• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.35 no.5
• /
• pp.859-868
• /
• 2013

The active noise control (ANC) technique attenuates acoustic noise in a flexible and effective way. Traditional ANC design aims to minimize the residual noise energy, which is indiscriminative in the frequency domain. However, human hearing perception exhibits selective sensitivity for different frequency ranges. In this paper, we aim to improve the noise attenuation performance in perceptual perspective by incorporating noise weighting into ANC design. We also introduce psychoacoustic analysis to evaluate the sound quality of the residual noise by using a predictive pleasantness model, which combines four psychoacoustic parameters: loudness, sharpness, roughness, and tonality. Simulations on synthetic random noise and realistic noise show that our method improves the sound quality and that ITU-R 468 noise weighting even performs better than A-weighting.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
• /
• 2003.05a
• /
• pp.617-621
• /
• 2003

Existing loudness models are specified only to diotic sounds in spite of the fact that normal human beings hear dichotic sounds. Approximately, the arithmetic mean of loudness values of both ear signals has been suggested for the resultant perceived loudness. In this study, the dependence of overall loudness perception on the interaural level differences was investigated by the subjective tests. It was found that the larger the interaural level difference, the louder the perception than the mean of calculated loudness values at both ears and the lower the critical band rate or the reference level, the louder the perception than the mean value. A modified loudness model was proposed to he applicable to dichotic sounds by using the equivalent diotic levels.

• Speech Sciences
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.167-179
• /
• 1999

The hearing mechanism is a complicated system. Sound is generated by a source that sends out air pressure or power. The pressure or power makes the sound waves. These waves reach the eardrum, or tympanic membrane, which vibrates at a rate and magnitude proportional to the nature of the sound waves. The tympanic membrane transforms this vibration into the mechanical energy in the middle ear, which in turn converts it to the hydraulic energy in the fluid of the inner ear. The hydraulic energy stimulates the sensory cells of the inner ear which send neuroelectrical impulses to the central auditory nervous system. The passive perception of auditory information starts just here. The listener gives attention to the speech sound, differentiates the sound from background noise, and integrates his experience with similar sounds. The listener then puts all of these aspects of audition into the context of the moment to identify the nature of sound. This has a major role in human communication. This paper provides an overview of the nature and characteristics of sound, the structure and function of the auditory system, and the way in which sound is processed by the auditory system.

• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.17-33
• /
• 2000

Purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation between Sung-Jung' concept of Sasang Constitutional Medicine and Brain. So, After studying the meaning of Sung-Jung' concept of Sasang Constitutional Medicine, I made a comparative study through the structure, function, development of Brain. The conclusions were as follows. 1. Human's brain acts a rational, control his actions. and It manage human body's physiology and pathology. and It perceive his surroundings, express his emotion through comprehension, synthesis, judgement about information from various fields. and It's abnormality bring about a spiritual, bodily injury. Therefore, human's brain have many correlation with Sung-Jung' concept of Sasang Constitutional Medicine. 2. Neocortex' function have many correlation with Sung' concept of Hearing-Sight-Smell-Taste (聽視嗅味=sensation=a highly mental capacity) through Ear-Eye-Nose-Mouse(耳目鼻?). 3. Limbic-system'function have many correlation with Jung' concept of Sorrow-Anger-Pleasure-Joy(哀怒喜榮=emotion) through Lung-Spleen-Liver-Kidney(肺脾肝腎) 4. Brain-stem' function have many correlation with vitalistic concept through Qui of Sorrow - Anger - Pleasure - Joy(哀怒喜樂之氣)' rise and fall. 5. Relation of emotions and diseases through Limbic system and Autonomic nervous system have many correlation with relation of Sung-Jung and diseases of Sasang Constitutional Medicine 6. Left-hemisphere' function that has superior power of verbal, analysis, logicality, consideration have many correlation with tendency of Soeumin and Taeumin. and Right-hemisphere' function that has superior power of emotion, non-verbal, imagination, spatial perception have many correlation with tendency of Soyangin and Taeyangin.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
• /
• v.43 no.5 s.311
• /
• pp.79-87
• /
• 2006

In this study, we evaluated the performance of a companding strategy as a preprocessing for speech enhancement and noise reduction. The proposed algorithm is based on two tone suppression that is human's hearing characteristics. This algorithm enhances spectral peak of speech signal and reduces background noise, however it has tradeoff characteristics between speech distortion and noise reduction due to limited channel number and nonlinear block. Therefore, we designed two different companding structures that have relative characteristics of noise reduction and speech distortion and found suitable companding structures by difference of individual speech perception ability in noise environment. Thus we proposed speech perception enhancement of cochlear implant user in noise environment with low SNR. The performance of the proposed algorithm was evaluated through 5 normal hearing listeners using noise band simulation. Improvement of speech perception was observed for all subjects and each subject preferred the different type of companding structure.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.18B no.6
• /
• pp.333-340
• /
• 2011

