UKAN+ Webinar: Audio for Extended Reality – Creating Auditory Illusions in the natural environment

Audio for Extended Reality – Creating Auditory Illusions in the natural environment

One of the main challenges in creating Audio for Augmented or Extended Reality is the seamless integration of virtual acoustic objects into the user’s natural acoustic environment. Rooms differ in their geometry and acoustic behaviour. Early room reflections are known to influence the auditory impression of the sound source. The late reverberation creates a room’s individual acoustic impression and sound. Perceptual matching of room acoustics aims at a perceptually sufficient alignment of the reproduced acoustic properties with that of the natural environment.

With accurate knowledge about the acoustics of the target environment, very plausible, or even authentic auditory illusions can be created. However, in unknown rooms, creating convincing auditory illusions remains a challenge. In practice, Audio for AR does not yet work reliably.
So how can we get there? And how can such systems benefit from AI?

Short Bio

Annika Neidhardt has 15 years of experience in Spatial Audio and Virtual Acoustics in both industry and science. Currently, she is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Surrey in the UK. She holds a Master degree in Automation & Robotics from Technische Universität Chemnitz, Germany and a Master degree in Audio Engineering from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria.

She has worked as an audio programmer for car hi-fi systems at LEAR Corporation, worked for the former IOSONO GmbH, investigated and developed object-based authoring tools for Spatial Audio in 3D Cinema at the Fraunhofer Institute of Media Technology in Ilmenau, before she started conducting research on her own behalf. She developed her own research projects on the perception of position-dynamic binaural audio and automatic room characterisation to complete her PhD thesis on the plausibility of simplified room representations in the Lab of Karlheinz Brandenburg at Technische Universität Ilmenau, where she was deputy head of the group for more than three years. Her research also contributed to starting the company Brandenburg Labs.

At the Institute of Sound Recording in Surrey, Annika joined the research on room acoustics and sound field modelling and works on the perceptual optimization of different methods for creating spatial auditory illusions over headphones for Virtual, Augmented and Extended Reality.