Federico Avanzini

• PhD in Information Engineering
• Professor (Associate) at University of Milan

This work presents PAN-AR, a dataset of spatial room impulse responses (SRIRs) encoded in the higher-order Ambisonics (HOA) format. The dataset encompasses measurements obtained in four distinct environments: a printer room, a meeting room, a classroom, and an underground parking area. The SRIRs have been recorded for different configurations of th...

Scattering Delay Networks (SDNs) are an interesting approach to artificial reverberation, with parameters tied to the room's physical properties and the computational efficiency of delay networks. This paper presents a highly-parametrized and real-time plugin of an SDN. The SDN plugin allows for interactive room auralization, enabling users to modi...

Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) are essential for spatial audio rendering. However, to provide a proper individual experience, the HRTF should be compliant with the anatomical traits of the listener. Therefore, estimating the individual HRTF based on anthropometric features is a widespread and promising approach. In this work, we propose an...

Musical expression significantly impacts individual development, enriching cognitive, emotional, and social capacities. This influence is particularly profound in young individuals with cognitive or physical impairments. To address this, we devised an ecosystem of software tools, paired with specially designed hardware devices, such as an eye track...

In immersive Audio Augmented Reality, a virtual sound source should be indistinguishable from the existing real ones. This property can be evaluated with the co-immersion criterion, which encompasses scenes constituted by arbitrary configurations of real and virtual objects. Thus, we introduce the term Audio Augmented Virtuality (AAV) to describe a...

People with blindness or severe low vision access mobile devices using screen readers. However, noisy environments can impair screen reader intelligibility. During mobility, this could disorient or even endanger the user. To address this issue, we propose three screen reader speech compensation techniques based on environmental noise: speech rate s...

This chapter analyzes the birth and evolution of educational technologies for music learning, from the origins of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in the late 1950s to the present times. While following the main advances in educational technology in general, the main focus is on the history of the various approaches to music education: from the...

In this chapter, frameworks and tools useful to organize the complex world of technology-mediated music learning are analyzed. Focusing mainly on the TPACK framework, where pedagogy, technology, and content information complement each other, an organization of knowledge in the musical domain is also proposed. The analysis of the three artistic proc...

In this chapter, we propose a concrete application of the TDMLR, described in Chap. 4. We present an extensive database of publications on digital materials aimed at music education, as well as a web platform that we have designed, implemented, and publicly released, that allows users to explore and navigate the publication database through the dim...

This final chapter addresses the connections between academic research on technology-assisted learning and the actual educational practice in the classroom. First, the chapter analyzes the main causes hindering a productive dialogue between teachers and researchers, which may be attributed to both parts. Then, some proposals are formulated to make...

This chapter introduces the most relevant learning theories and their implications for the design of music education applications. Understanding learning theories means analyzing in depth the processes that lead to obtaining information and deriving meaning from it. There are important relationships between the goals to be achieved and the applicat...

Previous chapters have reviewed the state of the art in digital music education, in terms of available technologies and their relation with learning theories, as well as conceptual frameworks for organizing technology-mediated learning. Based on this discussion, in this chapter, we propose a Taxonomy for Digital Music Learning Resources (TDMLR) aim...

Humans estimate sound-source directions by combining prior beliefs with sensory evidence. Prior beliefs represent statistical knowledge about the environment, and the sensory evidence consists of auditory features such as interaural disparities and monaural spectral shapes. Models of directional sound localization often impose constraints on the co...

This paper aims to highlight how a technologically augmented approach can help developing tonal harmony awareness in young learners. The proposal is rooted in previous experiences conducted by the same research group and dealing, on one side, with the embodiment of music concepts, and, on the other, with a reenactment of the same activities in the...

Human listeners estimate the spatial direction of a sound source from multiple auditory features and prior information on the sound direction. In this work, we describe a model of directional localization of a broadband and stationary sound source presented in an anechoic environment to a static listener. The model is based on Bayesian inference an...

