to be an interesting parameter that plays a role in both unobtrusiveness and information conveyed.

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The Effects of Using Headphones and Speakers on Collaboration in an Audio-Only Workspace

Authors:Metatla, Oussama; Bryan-Kinns, Nick; Stockman, Tony
Affiliation:School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

The means by which audio was delivered (headphones or loudspeakers) in a shared workplace environment influenced the dynamics of collaborations. In an experiment designed to show the influence of audio delivery, pairs of sighted individuals used audio as the sole means for communicating with one another while editing a shared diagram. The choice of working style affects how collaborators attend to the sounds present in a collaborative space, which in turn influences how they structure and organize their interactions. That in turn determines which information is relevant, dynamically changing according to how collaborators choose to work with sounds. Another conclusion was that the mere physical presence of audio in a shared space does not necessary imply that it is being attended to by those hearing it.

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Modeling the Rowing Stroke Cycle Acoustically

Authors:Schaffert, Nina; Gehret, Reiner; Mattes, Klaus
Affiliation:University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; BeSB GmbH Sound & Vibration, Berlin, Germany

Because elite athletes require an unconscious and automated sense of time, and because sound is especially appropriate for conveying timing information, acoustic feedback can be especially useful in training of rowers. In the context of human movement, rhythm is a time accurate sequence of motor actions. Rhythm and synchronization are inseparable within a moving context. An auditory feedback signal based on boat acceleration helps rowers control their activities, and this sonified data can be stored in an audio file for later training and analysis. The improved sensitivity to the time-critical nature of the rowing cycle yielded an improved synchronization among the crew, as well as an improvement of individual athlete’s rowing technique.

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A Comparison of Sound Dimensions for Auditory Graphs: Pitch Is Not So Perfect

Author:Peres, S. Camille
Affiliation:University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA

Visually-impaired individuals and sighted individuals who are conducting tasks in divided-attention situations, both benefit from using sound to display information typically communicated visually. Auditory displays of statistical graphs are one such tool and can be effective in these situations. However, it is not obvious how these graphs should be designed. In a series of experiments in which information was conveyed by sound, subjects were divided into two groups: those hearing graphs using integral (pitch and loudness) and separable (pitch and timing) dimensions of sound. The results showed that pitch alone produced the worst performance and timing the best. However, designs using pitch and loudness redundantly provided good results as well.

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Virtual Localization by Blind Persons

Author:Wersényi, György
Affiliation:Széchenyi István University, Gyõr, Hungary

In order for blind people to better use personal computers, an auditory virtual environment can be used to present information that might otherwise be available only with vision. Auditory objects can be spatial placed in the virtual environment if the user can successfully identify their location. In contrast to sighted subjects, blind subjects were better at detecting movements in the horizontal plane around the head, localizing static frontal audio sources, and orientation in a 2-D virtual audio display. On the other hand, sighted subjects performed better identifying ascending sound sources in the vertical plane and detecting static sources in the back.

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Wearable Sensor-Based Real-Time Sonification of Motion and Foot Pressure in Dance Teaching and Training

Authors:Grosshauser, T.; Bläsing, B.; Spieth, C.; Hermann, T.
Affiliation:Wearable Computing Lab., ETH Zurich, Switzerland; CITEC, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany; Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

As with tasks involved with motion and gesture, teaching dance can take advantage of auditory displays that map specific dance steps into their acoustic counterparts. Wearable sensors based on acoustic “fingerprints” accompany the dance movements in real-time. This kind of audio feedback has a positive influence on motor movement and perception. For example, joint angles, weight distribution, and energy of jumps are easily recognized through sound. With practice, a student can hear if a complex movement was correctly executed. The auditory system can hear complex patterns of rapid motion, especially aspects of a dance that are not easily seen.

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Standards and Information Documents 标准和信息文件

AES Standards Committee News

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Digital audio interfaces; metadata; audio connectors; microphone measurement and characterization

Features 专题

132nd Convention Report, Budapest 132届布达佩斯年度大会报告

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133rd Convention Preview, San Francisco 133旧金山年度大会前瞻

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133rd Convention Exhibitor Previews 133届年度大会展览商前瞻

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Stokowski and the Evolution of Recording Techniques

Authors:Rumsey, Francis; Auld, Robert

Leopold Stokowski was active as a recording artist from 1917 until 1977—virtually the entire period of the recording of music by analog technology. Robert Auld’s multimedia presentation at the 131st Convention paid special attention to Leopold Stokowski’s involvement in the development of multichannel sound recording, including his collaboration with Bell Labs starting in 1932, his work with Walt Disney for the film Fantasia, and his encouragement of recording in quadraphonic sound in the 1970s.

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New Officers 2012/2013 新入选官员

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AES Bylaws 协会章程

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132nd Convention Papers Order Form 132届年度大会论文订单

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Departments 部门信息

Advertiser Internet Directory  PDF (227KB)

Section News  PDF (229KB)

Obituaries  PDF (89KB)

AES Conventions and Conferences  PDF (65KB)

Extras 号外

Table of Contents  PDF (47KB)

Cover & Sustaining Members List  PDF (54KB)

AES Officers, Committees, Offices & Journal Staff  PDF (74KB)