Re: Student Interested in Music Transmission Index as a Possible Research Topic

["John G. Beerends" <J.G.Beerends@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In addition to the reply of William Treurniet and Lars Bramsløw, here some paper references on the ITU standards PEAQ and PESQ in which further references can be found towards a whole bunch of work that has been carried out in this domain.

John Beerends
TNO Information- and Communication Technology
The Netherlands

T. Thiede, W. C. Treurniet, R. Bitto, C. Schmidmer, T. Sporer, J. G. Beerends, C. Colomes, M. Keyhl, G. Stoll, K. Brandenburg, B. Feiten, "PEAQ - The ITU-Standard for objective measurement of perceived audio quality," J. Audio Eng. Soc., vol. 48, pp. 3-29 (2000 Jan./Feb.). 

A. W. Rix, M. P. Hollier, A. P. Hekstra and J. G. Beerends, "PESQ, the new ITU standard for objective measurement of perceived speech quality, Part 1 - Time alignment," J. Audio Eng. Soc., vol. 50, pp. 755-764 (2002 Oct.).

J. G. Beerends, A. P. Hekstra, A. W. Rix and M. P. Hollier, "PESQ, the new ITU standard for objective measurement of perceived speech quality, Part II - Perceptual model," J. Audio Eng. Soc., vol. 50, pp. 765-778 (2002 Oct.) (equivalent to KPN Research publication 00-32228). 

-----Original Message-----
From: AUDITORY Research in Auditory Perception [mailto:AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Prince
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 18:51
To: AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Student Interested in Music Transmission Index as a Possible Research Topic

Perhaps those interested would look at loudspeaker research for a start on metrics.  Unlike speech, there is no direct intelligibility measure but rather a large number of more subtle measures.  Bandwidth and low "linear"
distortion (ie. flat frequency response) are the dominant factors.
Non-linear distortion (IM distortion, harmonic distortion) are secondary factors.

Most recent research in one direction of measurement comes out of Brian Moore's group and has been published in recent AES journals.  More refinement of this approach targeting high fidelity playback devices is merited and other approached might also be investigated.  But the subject is over 70 years old so there is pleny of background material.  Currently the AES SC-04-03 has project x-129 in relation to this topic.

It's a tricky area and highly dependent on the playback material (music) so you'll probably need to focus to a tightly controlled study.

Best Regards

David Prince
SC-04-03 chair (Loudspeaker measurement and modeling)

 >I'm very interested in hearing people's opinions/advice on whether the  >formulation of a "Music Transmission Index" would be a suitable  >Phd-level research topic. It doesn't seem that much has been done in  >this area, and that it would have useful practical applications.
 >
 >Regards,
 >
 >Chris Share
 >