Hearing in Rooms [click left for another topic]
Acoustically, the effects of echoes are dramatic; however, perceptually, the auditory system copes with echoes quite well. For instance, if you were to read a textbook describing how the brain computes source location, the process seems straightforward: differences in the signals reaching the ears allow the listener to determine left-right direction while spectral content is used to determine the up-down, front-back direction. However, in rooms, spatial auditory cues are dramatically distorted by echoes from walls and other surfaces. We are using a combination of acoustical, behavioral, physiological, and computational approaches to understand how the auditory system copes with the presence of reverberation when determining both where a source is located and what its content is. This work is important for understanding the neural computations underlying robust perception in everyday settings.
Lee, AKC and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008). “Effects of reverberant spatial cues on attention-dependent object formation,” Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 9, 150-160.
Kopco, N, V Best, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2007). “Simulating distance cues in virtual reverberant environments,” Proceedings of the International Congress on Acoustics, Madrid, Spain, 2-7 September 2007.
Devore, S, A Ihlefeld, BG Shinn-Cunningham, and B Delgutte (2007). “Neural and behavioral sensitivies to azimuth degrade with distance in reverberant environments,” in Hearing-From Sensory Processing to Perception, B Kollmeier, G Klump, V Hohmann, U Langemann, M Mauermann, S Uppenkamp, and J Verhey (eds), Springer-Verlag, 505-516.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG, N Kopco, and T Martin (2005). "Localizing nearby sound sources in a classroom: Binaural room impulse responses”, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,, 117, 3100-3115.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG and K Kawakyu (2003). “Neural representation of source direction in reverberant space," Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, New Pfaltz, NY, October 2003, 79-82.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG and S Ram (2003). “Identifying where you are in room: Sensitivity to room acoustics,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display, Boston, MA, 6-9 July, 21-24.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2003). “Acoustics and perception of sound in everyday environments,” in Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Spatial Media, Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, March 2003, 31-40.
Kopco, N and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2002). “Auditory localization in rooms: Acoustic analysis and behavior,” in Proceedings of the 32nd International Acoustical Conference - EAA Symposium, Zvolen, Slovakia, 10-12 September 2002, 109-112.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2002). “Speech intelligibility, spatial unmasking, and realism in reverberant spatial auditory displays,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display, 2-5 July 2002, 183-186.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG, JG Desloge, and N Kopco (2001). “Empirical and modeled acoustic transfer functions in a simple room: Effects of distance and direction,” in Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, New Pfaltz, NY, 19-24 October 2001, 419-423.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2001). “Localizing sound in rooms,” in Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH and Eurographics Campfire: Acoustic Rendering for Virtual Environments, Snowbird, Utah, 26-29 May 2001, 17-22.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2001). “Creating three dimensions in virtual auditory displays,” in Usability Evaluation and Interface Design: Cognitive Engineering, Intelligent Agents and Virtual Reality, MJ Smith, G Salvendy, D Harris, and RJ Koubek (eds.), New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaurm, 604-608.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2000). “Distance cues for virtual auditory space,” Proceedings of the IEEE 2000 International Symposium on Multimedia Information Processing, Sydney, Australia, 13-15 December, 2000, 227-230.
Shinn-Cunningham, BG (2000). “Learning reverberation: Considerations for spatial auditory displays,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display, Atlanta, GA, 2-5 April 2000, 126-134.