Cheol-Ho Jeong

Equal autophonic level curves under different room acoustics conditions

The indirect auditory feedback from ones own voice arises from sound reflections at the room boundaries or from sound reinforcement systems. The relative variations of indirect auditory feedback are quantified through room acoustic parameters such as the room gain and the voice support, rather than the reverberation time. Fourteen subjects matched the loudness level of their own voice (the autophonic level) to that of a constant and external reference sound, under different synthesized room acoustics conditions. The matching voice levels are used to build a set of equal autophonic level curves. These curves give an indication of the amount of variation in voice level induced by the acoustic environment as a consequence of the sidetone compensation or Lombard effect. In the range of typical rooms for speech, the variations in overall voice level that result in a constant autophonic level are on the order of 2 dB, and more than 3 dB in the 4 kHz octave band. By comparison of these curves with previous studies, it is shown that talkers use acoustic cues other than loudness to adjust their voices when speaking in different rooms.

Room acoustic transition time based on reflection overlap

A transition time is defined based on the temporal overlap of reflected pulses in room impulse responses. Assuming specular reflections only, the temporal distance between adjacent reflections, which is proportional to the volume of a room, is compared with the characteristic width of a pulse at time t, which is mainly controlled by the absorption characteristics of the boundary surfaces of the room. Scattering, diffuse reflections, and diffraction, which facilitate the overlapping process, have not been taken into account. Measured impulse responses show that the transition occurs earlier in a room with nonuniform absorption and furniture than in a room that satisfies the underlying assumptions.

Absorption and impedance boundary conditions for phased geometrical-acoustics methods

Defining accurate acoustical boundary conditions is of crucial importance for room acoustic simulations. In predicting sound fields using phased geometrical acoustics methods, both absorption coefficients and surface impedances of the boundary surfaces can be used, but no guideline has been developed on which boundary condition produces accurate results. In this study, various boundary conditions in terms of normal, random, and field incidence absorption coefficients and normal incidence surface impedance are used in a phased beam tracing model, and the simulated results are validated with boundary element solutions. Two rectangular rooms with uniform and non-uniform absorption distributions are tested. Effects of the neglect of reflection phase shift are also investigated. It is concluded that the impedance, random incidence, and field incidence absorption boundary conditions produce reasonable results with some exceptions at low frequencies for acoustically soft materials.

Converting Sabine absorption coefficients to random incidence absorption coefficients.

Absorption coefficients measured by the chamber method are referred to as Sabine absorption coefficients, which sometimes exceed unity due to the finite size of a sample and non-uniform intensity in the reverberation chambers under test. In this study, conversion methods from Sabine absorption coefficients to random incidence absorption coefficients are proposed. The overestimations of the Sabine absorption coefficient are investigated theoretically based on Mikis model for porous absorbers backed by a rigid wall or an air cavity, resulting in conversion factors. Additionally, three optimizations are suggested: An optimization method for the surface impedances for locally reacting absorbers, the flow resistivity for extendedly reacting absorbers, and the flow resistance for fabrics. With four porous type absorbers, the conversion methods are validated. For absorbers backed by a rigid wall, the surface impedance optimization produces the best results, while the flow resistivity optimization also yields reasonable results. The flow resistivity and flow resistance optimization for extendedly reacting absorbers are also found to be successful. However, the theoretical conversion factors based on Mikis model do not guarantee reliable estimations, particularly at frequencies below 250 Hz and beyond 2500 Hz.

Combination of acoustical radiosity and the image source method.

A combined model for room acoustic predictions is developed, aiming to treat both diffuse and specular reflections in a unified way. Two established methods are incorporated: acoustical radiosity, accounting for the diffuse part, and the image source method, accounting for the specular part. The model is based on conservation of acoustical energy. Losses are taken into account by the energy absorption coefficient, and the diffuse reflections are controlled via the scattering coefficient, which defines the portion of energy that has been diffusely reflected. The way the model is formulated allows for a dynamic control of the image source production, so that no fixed maximum reflection order is required. The model is optimized for energy impulse response predictions in arbitrary polyhedral rooms. The predictions are validated by comparison with published measured data for a real music studio hall. The proposed model turns out to be promising for acoustic predictions providing a high level of detail and accuracy.

