Newsflash

After three years it is time for some redecoration ;-)

The research portal dereverberation.org is currently being updated... Please let me know if you experience any problems.

World's first dereverberation plugin for Pro Tools

Imagine your are making an audio recording on site and there is a large distance between the desired speaker and microphone, e.g., due to the microphone position. In this case, the desired sound is distorted by ambient noise and reverberation. In general, it is extremely hard to cleanup the recording.

NML RevCon-RR is a plugin for Pro Tools, a professional digital audio workstation platform, that allows you to reduce reverberation. The plugin already has been used for post-production work of several movies, TV shows, and TV commercials. The dereverberation algorithm used in this plugin was invented by NTT Communication Science Laboratories in Japan and is primarily based on [1].

A sound demo and product information can be found here.

[1] K. Kinoshita, M. Delcroix, T. Nakatani and M. Miyoshi, "Suppression of late reverberation effect on speech signal using long-term multiple-step linear prediction,'' IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language processing, 17(4), pp. 534-545, 2009.

International Workshop on Acoustic Echo and Noise Control

Established in 1993, the International Workshop on Acoustic Echo and Noise Control (IWAENC) is the leading workshop in the signal processing community addressing issues including:

- Adaptive filtering algorithms and structures for echo and noise control
- Noise and reverberation reduction techniques
- Active noise control, sound reproduction and hearing aids
- Transducers and acoustic front-ends
- Hardware and real-time issues
- Speech-databses and software tools
- Mulitrate filter banks and subband systems
- Systems for stereophonic echo and noise control
- Microphone arrays and array signal processing
- Sound enhancement and sound separation
- Temporal segmentation of signals
- Voice activity detection and double-talk detection
- Noise and acoustic environments and characteristics

The IWAENC workshop is held every even year and consists of a three day program that includes poster presentations of recent work and latest results, keynote talks, and demonstrations. Almost all IWAENC proceedings are available at www.iwaenc.org.

The next IWAENC will be hosted by Dr. Sharon Gannot and Prof. Israel Cohen in Tel-Aviv (Israel) in 2010. Please keep an eye on their website.

Database of Binaural Room Impulse Responses

Recently, a new database of binaural room impulse responses (BRIR) has been published by RWTH Aachen University.

The measurements with a dummy head took place in a low-reverberant  studio booth, an office room, a meeting room and a lecture room. Additionally, measurements with different azimuth angles  between dummy head and loudspeaker have been measured in a stairway hall. Due to the different dimensions and acoustic properties, it covers a wide range of situations where digital hearing aids or other hands-free devices can be used.

A more detailed description of the database can be found in the related paper. The database is available here.