Kategorie: ‘Research’
New exhibition DEAR ARCHITECTS: SOUND MATTERS
How often do you think about sound? How do you want people to feel when you are designing a space? Good acoustics design is inherent to architecture. Every decision you make about shape, form, geometry, volume and materials defines the acoustics. So how do you design proactively for the right outcomes, the first time?
With the comprehensive exhibition DEAR ARCHITECTS: SOUND MATTERS we want to link the field of acoustics more with that of architects. We show how acoustics are integrated into the design process and how auralization and simulation tools make it possible to experience acoustics at an early stage.
The exhibition is organized by the PAAD group in collaboration with the Design Computation chair at the RWTH.
Place: Reiff Foyer of the Faculty of Architecture, RWTH Aachen University, Schinkelstraße 1, 52062 Aachen
Dates: 7-13 December
Finissage: 13th December at 19h
Contact person: Josep Llorca-Bofí, josep.llorca@akustik.rwth-aachen.de
Aachen Acoustics Colloquium 2023
Next week the 14th Aachen Acoustics Colloquium will take place at Parkhotel Quellenhof in Aachen. On Tuesday, November, 28th and Wednesday, November, 29th, the scientific program includes 22 interesting presentations about current research within the area of automotive acoustics, accompanied by a technical exhibition from various companies and research institutes. A detailed overview of the program can be found in this PDF.
Our Institute contributes to two presentation to this conference:
- Mark Müller-Giebeler: “FE-Based Inverse Approach to Determine Complex Acoustic Material Parameters in Alpha Cabins”
- Chalotorn Möhlmann: “Holistic Approach for Aurally Accurate Road Traffic Noise Reduction by Adaption of Traffic Routes and Infrastructure Planning” (together with Carolin Schliephake, part of the BalSaM project)
Registration for the on-site participation this event is no longer available, but the registration for online participation is still possible on the AAC website.
International Conference on Auditorium Acoustics 2023 in Athens
From September 28th to 30th, the Institute of Acoustics has held the 11th International Conference on Auditorium Acoustics at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Athens, Greece. Jonas Heck and Josep Llorca-Bofí as well as our alumnus Ingo Witew presented their research in the field of concert halls and room acoustics:
- Jonas Heck, Josep Llorca-Bofí and Michael Vorländer: Concert Halls in Virtual Reality – From Audio-visual Perception to a Common Vocabulary
- Ingo Witew and Michael Vorländer: Measurements in room acoustics – How good are we at it?
On the first conference day, Jonas Heck and Josep Llorca-Bofí organized a round table to discuss the importance of descriptive vocabulary which can be used to depict the perception in concert halls. The poster „Concert Halls in Virtual Reality – From Audio-visual Perception to a Common Vocabulary“ was accompanied by a demonstration of a recent experiment in virtual reality. It was very well received by the delegates who selected it for the first poster prize.
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- Small auditorium, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), Foto: Josep Llorca-Bofí
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- Poster award recipients, Foto: Sergio de las Heras
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- Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), Foto: Jonas Heck
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- Big auditorium, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), Foto: Jonas Heck
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- Demonstration of experiments in virtual reality, Foto: Sergio de las Heras
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- Demonstration of experiments in virtual reality, Background: Poster, Foto: Josep Llorca-Bofí
Research trip to Santiago de Chile
From October 10th to October 13th 2023, Lukas Aspöck participated in the workshop “Digital transformation in the development of rehabilitation sciences: the current challenge to use state-of-the-art technology” on behalf of the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics.
The workshop was held in Santiago de Chile and Valparaíso and was mainly hosted and organized by the Universidad San Sebastián. The program included many interesting presentations by national and international researchers related to machine learning, virtual reality and the development of sensors and tools which can be applied within different fields of rehabilitation and related research. As part of the workshop, the researchers also visited various facilities, ranging from laboratories and workshops for speech therapy and audiology to a healthcare unit for physical rehabilitation and the research and technology transfer center AC3E of the Federico Santa María Technical University.