Non-uniform sound intensity distributions when measuring absorption coefficients in reverberation chambers using a phased beam tracing

Measured absorption coefficients in reverberation chambers often differ from theoretical random incidence absorption coefficients, because ideal assumptions for the theoretical random incidence absorption coefficient are not fulfilled during measurements in actual reverberation chambers. Therefore sound intensity distributions on absorber under measurement conditions have been simulated using a phased beam tracing, and used as correction functions for reducing discrepancies between the measured and theoretical absorption coefficients. Two reverberation rooms were investigated by assuming that a test specimen was attached to a vertical surface and the floor. The frequency-dependent sound intensity distributions on absorbers were found to be affected by the reverberation chamber geometry and dimensions, the absorption capability of the specimen, and the placement of the specimen. High frequency intensity distributions above 1 kHz were similar for all studied cases, but some variations in low frequency intensity distributions were observed. If the non-uniform intensity distribution and a finite size effect are taken into account for correcting the theoretical absorption coefficients, a good agreement is found between corrected and measured statistical absorption coefficients. The non-uniform sound intensity can account for the discrepancy at high frequencies.

Thresholds for the slope ratio in determining transition time and quantifying diffuser performance in situ

This study is concerned with an objective measure called the slope ratio that can detect acoustic defects due to unexpected pressure increases such as strong reflections and coincidental constructive interference. The slope ratio is the ratio of the instantaneous slope to the mean slope in a decay curve. The slope ratio was suggested for determining the room acoustic transition time experimentally, but its threshold criteria have not been thoroughly investigated. The thresholds for the slope ratio, particularly for applications such as determining the room acoustic transition time and quantifying in situ diffuseness, are examined for various room impulse responses. For the tested rooms, a slope ratio threshold of 11 gives the most consistent and systematic results.

A Correction of Random Incidence Absorption Coefficients for the Angular Distribution of Acoustic Energy under Measurement Conditions

Most acoustic measurements are based on an assumption of ideal conditions. One such ideal condition is a diffuse and reverberant field. In practice, a perfectly diffuse sound field cannot be achieved in a reverberation chamber. Uneven incident energy density under measurement conditions can cause discrepancies between the measured value and the theoretical random incidence absorption coefficient. Therefore the angular distribution of the incident acoustic energy onto an absorber sample should be taken into account. The angular distribution of the incident energy density was simulated using the beam tracing method for various room shapes and source positions. The averaged angular distribution is found to be similar to a Gaussian distribution. As a result, an angle-weighted absorption coefficient was proposed by considering the angular energy distribution to improve the agreement between the theoretical absorption coefficient and the reverberation room measurement. The angle-weighted absorption coefficient, together with the size correction, agrees satisfactorily with the measured absorption data by the reverberation chamber method. At high frequencies and for large samples, the averaged weighting corresponds well with the measurement, whereas at low frequencies and for small panels, the relatively flat distribution agrees better.

Effects of source and receiver locations in predicting room transfer functions by a phased beam tracing method

The accuracy of a phased beam tracing method in predicting transfer functions is investigated with a special focus on the positions of the source and receiver. Simulated transfer functions for various source-receiver pairs using the phased beam tracing method were compared with analytical Greens functions and boundary element solutions up to the Schroeder frequency in simple rectangular rooms with different aspect ratios and absorptions. Only specular reflections were assumed and diffraction was neglected. Three types of error definitions were used: average error level over a narrow band spectrum, average error level over a 1/3 octave band spectrum, and dissimilarity measure. The narrow band error and dissimilarity increased with the source-to-receiver distance but converged to a certain value as the reverberant field became dominant. The 1/3 octave band error was found to be less dependent on the source-receiver distance. The errors are increased as the aspect ratio becomes more disproportionate. By changing the wall absorption from 0.2 to 0.8 for a rectangular room, the average narrow and 1/3 octave band error are deviated by around 1.5 dB. A realistic non-uniform distribution of the absorption increases the error, which might be ascribed to wave phenomena evoked by the impedance-discontinuous boundary.

Reproducibility of The Random Incidence Absorption Coefficient Converted From the Sabine Absorption Coefficient.

Sabine Absorption Coefficient. DTU Orbit (30/12/2018) Reproducibility of The Random Incidence Absorption Coefficient Converted From the Sabine Absorption Coefficient. Absorption coefficients measured in reverberation chambers, Sabine absorption coefficients, suffer from two major problems. Firstly, they sometimes exceed unity. Secondly, the reproducibility of the Sabine absorption coefficients is quite poor, meaning that the Sabine absorption coefficients vary largely depending on the test room. Several conversion methods for porous absorbers from the Sabine absorption coefficient to the random incidence absorption coefficient were suggested by considering the finite size of a test specimen and non-uniformly incident energy onto the specimen, which turned out to be successful in terms of the trueness. However, the reproducibility of the converted random incidence absorption coefficients has not been investigated. The present study mainly focuses on the reproducibility of the random incidence absorption coefficients that are converted from the Sabine absorption coefficients measured in 13 different chambers in a recent round-robin test, revealing that the reproducibility of the converted random incidence absorption coefficient is improved significantly compared to that of the Sabine absorption coefficient. Between the two optimization methods used, the flow resistivity optimization outperforms the surface impedance optimization in terms of the reproducibility.