This chapter addresses the first building block of sonic interactions in virtual environments, i.e., the modeling and synthesis of sound sources. Our main focus is on procedural approaches, which strive to gain recognition in commercial applications and in the overall sound design workflow, firmly grounded in the use of samples and event-based logi...

The matching of reverberation features between real sound sources and virtual ones is a key task in Audio Augmented Reality. An adequate matching provides a proper auditory immersion to the user. In this paper, we propose a method for reverb matching. The method automatically optimizes the parameters of an artificial reverberator to match a target...

This study focuses on the perception of music performances when contextual factors, such as room acoustics and instrument, change. We propose to distinguish the concept of "performance" from the one of "interpretation", which expresses the "artistic intention". Towards assessing this distinction, we carried out an experimental evaluation where 91 s...

This paper presents an Automatic Music Transcription system that incorporates context-related information. Motivated by the state-of-art psychological research, we propose a methodology boosting the accuracy of AMT systems by modeling the adaptations that performers apply to successfully convey their interpretation in any acoustical context. In thi...

This study focuses on the perception of music performances when contextual factors, such as room acoustics and instrument, change. We propose to distinguish the concept of "performance" from the one of "interpretation", which expresses the "artistic intention". Towards assessing this distinction, we carried out an experimental evaluation where 91 s...

Obstacle avoidance is a major challenge during independent mobility for blind or visually impaired (BVI) people. Typically, BVI people can only perceive obstacles at a short distance (about 1 m, in case they are using the white cane), and some obstacles are hard to detect (e.g . , those elevated from the ground), or should not be hit by the white c...

A Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is a hardware and/or software device aiming to ease those operations required for music production, such as arranging, recording, editing, mixing, and, more in general, modifying sounds creatively. A peculiarity of a DAW environment is that most of the work is highly parallelizable, since the basic architecture of...

In the field of 3D audio, the use of Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) compliant to the subject anatomical traits is crucial to guarantee a proper individual experience. This work proposes an HRTF individualization method based on anthropometric features automatically extracted from 3D head meshes. The method aims at a fully automated process...

Audio-to-score alignment (A2SA) is a multimodal task consisting in the alignment of audio signals to music scores. Recent literature confirms the benefits of Automatic Music Transcription (AMT) for A2SA at the frame-level. In this work, we aim to elaborate on the exploitation of AMT Deep Learning (DL) models for achieving alignment at the note-leve...

This paper introduces a shoebox room simulator able to systematically generate synthetic datasets of binaural room impulse responses (BRIRs) given an arbitrary set of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs). The evaluation of machine hearing algorithms frequently requires BRIR datasets in order to simulate the acoustics of any environment. However,...

In cognitive sciences, Bayesian inference has been effectively applied to describe various aspects of perceptual decision making. In the field of spatial hearing, while most of the sound localization models rely on deterministic methods to predict the perceived directional estimates, few attempts have been made to represent the human sound localiza...

This paper investigates the use of computer-based technologies applied to early learning of tonal music harmony, a topic often considered too abstract and difficult for young students or amateurs. A web-based platform is described, aimed at fostering and assessing harmonic awareness in children by leveraging on chord perception, gestural interactio...

This paper focuses on music and music-related cultural heritage typically preserved by opera houses, starting from the experience achieved during the long-lasting collaboration between La Scala theater and the Laboratory of Music Informatics of the University of Milan. First, we will mention the most significant results achieved by the project in t...

Presentation slides of the conference proceeding: Predicting Directional Sound-Localization of human listeners in both Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions

Measuring and understanding spatial hearing is a fundamental step to create effective virtual auditory displays (VADs). The evaluation of such auralization systems often requires psychoacoustic experiments. This process can be time consuming and error prone, resulting in a bottleneck for the evaluation complexity. In this work we evaluated VAD’s ab...

This paper describes an open-source Python framework for handling datasets for music processing tasks, built with the aim of improving the reproducibility of research projects in music computing and assessing the generalization abilities of machine learning models. The framework enables the automatic download and installation of several commonly us...

