Assessment of spatial audio quality based on sound attributes

International audienceSpatial audio technologies become very important in audio broadcast services. But, there is a lack of methods for evaluating spatial audio quality. Standards do not take into account spatial dimension of sound and assessments are limited to the overall quality particularly in the context of audio coding. Through different elicitation methods, a long list of attributes has been established to characterize sound but it is difficult to include them in a listening test. A previous study aimed at clustering attributes in families. Thus 3 families of attributes were highlighted, ''timbre", ''space" and ''defaults". The overall quality and these three families were evaluated in the listening test presented in this article. The test protocol was based on the Mushra recommendation. However it included three anchors specific to each attribute and no reference in order to evaluate quality instead of fidelity. The aim of the experiment described in this paper was to verify the influence of those 3 attributes on the overall quality in a 5.1 reproduction system. It results that the defaults attribute has more influence on the overall quality than the timbre and the timbre. Moreover the presentation of the three attributes on the same interface adds no bias

Families of sound attributes for assessment of spatial audio

8 pages http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=15728International audienceOver the last years, studies have highlighted many features liable to be used for the characterization of sounds by several elicitation methods. These various experiments have resulted in the production of a long list of sound attributes. But, as their respective meaning and weight are not alike for assessors and listeners, the analysis of the results of a listening test based on sound criteria remains complex and difficult. The experiments reported in this paper were aimed at shortening the list of attributes by clustering them in sound families from the results of two semantic tests based on either a free categorization (i) or use of a multi-dimensional scaling method (ii)

Sound Quality Evaluation Based on Attributes - Application to Binaural Contents

International audienceThe audio quality assessment is based on standards which mainly evaluate the overall quality to the detriment of more accurate sound criteria. On the other hand, a major problem of an assessment based on sound criteria is their meaning and their understanding that have to be the same for each listener. A previous study clustered a list of sound attributes in three main categories called 'timbre', 'space', 'defaults'. The work presented here is based on those previous results and aims at tuning a subjective test methodology of spatial audio quality. So the three families were included in a test dedicated to the assessment of spatial audio quality with binaural contents. The test was based on the MUSHRA method but using three anchors specifically to each attribute and without explicit reference. The original version was added as the hidden reference. The aim of the listening test described in this paper was to verify the relevance of those 3 attributes and their influence on the overall quality

State of the art on subjective assessment of spatial sound quality

International audienceA new aim of sound technologies is spatial reproduction, which raises new questions about their quality assessment. This literature review deals with spatial audio quality: for audio coding, assessment is made through use of two mainly subjective ITU-R test methods. But, they are restricted to the evaluation of the overall quality. The finding, through various studies, of some features specific to surround sound drove us to wonder whether they can be included in a new quality assessment

Categorization of Sound Attributes for Audio Quality Assessment — A Lexical Study

International audienceFor the evaluation of perceived quality in audio coding, two well-known subjective test methods, both of which are based on Basic Audio Quality (BAQ), are recommended by the International Telecommunication Union. Although a predictor of quality, BAQ is likely to be multidimensional. Listening tests can be used to evaluate other attributes that contribute to impairments created by coding. The goal of this study is to define categories of additional attributes, thereby providing a complement to the single BAQ metric. When quality attributes are sorted, there appears to be three groups: one related to space, a second related to defects, and a third split into timbre and quality

Determination of a relevant spatial anchor for audio quality evaluation of codecs

International audienceIn most tests on audio quality, a "low quality" anchor is provided concurrently with the sequences to be evaluated. A classic generic anchor consists of a low-pass filtered version of the audio reference; but evaluation of specific sound properties (for example spatial features) could require a specific anchor. In a first experiment, we evaluated five spatial anchors to find which was the most appropriate for a test including evaluation of Space quality. One of the tested anchors obtained low scores for all the excerpts used. In a second experiment, a copy of this anchor was integrated into an evaluation test of audio codecs, with assessment of the categories Timbre, Defects, and Space. The scores obtained in this test indicated that this anchor fulfilled the required criteria (a low score for the anchor over all excerpts, the correct range of codec scores for Space, and no serious degradation for Timbre and Defects)

Analysis of Outcomes in Ischemic vs Nonischemic Cardiomyopathy in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation A Report From the GARFIELD-AF Registry

IMPORTANCE Congestive heart failure (CHF) is commonly associated with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF), and their combination may affect treatment strategies and outcomes