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- Visit at the AC3E research center, Valparaiso Photo: Sandra Rojas
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- The organisation team of the event Photo: Lukas Aspöck
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- Lukas during his presentation Photo: Rhoddy Viveros
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- Speech lab in AC3E center in Valparaiso Photo: Lukas Aspöck
Lukas contributed to the event by giving a 60-minute presentation with the topic “Virtual reality environments for research in acoustics and audiology”. The slides of this presentation are available here.
Many thanks to our former colleague Rhoddy Viveros for the organization and the invitation to this event. Thanks also to the rest of the organization team, which was led by Carla Contreras and also included Sandra Rojas, Matías Zañartu and Cristhian Mendoza. The event was funded by the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (International Linkage FOVI220126).
Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung 2023
Im Rahmen der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung 2023 in Saarbrücken fand am 5. Oktober 2023 ein Marktplatz aktueller Forschung statt, in der Methoden und Werkzeuge für die digitale Musikforschung präsentiert werden konnten. Im Zuge der Zusammenarbeit mit Prof. Stefan Morent von der Universität im Projekt „Sacred Sound – Sacred Space“ demonstrierten unsere Mitarbeitenden Carolin Breuer und Pascal Palenda die Möglichkeiten, Räume akustische zu simulieren und auralisieren, in virtuelle Räume hinzusingen oder zu musizieren, sowie Räume in der Virtuellen Realität mit Hilfe eines Head-Mounted-Displays interaktiv akustisch-visuell erlebbar zu machen.
Stand bei der Jahrestagung für Musikforschung. Foto: Martin Albrecht-Hohmaier
New publication on HRTFs in Journal of the Audio Engineering Society
We are happy to announce that the article “A magnitude-based parametric model predicting the audibility of HRTF variation” by Shaima’a Doma, Cosima Ermert, and Janina Fels has been recently published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (JAES) as part of the Special Issue on “Spatial Audio”. The study examines just noticeable differences in HRTFs with a focus on monaural cue changes. The probability of a listener detecting spectral changes is modelled as a function of three monaural error metrics, with linear model coefficients derived using Principal Component Analysis.
The open-access article can be viewed and downloaded in the AES E-Library.
Graphical abstract of the published paper.
Sacred Sound: The acoustic reconstruction of no longer existing spaces
The project Sacred Sound – Sacred Space, led by musicologist Prof. Stefan Morent of the University of Tübingen, deals with the acoustics of sacred spaces as they existed and were used many centuries ago. In cooperation with IHTA, this project uses simulations to reconstruct, for example, the acoustics of the abbey church of Cluny III in order to auralize the liturgical chants of the medieval monks. Cluny III existed between 1130 and 1790 and was the largest church in the world until the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Based on the room acoustic simulations, medieval choir chants were performed and recorded in IHTA’s laboratories by the ensemble Ordo Virtutum. During the recordings, the singers were presented with the reflections of the virtually reconstructed church space in real time. In further steps of the project these recordings will be analyzed musicologically in order to investigate the influence of the architecture on the musical performance.
Parts of the project were recently documented by the SWR in a radio (116 min.) and a TV report (20 min; both in German language).
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- Remnants of Cluny III (Foto: CC0, pxhere.com)
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- 3d model of cluny III. Black and dark grey parts show the still existing remnants of the church (Picture: Lukas Aspöck, CC-BY 4.0)
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- Ray Tracing simulation in the acoustic 3d model of Cluny III (Picture: Lukas Aspöck, CC-BY 4.0).
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- Simulated (and measured) reverberation times for the remnants and the full church (Picture: Lukas Aspöck, CC-BY 4.0).
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- Ensemble Ordo Virtutum during the recording session at the hemi anechoic chamber at the Institute (Picture: Lukas Aspöck, CC-BY 4.0).
Thanks for everyone at IHTA who supported this project. Thanks also to the Visual Computing Institute for helping out with the aixCAVE system and to the company Sennheiser for providing microphones for the recording sessions!
