Department of Information and Communications Engineering

Communication acoustics: spatial sound and psychoacoustics

Capturing, transmission, reproduction, synthesis, and perception of sound - these are the fields that interest us in the communication acoustics team
Aalto University / Communication acoustics / photo: Ville Pulkki

Our projects are gathered around spatial sound. We have developed, and are still developing, new reproduction methods for spatial sound taking into account the time-frequency-space resolution of the human hearing. These methods are applicable to multi-channel loudspeaker layouts, headphones, and binaural hearing aids. Additionally, we are currently developing new types of non-linear beam-forming algorithms.

To enable the research of perceptually optimised spatial audio methods, we have to know more about the perceptual spatial hearing mechanisms of humans. We study these mechanisms with listening tests and model the brain mechanism devoted to spatial auditory perception. In this context, we are very interested in the perception of spatially complex sound scenes and the binaural perception of timbre.

Furthermore, we research acoustical measurement techniques for spatial sound. Here, the head-related acoustics are of vital importance in spatial hearing research, and we work on new modelling and measurement tools to understand the acoustical effects near the head and in the ear canals.

For this purpose, we must also inspect proper acoustical sources in measurements. Our current topic is the suitability of laser-induced shock waves as massless point sources. They can be applied to acoustical room measurements, and the technique is currently in active development.

European Union flag

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 240453. The starting independent research project Technologies and Psychophysics of Spatial Sound (TEPESS) funded by European Research Council runs within the Communication acoustics team.

Latest publications

Investigating sound-field reproduction methods as perceived by bilateral hearing aid users and normal-hearing listeners

Janani Fernandez, Leo McCormack, Petteri Hyvärinen, Abigail Anne Kressner 2024 Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Compression of Higher-Order Ambisonic Signals using Directional Audio Coding

Christoph Hold, Ville Pulkki, Archontis Politis, Leo McCormack 2024 IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio Speech and Language Processing

Underwater soundfield visualisation using directionally constrained acoustic parameters

Vasileios Bountourakis, Ville Pulkki 2023 The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Using optimal mass transport in bearing-time records for underwater target localization and tracking

Vasileios Bountourakis, Filip Elvander, Ville Pulkki 2023 Underwater Acoustic Conference and Exhibition Series

Location as Supervision for Weakly Supervised Multi-Channel Source Separation of Machine Sounds

Ricardo Falcon-Perez, Gordon Wichern, Francois G. Germain, Jonathan Le Roux 2023 Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, WASPAA 2023

Dataset and analysis of acoustic intensity vector measurements around an upscaled ear model

Aaron Geldert, Marton Marschall, Ville Pulkki 2023 AES Europe 2023

Common-slope modeling of late reverberation

Georg Gotz, Sebastian J. Schlecht, Ville Pulkki 2023 IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio Speech and Language Processing

Magnitude-Least-Squares Binaural Ambisonic Rendering with Phase Continuation

Christoph Hold, Nils Meyer-Kahlen, Ville Pulkki 2023

Optimizing Higher-Order Directional Audio Coding with Adaptive Mixing and Energy Matching for Ambisonic Compression and Upmixing

Christoph Hold, Leo McCormack, Archontis Politis, Ville Pulkki 2023 Proceedings of the 2023 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, WASPAA 2023

Repeated knockout tournaments for efficient screening of the top-ranking sample

Petteri Hyvärinen, Nils Meyer-Kahlen 2023 Audio Engineering Society Convention 155
More information on our research in the Aalto research portal.
Research portal
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