The Human-Computer Interaction(HCI) is a study of the method for interaction between human and computers that merges the ergonomics and the information technology. The intelligent space, which is a part of the HCI, is an important area to provide effective user interface for the disabled, who are alienated from the information-oriented society. In the intelligent space for the disabled, the method supporting information depends on types of disability. In this paper, we only support the hearing-impaired. It is material to the gaze direction detection method because it is very efficient information provide method to present information on gazing direction point, except for the information provide location perception method through directly contact with the hearing-impaired. We proposed the gaze direction detection method must be necessary in order to provide the residence life application to the hearing-impaired like this. The proposed method detects the region of the user from multi-view camera images, generates candidates for directions of gaze for horizontal and vertical from each camera, and calculates the gaze direction of the user through the comparison with the size of each candidate. In experimental results, the proposed method showed high detection rate with gaze direction and foot sensing rate with user's position, and showed the performance possibility of the scenario for the disabled.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.19 no.7
• /
• pp.28-33
• /
• 2000

For efficient quantization of speech representation, it is common to incorporate Perceptual characteristics of human hearing. However, the focus has been confined only to the magnitude information of speech, and little attention has been paid to phase information. This paper presents a novel approach, termed perceptually irrelevant phase elimination (PIPE), to find out irrelevant phase information of acoustic signals in terms of perception. The proposed method, which is based on the observation that the relative phase relationship within a critical band is perceptually important, is derived not only for stationary Fourier signal but also for harmonic signal. The proposed method is incorporated into the analysis/synthesis system based on harmonic representation of speech, and subjective test results demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed method.

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.39 no.6
• /
• pp.832-840
• /
• 2017

Recently, deep recurrent neural networks have achieved great success in various machine learning tasks, and have also been applied for sound event detection. The detection of temporally overlapping sound events in realistic environments is much more challenging than in monophonic detection problems. In this paper, we present an approach to improve the accuracy of polyphonic sound event detection in multichannel audio based on gated recurrent neural networks in combination with auditory spectral features. In the proposed method, human hearing perception-based spatial and spectral-domain noise-reduced harmonic features are extracted from multichannel audio and used as high-resolution spectral inputs to train gated recurrent neural networks. This provides a fast and stable convergence rate compared to long short-term memory recurrent neural networks. Our evaluation reveals that the proposed method outperforms the conventional approaches.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
• /
• v.16 no.9 s.114
• /
• pp.897-903
• /
• 2006

The reduction of the vehicle interior noise has been the main interest of noise and vibration harshness (NVH) engineers. The driver's perception on the vehicle noise is affected largely by psychoacoustic characteristic of the noise as well as the SPL. In particular, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system sound among the vehicle interior noise has been reflected sensitively in psychoacoustics view point. Even though the HVAC noise is not louder than overall noise level, it clearly affects subjective perception to drivers in the way of making to be nervous or annoyed. Therefore, these days a vehicle engineer takes aim at developing sound quality as well as reduction of noise. In this paper, we acquired noises in the HVAC from many vehicles. Through the objective and subjective sound quality (SQ) evaluation with acquiring noises recorded by the vehicle HVAC system, the simple and multiple regression models were obtained for the subjective evaluation 'Pleasant' using the semantic differential method (SDM). The regression procedure also allows you to produce diagnostic statistics to evaluate the regression estimates including appropriation and accuracy. Furthermore, the neural network (NN) model were obtained using three inputs(loudness, sharpness and roughness) of the SQ metrics and one output(subjective 'Pleasant'). Because human's perception is very complex and hard to estimate their pattern, we used NN model. The estimated models were compared with correlations between output indexes of SQ and hearing test results for verification data 'Pleasant'. As a result of application of the SQ indexes, the NN model was shown with the largest correlation of SQ indexes and we found possibilities to predict the SQ metrics.

• Journal of Audiology & Otology
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.65-71
• /
• 2021

Background and Objectives: In masking level difference (MLD), the masked detection threshold for a signal is determined as a function of the relative interaural differences between the signal and the masker. Study 1 analyzed the results of school-aged children with good school performance in the MLD test, and study 2 compared their results with those of a group of children with poor academic performance. Subjects and Methods: Study 1 was conducted with 47 school-aged children with good academic performance (GI) and study 2 was carried out with 32 school-aged children with poor academic performance (GII). The inclusion criteria adopted for both studies were hearing thresholds within normal limits in basic audiological evaluation. Study 1 also considered normal performance in the central auditory processing test battery and absence of auditory complaints and/or of attention, language or speech issues. The MLD test was administered with a pure pulsatile tone of 500 Hz, in a binaural mode and intensity of 50 dBSL, using a CD player and audiometer. Results: In study 1, no significant correlation was observed, considering the influence of the variables age and sex in relation to the results obtained in homophase (SoNo), antiphase (SπNo) and MLD threshold conditions. The final mean MLD threshold was 13.66 dB. In study 2, the variables did not influence the test performance either. There was a significant difference between test results in SπNo conditions of the two groups, while no differences were found both in SoNo conditions and the final result of MLD. Conclusions: In study 1, the cut-off criterion of school-aged children in the MLD test was 9.3 dB. The variables (sex and age) did not interfere with the MLD results. In study 2, school performance did not differ in the MLD results. GII group showed inferior results than GI group, only in SπNo condition.