International Congress on Acoustics ICA 2022
The Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics looks back on a very enjoyable and successful 24th International Congress on Acoustics ICA 2022 in Gyeongju, South Korea. IHTA was present with a total of 10 delegates and actively contributed to the program with two theme organizers, five special session organizers, 10 oral presentations, and one plenary lecture. The conference was an excellent event to meet the international acoustic community in real life again.
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- Entrance of the congress venue (Foto: Janina Fels)
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- IHTA group picture with Alumnus Bruno Masiero (Foto: Janina Fels)
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- Plenary talk by Janina Fels (Foto: Jamilla Balint)
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- Janina Fels at her plenary talk (Foto: Cheol-Ho Jeong)
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- ICA-ASA Young Scientist Conference Attendance Grant for Cosima Ermert (Foto: ICA)
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- Poster and interactive IHTApark Demo (Foto: Josep Llorca-Bofi)
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- Presentation by Josep Llorca-Bofi (Foto: Josep Llorca-Bofi)
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- Presentation by Jonas Heck (Foto: Josep Llorca-Bofi)
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- Presentation by Christian Dreier (Foto: Josep Llorca-Bofi)
The full proceedings of the conference are available for download on the ICA 2022 website.
IHTA at the BauSIM conference in Weimar
From the 20th to the 22nd September 2022, the BauSIM conference took place. The scientific core topic of the conference is traditionally the energetic simulation in the building sector and offers an ideal discussion forum for experts from science and industry for mutual exchange. The conference is organized by the and IBSPA Germany-Austria, member of the International Building and Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA) This year’s conference introduced a new session on acoustic simulation topics, and our institute was present.
In particular, our Junior Principal Investigator Dr. Josep Llorca-Bofí, from the PAAD group was invited as key-note speaker, talking about The city – A machine for noise? Virtual acoustics in architectural design research. Together with our PhD student M. Sc. Jonas Heck and Professor Michael Vorländer, the following research paper was presented: 3D photogrammetry for auralization – An approach for geometry simplification and material categorization.
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- Key-note talk Dr. Josep Llorca-Bofí
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- Bauhaus-Universtät Weimar
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- BauSIM lecture hall
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- IHTApark demonstrator
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- Immersive audio and visuals
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- Portable research laboratory using head-mounted display and equalized headphones
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- Visit to the acoustic laboratory at the chair of Building Physics
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- Visit to the acoustic laboratory at the chair of Building Physics
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- Optic visualization of thermal air movement
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- Visit to the optics laboratory at the chair of Building Physics
Inter-noise 2022 in Glasgow
This year’s inter-noise conference took place from August 21st to 24th in Glasgow, Scotland. More than 1000 delegates participated in this conference and presented interesting research in the field of acoustics and noise. Highlights of the conference included key note talks by Lily Wang (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) on indoor acoustic conditions and by the Salford Group (Andy Moorhouse, Andy Elliott and Josh Meggitt) on virtual acoustic prototypes.
Four researchers of the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics travelled to the conference and presented the following research papers:
- Eli Abi Raad: Experimental setup for laser vibrometry measurements of the vibrating horn in Ultrasonic Metal Welding
- Lukas Aspöck: Differences between measured and simulated room impulse responses
- Christian Dreier: Vehicle pass-by noise auralization in a virtual urban environment
- Lara Stürenburg: Acoustic Measurements and Psychoacoustic Analyses of Ventilation Diffusers
The full conference proceedings are also available for download here.
The interesting scientific program was accompanied by an entertaining social program as well as various early career events, which helped many of the younger participants to connect with each other. The International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (i-ince) also supported young researchers by providing travel grants, one of which was received by Elie Abi Raad. Congratulations, Elie, to this grant.
Pictures from the conference including the grant ceremony can be found in the gallery below.
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- Impressions of the presentations
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- Impressions of the presentations
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- Impressions of the presentations
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- Travel grant ceremony Elie Abi Raad
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- All travel grant recipients
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- Entry to the social event of the conference
IHTA at the POSTER 2022 Conference
After a break of three years due to the pandemic, this year in May, the 26th International Student Conference on Electrical Engineering POSTER 2022 was held in Prague, Czech Republic. This annual event in Czech’s capital city is an excellent opportunity for undergraduate and postgraduate students to gain first experiences at an international conference and strengthens the relationship between CTU Prague and RWTH Aachen University.
