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Department of Information and Communications Engineering

Communication acoustics: spatial sound and psychoacoustics

Capturing, transmission, reproduction, synthesis, and perception of sound - these are the fields that interest us in the communication acoustics team
Aalto University / Communication acoustics / photo: Ville Pulkki

Our projects are gathered around spatial sound. We have developed, and are still developing, new reproduction methods for spatial sound taking into account the time-frequency-space resolution of the human hearing. These methods are applicable to multi-channel loudspeaker layouts, headphones, and binaural hearing aids. Additionally, we are currently developing new types of non-linear beam-forming algorithms.

To enable the research of perceptually optimised spatial audio methods, we have to know more about the perceptual spatial hearing mechanisms of humans. We study these mechanisms with listening tests and model the brain mechanism devoted to spatial auditory perception. In this context, we are very interested in the perception of spatially complex sound scenes and the binaural perception of timbre.

Furthermore, we research acoustical measurement techniques for spatial sound. Here, the head-related acoustics are of vital importance in spatial hearing research, and we work on new modelling and measurement tools to understand the acoustical effects near the head and in the ear canals.

For this purpose, we must also inspect proper acoustical sources in measurements. Our current topic is the suitability of laser-induced shock waves as massless point sources. They can be applied to acoustical room measurements, and the technique is currently in active development.

European Union flag

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 240453. The starting independent research project Technologies and Psychophysics of Spatial Sound (TEPESS) funded by European Research Council runs within the Communication acoustics team.

Latest publications

Marc S. Dantzker, Matthew T. Duggan, Erika Berlik, Symeon Delikaris-Manias, Vasileios Bountourakis, Ville Pulkki, Aaron N. Rice 2025 Methods in Ecology and Evolution

Ricardo Falcon Perez, Ruohan Gao, Gregor Mueckl, Sebastia V. A. Gari, Ishwarya Ananthabhotla 2025 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics

Janani Fernandez, Petteri Hyvärinen, Abigail Anne Kressner 2025 Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Jackie Lin, Georg Götz, Sebastian J. Schlecht 2025 Eurasip Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing

Pedro Llado Gonzalez, Piotr Majdak, Roberto Barumerli, Robert Baumgartner 2025 Trends in Hearing

Ville Pulkki 2025

Ville Pulkki 2025

Stefan Wirler, Ville Pulkki 2025 Journal of the Audio Engineering Society

Stefan Wirler, Nils Meyer-Kahlen, Ville Pulkki 2025 Proceedings of the European Signal Processing Conference EUSIPCO

Vasileios Bountourakis 2024
More information on our research in the Aalto research portal.
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