Olli Rummukainen

Apple Inc. · Acoustics

Auditory localization cues in the near-field (< 1.0 m) are significantly different than in the far-field. The near-field region is within an arm's length of the listener allowing to integrate proprioceptive cues to determine the location of an object in space. This perceptual study compares three non-individualized methods to apply head-related tra...

The minimum audible angle has been studied with a stationary listener and a stationary or a moving sound source. The study at hand focuses on a scenario where the angle is induced by listener self-translation in relation to a stationary sound source. First, the classic stationary listener minimum audible angle experiment is replicated using a headp...

Virtual reality systems with multimodal stimulation and up to six degrees-of-freedom movement pose novel challenges to audio quality evaluation. This paper adapts classic multiple stimulus test methodology to virtual reality and adds behavioral tracking functionality. The method is based on ranking by elimination while exploring an audiovisual virt...

This paper proposes a method for evaluating real-time binaural reproduction systems by means of a wayfinding task in six degrees of freedom. Participants physically walk to sound objects in a virtual reality created by a head-mounted display and binaural audio. The method allows for comparative evaluation of different rendering and tracking systems...

Research into multi-modal perception, human cognition, behavior, and attention can benefit from high-fidelity content that may recreate real-life-like scenes when rendered on head-mounted displays. Moreover, aspects of audiovisual perception, cognitive processes, and behavior may complement questionnaire-based Quality of Experience (QoE) evaluation...

Telemeetings such as audiovisual conferences or virtual meetings play an increasingly important role in our professional and private lives. For that reason, system developers and service providers will strive for an optimal experience for the user, while at the same time optimizing technical and financial resources. This leads to the discipline of...

Virtual reality (VR) headsets with an integrated eye tracker enable the measurement of pupil size fluctuations correlated with cognition during a VR experience. We present a method to correct for the light-induced pupil size changes, otherwise masking the more subtle cognitively-driven effects, such as cognitive load and emotional state. We explore...

Many quality evaluation methods are used to assess uni-modal audio or video content without considering perceptual, cognitive, and interactive aspects present in virtual reality (VR) settings. Consequently, little is known regarding the repercussions of the employed evaluation method, content, and subject behavior on the quality ratings in VR. This...

In dynamic virtual reality, visual cues and motor actions aid auditory perception. With multimodal integration and auditory adaptation effects, generic head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) may yield no significant disadvantage to individual HRTFs regarding accurate auditory perception. This study compares two individual HRTF sets against a gener...

Virtual reality (VR) technology enables and requires new ways of user experience testing in immersive environments. For various aspects of user experience, objective assessment of the cognitive load can be a useful parameter. With eye-tracking becoming a more widespread feature of current VR headsets, pupillometry is an appealing option to unobtrus...

Auditory localization is affected by visual cues. The study at hand focuses on a scenario where dynamic sound localization cues are induced by lateral listener self-translation in relation to a stationary sound source with matching or mismatching dynamic visual cues. The audio-only self-translation minimum audible angle (ST-MAA) is previously shown...

"Towards the Perception of Sound Source Directivity Inside Six-Degrees-of-Freedom Virtual Reality" Presented at: 5th International Conference on Spatial Audio, Ilmenau, Germany, 2019

Individual head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) improve localization accuracy and externalization in binaural audio reproduction compared to generic HRTFs. Listening tests are often conducted using generic HRTFs due to the difficulty of obtaining individual HRTFs for all participants. This study explores the ramifications of the choice of HRTFs...

The immersion of the user is of key interest in the reproduction of acoustic scenes in virtual reality. It is enhanced when movement is possible in six degrees-of-freedom, i.e., three rotational plus three translational degrees. Further enhancement of immersion can be achieved when the user is not only able to move between distant sound sources, bu...

Sound source directivity is a measure of the distribution of sound, propagating from a source object. It is an essential component of how we perceive acoustic environments, interactions and events. For six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DoF) virtual reality (VR), the combination of binaural audio and complete freedom of movement introduces new influencing e...