Three Phd students of the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics presented scientific work in Prague:
- Anne Heimes: Virtual reality environments for soundscape research
- Carolin Reimers: Investigating the Auditory Selective Attention Switch in Virtual Reality
- Lukas Vollmer: Evaluating Spatial Audio for Hearing Aid Applications
We are happy to report that the work by Anne Heimes was selected by a jury as the best paper in the category Informatics and Cybernetics. Congratulations to Anne for this award!
Pictures of the event can be found on the conference’s website.
Early Career Presenter Award at the 182nd ASA Meeting
The 182nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) was held in Denver, Colorado, from 23- 27 May 2022. At the conference, our PhD student Simon Kersten was honored with the Early Career Presenter Award by the Computational Acoustics Technical Committee of the ASA for his presentation on “Influence of the Model Parameters for the Finite Element Simulation of Bone Conduction in the Human Head”.
In this work, the influence of the various material parameters that are to be determined for finite-element models of human heads in bone conduction research was illustrated using a simple ellipsoid model. This research is part of the CRC 1330 HAPPAA funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Congratulations to Simon for this award!
Euronoise 2021 – EAA e-Congress
EURONOISE 2021 has started today and of course IHTA is also represented with interesting talks!
Unfortunately it was not possible to meet in person on Madeira and we are faced with a nicely organized online event. You can find a list of all IHTA’s talks below (The time zone of the program is UTC/GMT+0, Lisbon time zone):
Monday, October 25th, 2021
- 15.40, Room PORTO MONIZ (room 5) – Investigating noise disturbance in open-plan offices using measurements of the room acoustics, and of the sound environment during occupancy – Manuj Yadav; Densil Cabrera; Jungsoo Kim; James Love; Jonothan Holmes; Janina Fels; Richard de Dear;[SS5]
Tuesday, October 26th, 2021
- 9.20, Room PORTO SANTO (room 3) – Challenges in interactive sound insulation auralization – Michael Vorländer;[SS17]
- 11.20, Room PORTO SANTO (room 3) – Voice support from acoustically retroreflective surfaces – Densil Cabrera; Jonothan Holmes1; Shuai Lu1; Mary Rapp1; Manuj Yadav; [SS22]
- 17.20, Room PORTO MONIZ (room 5) – Combined assessment of cognitive and physiological parameters in child-appropriate listening experiments – Karin Loh; Christoph Hoog Antink; Sophie Nolden; Janina Fels;[SS21]
Wednesday, October 27th, 2021
- 14:20, Room FUNCHAL (room 2) – On the Estimation of Directional Decay Times in Reverberation Rooms – Marco Berzborn; Jamilla Balint; Michael Vorländer;[SS9]
- 14:40, Room FUNCHAL (room 2) – Modeling the edge effect for inverse determination of porous absorbers using feed forward neural networks – Mark Müller-Giebeler; Michael Vorländer;[SS9]
- 15:20, Room PORTO MONIZ (room 5) – Eigenfrequency analysis of the vibrating horn in Ultrasonic Metal Welding – Elie Abi Raad; Jose Maria Uribe; Michael Vorländer;[GS29]
More information can be found here: http://www.spacustica.pt/euronoise2021/
BASH 2021 – Joint Conference on Binaural and Spatial Hearing
The 2nd joint conference on binaural and spatial hearing (BASH) was held on October 7th and 8th, 2021. The meeting took place virtually, featuring talks on behavior, modeling, physiology and virtual reality. On Friday, October 8th, Janina Fels and Carolin Reimers gave a presentation on a paradigm investigating auditory selective attention in a virtual classroom, which has been developed in the context of the project “Evaluating cognitive performance in classroom scenarios using audiovisual virtual reality – ECoClass-VR” . This project is part of the priority program SPP2236 – AUDICTIVE: Auditory Cognition in interactive virtual Environments funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – German Research Foundation. Next to exciting projects, AUDICTIVE also organizes workshops for the participating researchers, such as a visualization workshop offered by Martina Grigoleit, which has already been made use of during the BASH.