This paper presents AREmbody, an augmented-reality mobile application for the development of tonal harmony awareness. Continuing from previous prototypes based on full body and desktop interaction, AREmbody benefits from a very simple portable setup which allows physical interaction and supports the activity of one or more users. The application co...

The Sound and Music Computing (SMC) discipline aims to design better sound objects and environments for promoting multidisciplinary research to understand, model, and improve human interaction in multi-modal domains. Moreover, SMC supports core ICT technologies for the ongoing revolution in digital audio and music culture. In particular, mobile and...

For the past five years, the authors have been running at the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference a Workshop called Sonic Interactions in Virtual Environments (SIVE).The main goal of the workshop series has been to increase among the virtual realitycommunity awareness of the importance of sonic elements when designing multi-modal and immersive virtual...

Mobile virtual reality (VR) is increasingly becoming popular and accessible to everyone that holds a smartphone. In particular, digital didactics can take advantage of natural interaction and immersion in virtual environments, starting from primary education. This paper investigates the problem of enhancing music learning in primary education throu...

Independent mobility is one of the main challenges for blind or visually impaired (BVI) people. In particular, BVI people often need to identify and avoid nearby obstacles, for example a bicycle parked on the sidewalk. This is generally achieved with a combination of residual vision, hearing and haptic sensing using the white cane. However, in many...

Understanding spatial hearing leads to implement efficient and effective auralization rendering algorithms with headphones. Two important aspects contribute to sound localization: (i) acoustic filtering of listener body, and (ii) non-acoustic factors introduced by auditory periphery. Accordingly, head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) describe use...

This paper aims at comparing and reproducing the predictions of two public available computational auditory models for speaker localization in different simulated environments. The direction-of-arrival (DOA) of sound sources in the horizontal plane can be extracted by using binaural spatial cues from room and user acoustics. Since our predictions c...

This paper proposes an image-guided HRTF selection procedure that exploits the relation between features of the pinna shape and HRTF notches. Using a 2D image of a user's pinna, the procedure selects from a database the HRTF set that best fits the anthropometry of that user. The proposed procedure is designed to be quickly applied and easy to use f...

A library of piano samples composed of binaural recordings and keyboard vibrations has been built, with the aim of sharing accurate data that in recent years have successfully advanced the knowledge on several aspects about the musical keyboard and its multimodal feedback to the performer. All samples were recorded using calibrated measurement equi...

Towards improving the performance in various music information processing tasks, recent studies exploit different modalities able to capture diverse aspects of music. Such modalities include audio recordings, symbolic music scores, mid-level representations, motion, and gestural data, video recordings, editorial or cultural tags, lyrics and album c...

Achieving a full 3D auditory experience with head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) is still one of the main challenges of spatial audio rendering. HRTFs capture the listener's acoustic effects and personal perception, allowing immersion in virtual reality (VR) applications. This paper aims to investigate the connection between listener sensitivit...

Indoor navigation is an important service, currently investigated both in industry and academia. While the main focus of research is the computation of users' position, the additional challenge of conveying guidance instructions arises when the target user is blind or visually impaired (BVI). This contribution presents our ongoing research aimed at...

A virtual tube delay effect based on the real-time simulation of acoustic wave propagation in a garden hose is presented. The paper describes the acoustic measurements conducted and the analysis of the sound propagation in long narrow tubes. The obtained impulse responses are used to design delay lines and digital filters, which simulate the propag...

This paper explores the limits of human localization of sound sources when listening with non-individual Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs), by simulating performances of a localization task in the mid-sagittal plane. Computational simulations are performed with the CIPIC HRTF database using two different auditory models which mimic human hear...

This paper proposes an image-guided HRTF selection procedure that exploits the relation between features of the pinna shape and HRTF notches. Using a 2D image of a subject's pinna, the procedure selects from a database the HRTF set that best fits the anthropometry of that subject. The proposed procedure is designed to be quickly applied and easy to...

We suggest that studies on active touch psychophysics are needed to inform the design of haptic musical interfaces and better understand the relevance of haptic cues in musical performance. Following a review of the previous literature on vibrotactile perception in musical performance, two recent experiments are reported. The first experiment inves...

