Lloyd May on Audio Processing Strategies to Enhance Cochlear Implant Users' Music Enjoyment
Date:
Fri, 05/10/2024 - 10:30am - 12:00pm
Location:
CCRMA Seminar Room
Event Type:
Hearing Seminar Who: Lloyd May (CCRMA)
What: Designing Audio Processing Strategies to Enhance Cochlear Implant Users' Music Enjoyment
When: Fri, 05/10/2024 - 10:30am - 12:00pm
Where: CCRMA Seminar Room, Top Floor of The Knoll at Stanford
Why: How do we stimulate our brains with electricity.
Abstract:
Cochlear implants (CIs) provide hundreds of thousands of users with increased access to sound. While strides have been made to improve speech perception among CI users, far less attention has been paid to the somewhat trickier task of music enjoyment. Previous studies have explored music pre-processing strategies generalized across CI users. However, CI users, like any group of people, have an incredible diversity of lived experiences, aesthetic preferences, and music listening set-ups. Our project seeks to empower CI users to personalize the pre-processing of recorded music to enhance music enjoyment. To achieve this, we conducted an exploratory mixed-methods study that paired professional audio engineers with CI users to iteratively create bespoke music mixes for each user. The findings from this study were then used to develop a website that allows CI users to easily implement several of the most impactful music mixing techniques on recorded music of their choice.
Bio:
Lloyd May is a 4th year PhD candidate at CCRMA, advised by Prof Jonathan Berger and Prof Patricia Alessandrini. Lloyd's work focuses on centering D/deaf and Disabled enjoyment in musical experiences, with research projects ranging from customizable closed-captions for non-speech sounds, to physically accessible musical instruments, to co-designing haptic and vibration-based instruments. Lloyd was trained as an engineer and biostatistician at Dartmouth College (2018) and completed a master's of Digital Musics with a concentration on musical neuroscience, supervised by Prof. Michael Casey (2020). Lloyd was born and raised in Carletonville, South Africa, and makes video games in his spare time.
FREE
Open to the Public