| EPSRC Reference: |
GR/T06247/01 |
| Title: |
Identification of continua between natural sounds in real-room listening conditions |
| Principal Investigator: |
Watkins, Dr AJ |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Department: |
Sch of Psychology and Clinical Lang Sci |
| Organisation: |
University of Reading |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research (Pre-FEC) |
| Starts: |
01 November 2004 |
Ends: |
31 October 2007 |
Value (£): |
207,677
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Vision & Senses - ICT appl. |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
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Artificial devices that listen (such as speech recognizers) or that try and help others to listen (such as signal-processing hearing aids) do not work very well for sounds distorted by the reverberation present in real rooms, even though these conditions don't trouble unimpaired, human listeners. A preliminary experiment indicates that this is an achievement of our perceptual systems that is at least in some part due to a 'smart' compensation for rooms' distorting effects on sounds. This project asks how this perceptual mechanism works. This will entail a series of room-acoustic measurements to obtain binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs) that capture perceptually relevant information about room conditions. These BRIRs will then be applied to the speech and other sounds used for perceptual experiments so that listeners wearing headphones experience sounds as they are heard in the room where the BRIR was measured. These perceptual experiments will then test a series of hypotheses about the compensation mechanism, asking about the influences of different room-conditions, whether the mechanism is peripheral or central, whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic, and about the influences of context using different acoustic conditions in speech and other sounds that surround a test item.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.rdg.ac.uk |