While a standard approach is more or less established for rendering basic vibratory cues in consumer electronics, the implementation of advanced vibrotactile feedback still requires designers and engineers to solve a number of technical issues. Several off-the-shelf vibration actuators are currently available, having different characteristics and l...

This paper deals with the issue of individualizing the head-related transfer function (HRTF) rendering process for auditory elevation perception: is it possible to find a non-individual, personalized HRTF set that allows a listener to have an equally accurate localization performance than with his/her individual HRTFs? We propose a psycho-acoustica...

Repeatability of head-related transfer function (HRTF) measurements is a critical issue in intra- and inter- laboratory setups. In this paper, simulated perceptual variabilities of HRTFs are computed as an attempt to understand if different acquisition methods achieve similar results in terms of psychoacoustic features. We consider 12 HRTF indepen...

Two experiments were conducted on an upright and a grand piano, both either producing string vibrations or conversely being silent after the initial keypress, while pianists were listening to the feedback from a synthesizer through insulating headphones. In a quality experiment, participants unaware of the silent mode were asked to play freely and...

Stimulus order has been reported to affect perceived loudness. This letter investigates how temporal order affects distance discrimination of receding and approaching pairs of sound sources rendered binaurally in the anechoic near-field. Individual discrimination thresholds for different virtual locations were measured through an adaptive procedure...

Headphone rendering of nearby virtual sound sources represents to date an open issue in 3-D audio, due to a number of technical challenges and temporal requirements involved in the measurement of individual Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs). In order to tackle this problem, we propose a filter model of near-field effects based on the Distance...

Virtual and augmented realities are expected to become more and more important in everyday life in the next future; the role of spatial audio technologies over headphones will be pivotal for application scenarios which involve mobility. This paper introduces the SelfEar project, aimed at low-cost acquisition and personalization of Head-Related Tran...

La relazione tra i parametri antropometrici di un soggetto umano e le feature tipiche delle Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF), in particolare quelle collegabili al padiglione auricolare (o pinna), non è compresa appieno. In questo articolo applichiamo tecniche di elaborazione del segnale per estrarre le frequenze del primo notch dovuto alla pin...

Questo articolo descrive un progetto relativo all'implementazione di un flauto di Pan virtuale all'interno di una installazione museale che verrà esposta presso il Museo di Scienze Archeologiche e d'Arte dell'Università degli Studi di Padova. In primo luogo, l'articolo introduce il problema della conservazione attiva e della valorizzazione degli st...

This paper presents ongoing work aimed at realizing an interactive museum installation that aids museum visitors learn about a musical instrument that is part of the exhibit: an exceptionally well preserved ancient Pan flute, most probably of Greek origins. The paper first discusses the approach to non-invasive analysis on the instrument, which was...

This paper presents a novel spatial auditory display that combines a virtual environment based on a Digital Waveguide Mesh (DWM) model of a small tubular shape with a binaural rendering system with personalized head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) allowing interactive selection of absolute 3D spatial cues of direction as well as egocentric dista...

The scattering around the human pinna that is captured by the Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs) is a complex problem that creates uncertainties in both acoustical measurements and simulations. Within the simulation framework of Finite Difference Time Domain(FDTD) with axis-aligned staircase boundaries resulting from a voxelization process, th...

Skilled interactions with sounding objects, such as drumming, rely on resolving the uncertainty in the acoustical and tactual feedback signals generated by vibrating objects. Uncertainty may arise from mis-estimation of the objects’ geometry-independent mechanical properties, such as surface stiffness. How multisensory information feeds back into t...

The relation between anthropometric parameters and Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) features, especially those due to the pinna, are not fully understood yet. In this paper we apply signal processing techniques to extract the frequencies of the main pinna notches (known as N1, N2, and N3) in the frontal part of the median plane and build a mod...