To evoke a place illusion, virtual reality builds upon the integration of coherent sensory information from multiple modalities. This integrative view of perception could be contradicted when quality evaluation of virtual reality is divided into multiple uni-modal tests. We show the type and cross-modal consistency of visual content to affect overa...

Corresponding works to Convention e-Brief #454

Virtual reality technology incorporating six degrees-of-freedom introduces new challenges for the evaluation of audio quality. Here, a real-time 'online' evaluation platform is proposed, allowing multiple stimulus comparison of binaural renderers within the virtual environment, to perceptually evaluate audio quality. To evaluate the sensitivity of...

One of the challenges of virtual reality technology is to provide convincing sensory information to users, to give the illusion of presence within the virtual environment. Audiovisual input combined with self-motion is a step beyond traditional cinematic content, whereby the audio renderer must accommodate a limitless number of potential user inter...

First-order Ambisonics (FOA) recordings can be processed and reproduced over headphones. They can be rotated to account for the listener's head orientation. However, virtual reality (VR) systems allow the listener to move in six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF), i.e., three rotational plus three transitional degrees of freedom. Here, the apparent angles a...

This paper proposes a new method of evaluating real-time binaural reproduction systems by means of a wayfinding task in six degrees of freedom (6 DoF). Participants physically walk to sound objects in a virtual reality created by a head mounted display and binaural audio. We show how the quality of spatial audio rendering is reflected by objective...

Most research on multisensory processing focuses on impoverished stimuli and simple tasks. In consequence, very little is known about the sensory contributions in the perception of real environments. Here, we presented 23 participants with paired comparison tasks, where natural scenes were discriminated in three perceptually meaningful attributes:...

Diffuse Field Modeling (DFM) is a systematic means for simulating and reproducing a diffuse field for arbitrary loudspeaker configurations. DFM is presented in two publications: Part I [1] presents the algorithm and this Part II reports the perceptual evaluation. Two experiments were conducted: in Experiment 1 sound recording professionals were to...

Concurrent auditory stimuli have been shown to enhance detection of abstract visual targets in experimental setups with little ecological validity. We presented 11 participants, wearing an eye-tracking device, with a visual detection task in an immersive audiovisual environment replicating a real-world environment. The participants were to fixate o...

This article presents VQone, a graphical experiment builder, written as a MATLAB toolbox, developed for image and video quality ratings. VQone contains the main elements needed for the subjective image and video quality rating process. This includes building and conducting experiments and data analysis. All functions can be controlled through graph...

In this work the effect of reproduction setup on the perception of natural scene attributes was studied. Discrimination of reproduced real-world scenes in movement, openness and noisiness was inspected between an immersive large reproduction setup and a non-immersive small reproduction setup. The results show decreased sensitivity for movement disc...

This work analyzed the perceptual attributes of natural dynamic audiovisual scenes in two consec-utive experiments. First, we presented 30 naive participants with 19 natural scenes depicting urban environments reproduced with an immersive audiovisual display utilizing surrounding visual projec-tions and spatial audio reproduction. The aim was to as...

This work analyzed the perceptual attributes of natural dynamic audiovisual scenes. We presented thirty participants with 19 natural scenes in a similarity categorization task, followed by a semi-structured interview. The scenes were reproduced with an immersive audiovisual display. Natural scene perception has been studied mainly with unimodal set...

The effects of using two-dimensional video projection together with parametric three-dimensional spatial audio reproduction system are examined in this study. The discrepancy between the auditory and visual events, and differing depth cues, are evaluated by means of subjective evaluations using the method of adjustment. The results show the Directi...

Current perception-based quality metrics for unimodal systems cannot reflect the perceived quality in multimodal situations, and better understanding of multimodal perceptual mechanisms is needed. In this work, audiovisual perception was studied with an immersive audiovisual display. The aim was to observe cross-modal interaction of auditory and vi...

Binaural hearing is beneficial in suppressing the audibility of echoes in reverberant environments. Echo suppression has typically been investigated utilising a single reflection, and often at high directto- reverberant energy ratios (DRRs) where the reflection is barely audible. In natural environments, however, reverberation comprises a large num...