Annual Meeting of the Priority Program AUDICTIVE
On September 16th, 2021 we met online for our annual meeting of our priority program SPP2236 – AUDICTIVE (www.spp2236-audictive.de): Auditory Cognition in interactive virtual Environments funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – German Research Foundation.
The day was very inspiring and the basis for special interests groups and lab visits could be established! Special thanks go to our moderator Ellen Gürtler.
We are looking forward to the upcoming months full of exciting collaborations!
Screenshot of the Zoom Meeting
DAGA 2021 poster award
At the DAGA Acoustics Annual Conference 2021, one of the poster awards has been given to the work presented by Jonas Heck, Josep Llorca-Bofí and Michael Vorländer, with the title: Hearing Architecture and Seeing Soundscapes: Methodological Approach of Individual Vocabulary Profiling to Evaluate Audiovisual Perception.
Congratulations!
PAADtalks!
PAADtalks! are here: the interdisciplinary colloquium organized by the Person-focused Analysis of Architectural Design – PAAD group in collaboration with the Human Technolgy Center at the RWTH Aachen University. This series of academic lectures gathers humanities and technological approaches to architecture, and constructs collaboration networks for upcoming actions. There is no complete way to approach a person-focused analysis of architecture without an integral view. PAADtalks! spreads architectural research from the broad sense, beyond any reductionism or utopian pretension. More information through this email.
Lautenbach: The acoustical design process of a classical concert hall
June 16th 2023
Kahle: The Concert Hall – a machine for music? Or how to integrate acoustic design into architecture
June 3rd 2022
Lachenmayr: Applied room acoustics – How to build a concert hall
Jan 14th 2022
Chatterjee: The neuroaesthetics of architectural spaces
October 4th 2021
Kang: Designing soundscape in open public spaces: a framework and potentials
July 2nd 2021
Psarra: Contextual sensibility and influence in the architecture of Carlo Scarpa
May 21st 2021
Priority Program AUDICTIVE – Kick-Off-Meeting
Awesome day (on April 27, 2021) with the virtual Kick-Off-Meeting from the priority program SPP2236-AUDICTIVE: Auditory Cognition in interactive virtual Environments funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Group picture of the AUDICTIVE participants – Zoom
We are very happy that we had a very interactive and successful meeting with great collaborators and partners within AUDICTIVE. Special thanks go to our moderator Ellen Gürtler and the graphic recorder Martina Grigoleit, who made this day very inspiring and extraordinary.
Graphic Recording of the Meeting by Martina Grigoleit
W3 Lehrstuhl für Hörtechnik und Akustik
Am 13. November 2020 wurde von Rektor der RWTH, Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Ulrich Rüdiger, die Urkunde zur Ernennung als W3-Professorin an Prof. Dr.-Ing. Janina Fels überreicht. Damit wird das bisher von ihr geleitete Lehr- und Forschungsgebiet für Medizinische Akustik zum Lehrstuhl für Hörtechnik und Akustik (Chair for Hearing Technology and Acoustics).
Das gesamte Institut für Technische Akustik freut sich über diese Entwicklung und gratuliert sehr herzlich.
PAAD research group emerges at the Institute of Technical Acoustics
The Person-focused Analysis of Architectural Design – PAAD group will be born in January 2021, integrated in the Institute of Technical Acoustics at RWTH Aachen University. The group is constituted by Dr. Josep Llorca-Bofí and one full-time doctoral candidate and is funded for a period of four years by the RWTH Junior Principal Investigator Fellowship.
The visionary approach is to offer new knowledge about architect’s design implications on people’s perception, by passing over the specific languages of other research areas, such as acoustics.
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- Cross-disciplinary Spatial Analysis
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- Categorization of the Architectural Design
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- Visualization and Auralization tools
Akustik-Forschung- Aachen Acoustics Colloquium 2023 Aspöck, Lukas
- Research trip to Santiago de Chile Fels, Janina