In this paper a psychophysical experiment targeted at exploring relative distance discrimination thresholds with binaurally rendered virtual sound sources in the near field is described. Pairs of virtual sources are spatialized around 6 different spatial locations (2 directions x 3 reference distances) through a set of generic far-field Head-Relate...

This paper presents a multimodal interactive system for non-visual (auditory-haptic) exploration of virtual maps. The system is able to display haptically the height profile of a map, through a tactile mouse. Moreover, spatial auditory information is provided in the form of virtual anchor sounds located in specific points of the map, and delivered...

Although acoustic frequency is not a spatial property of physical objects, in common language, pitch, i.e., the psychological correlated of frequency, is often labeled spatially (i.e., “high in pitch” or “low in pitch”). Pitch-height is known to modulate (and interact with) the response of participants when they are asked to judge spatial propertie...

This paper focuses on the localization of footstep sounds interactively generated during walking and provided through headphones. Three distinct experiments were conducted in a laboratory involving a pair of sandals enhanced with pressure sensors and a footstep synthesizer capable of simulating two typologies of surface materials: solid (e.g., wood...

This paper presents the early developments of a recently started research project, aimed at studying from a mul- tidisciplinary perspective an exceptionally well preserved ancient pan flute. A brief discussion of the history and iconography of pan flutes is provided, with a focus on Clas- sical Greece. Then a set of non-invasive analyses are pre- s...

The perceived properties of a digital piano keyboard were studied in two experiments involving different types of vibrotactile cues in connection with sonic feedback. The first experiment implemented a free playing task in which subjects had to rate the perceived quality of the instrument according to five attributes: Dynamic control, Richness, Eng...

While the angular spatialization of source sounds through individualized Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) has been extensively investigated in auditory display research, also leading to effective real-time rendering of these functions, conversely the interactive simulation of egocentric distance information has received less attention. The l...

This paper presents the early developments of a recently started research project, aimed at studying from a multidisciplinary perspective an exceptionally well preserved ancient Pan flute. A brief discussion of the history and iconography of pan flutes is provided, with a focus on Classical Greece. Then a set of non-invasive analyses are presented,...

In this paper we propose a method to customize a spherical head model for binaural sound rendering based on the listener's an-thropometry. Interaural level difference (ILD) information from a HRTF database is used to subjectively tune the radius parameter of the spherical model so as to best fit individual measures. Multiple linear regression on an...

The acoustic effects undergone by a sound wave on its way from the source to the listener's ears are summarized in a specific transfer function (Head-Related Transfer Function, HRTF), whose contribution given by the pinna alone is known as PRTF (Pinna-Related Transfer Function). The PRTF of a listener can be approximated with a specific synthetic m...

Gli effetti acustici cui è sottoposto il suono nel tragitto dalla sorgente alle orecchie dell’ascoltatore sono riassunti in una specifica funzione di trasferimento (Head-Related Transfer Function, HRTF), di cui la PRTF (Pinna-Related Transfer Function) rappresenta il solo contributo dato dal padiglione auricolare. La PRTF di un singolo ascoltatore...

An experiment has been conducted, measuring pianists’ sensitivity to piano key vibrations at the fingers while playing an upright or a grand Yamaha Disklavier piano. At each trial, which consisted in playing loud and long A notes across the whole keyboard, vibrations were either present or absent through setting the Disklavier pianos to normal or q...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a system for customized binaural audio delivery based on the extraction of relevant features from a 2-D representation of the listener’s pinna. Design/methodology/approach – The most significant pinna contours are extracted by means of multi-flash imaging, and they provide values for the parameters...

A multimodal interactive system for audio-haptic integration is presented in this paper. Preliminary subjec-tive tests with a virtual reality setup were conducted with the goal of interpreting cognitive mechanisms and improving performances in orientation & mobility protocols for visually impaired subjects, where spatial representations need to be...

The auditory perception of materials is a popular topic in the study of non-vocal sound-source perception. In this chapter, we review the empirical evidence on the mechanical and acoustical correlates of the perception of impacted stiff materials, and of the state of matter of sound-generating substances (solids, liquids, gases). As a whole, these...