Nicholas J. Bryan

 Senior Research Scientist
Audio Research Group, Adobe Research
San Francisco, CA

nibryan at adobe.com

About: My research interests are at the intersection of audio signal processing, machine learning, and human-computer interaction.
I received my PhD and MA from CCRMA, Stanford University and MS in Electrical Engineering, also from Stanford. During my graduate studies, I was advised by Prof. Ge Wang with additional work with Prof. J. S. Abel and J. O. Smith III. I received my Bachelor of Music and BS in Electrical Engineering at the University of Miami-FL. Before joining Adobe, I worked on audio algorithms at Apple for 4.5 years.

News

[05/2021] DeepAFx code release here! Third-party audio effects plugins as differentiable layers within deep neural networks.
[05/2021] WASPAA 2021 area chair on music signal processing & deep learning.
[03/2021] Three papers accepted to ICASSP 2021.
[12/2020] ICASSP 2021 area and session chair on music signal processing & deep learning.
[10/2020] Awarded an ISMIR 2020 best reviewer award.
[07/2020] Two papers accepted to Interspeech 2020.
[07/2020] Two papers accepted to ISMIR 2020.
[03/2020] Four papers accepted to ICASSP 2020.
[11/2019] One paper accepted to IEEE VR Journal track 2020.
[11/2019] Elected to the IEEE Audio and Acoustics Signal Processing (AASP) Technical Committee (2019-2022).
[08/2018] Joined Adobe Research and started to publish again after 4.5 years at Apple.

Adobe Internships

For current students, I offer research internships at Adobe Research in San Francisco, CA. Internships are typically during the summer months and for graduate students studying audio/music signal processing, machine learning, or related field. If you are interested, please send me an email with your CV and research interests in October-December before the given summer. My Adobe webpage is here.

Publications

"Differentiable Signal Processing with Black-Box Audio Effects."
M. A. Martínez Ramírez, O. Wang, P. Smaragdis, N. J. Bryan
ICASSP, Toronto, Canada. June, 2021.
(arXiv, web, code, ieee explore, paper)
"Few-shot Continual Learning for Audio Classification."
Y. Wang, N. J. Bryan, M. Cartwright, J.-P. Bello, J. Salamon
ICASSP, Toronto, Canada. June, 2021.
(paper, ieee explore)
"Context-aware Prosody Correction for Text-based Speech Editing."
M. Morrison, L. Rencker, Z. Jin, N. J. Bryan, J.P. Caceres, B. Pardo
ICASSP, Toronto, Canada. June, 2021.
(arXiv, web, paper)
"A Differentiable Perceptual Audio Metric Learned from Just Noticeable Differences."
P. Manocha, A. Finkelstein, R. Zhang, N. J. Bryan, G. J. Mysore, Z. Jin
Interspeech, Shanghai, China. October, 2020.
(arXiv, web, code)
"Controllable Neural Prosody Synthesis."
M. Morrison, Z. Jin, J. Salamon, N. J. Bryan, G. J. Mysore
Interspeech, Shanghai, China. October, 2020.
(paper | arXiv, web)
"Metric Learning vs Classification for Disentangled Music Representation Learning."
J. Lee, N. J. Bryan, J. Salamon, Z. Jin J. Nam
International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), Montreal, Canada. October, 2020.
(paper | arXiv | web)
"Few-shot Drum Transcription in Polyphonic Music."
Y. Wang, J. Salamon, M. Cartwright, N. J. Bryan, J.-P. Bello
International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), Montreal, Canada. October, 2020.
(paper | arXiv)
"Disentangled Multidimensional Metric Learning For Music Similarity."
J. Lee, N. J. Bryan, J. Salamon, Z. Jin J. Nam
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain. May, 2020.
(project page | paper | ieee link | arXiv | talk | data set)
"One-Shot Parametric Audio Production Style Transfer With Application to Frequency Equalization."
S. I. Mimilakis, N. J. Bryan, P. Smaragdis
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain. May, 2020.
(project page | paper | ieee link | talk)
"Few-Shot Sound Event Detection."
Y. Wang, J. Salamon, N. J. Bryan, J.-P. Bello
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain. May, 2020.
(paper | ieee link | talk)
"Impulse Response Data Augmentation and Deep Neural Networks For Blind Room Acoustic Parameter Estimation."
N. J. Bryan
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain. May, 2020.
(paper | ieee link | talk)
"Scene-Aware Audio Rendering via Deep Acoustic Analysis."
Z. Tang N. J. Bryan D. Li T. Langlois D. Manocha
IEEE VR Journal Track (TVCG), Atlanta, USA. March, 2020.
(paper | ieee | arXiv | project page | video )
"ISSE: An Interactive Source Separation Editor."
N. J. Bryan, G. J. Mysore, G. Wang
Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Toronto, Canada. April, 2014.
(project page | paper | video)
"Interactive Sound Source Separation."
N. J. Bryan.
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. March, 2014.
(PhD Thesis)

* Tutorial on single-channel source separation (slides + code)
* ISSE: An Interactive Source Separation Editor (talk 1) (talk 2)
* Software (link)
* C++ code (link)
* Matlab code (link)
* Demos (link)
* SiSEC results (link)
* Publications (link)
"Source Separation of Polyphonic Music With Interactive User-Feedback on a Piano Roll Display."
N. J. Bryan, G. J. Mysore, G. Wang
International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference, Curitiba, Brazil. November, 2013.
(web | paper)
"An Efficient Posterior Regularized Latent Variable Model for Interactive Sound Source Separation."
N. J. Bryan, G. J. Mysore
International Conference on Machine Learning, Atlanta, GA. June, 2013.
(web | paper | sisec | Adobe MAX | poster | slides)
"Interactive Refinement of Supervised and Semi-Supervised Sound Source Separation Estimates."
N. J. Bryan, G. J. Mysore
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Vancouver, Canada. May, 2013.
(web | pre-print | poster)
"Interactive User-Feedback for Sound Source Separation."
N. J. Bryan, G. J. Mysore
International Conference on Intelligent User-Interfaces, Workshop on Interative Machine Learning (Extended Abstract/Workshop Paper), Santa Monica, CA. March, 2013.
(web | abstract)
"User-Guided Variable-Rate Time-Stretching Via Stiffness Control."
N. J. Bryan, J. Herrera, G. Wang
In the Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFX), York, United Kingdom. September 17-21, 2012.
(web | paper | slides (long) | slides (short) )
"Clustering and Synchronizing Multi-Camera Video via Landmark Cross-Correlation"
N. J. Bryan, P. Smaragdis, G. J. Mysore
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Kyoto, Japan, March, 2012.
(paper | poster | pre-print | slides, Adobe MAX)
"Musical Influence Network Analysis and Rank of Sampled-Based Music."
N. J. Bryan, G. Wang
In the Proceedings of the 12th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR). Miami, FL, 2011.
(paper | whosampled | slides)
"Two Turntables and a Mobile Phone."
N. J. Bryan, G. Wang
In the Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). Oslo, Norway, 2011.
(paper | slides | web)
"Instinct-Based Mating in Genetic Algorithms Applied to the Tuning of 1-NN Classifiers."
T. Quirino, M. Kubat, N. J. Bryan
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), December, 2010.
(paper)
"Methods For Extending Room Impulse Responses Beyond Their Noise Floor."
N. J. Bryan, J. S. Abel
Presented at the 129th Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES), San Francisco, November 4-7, 2010.
(paper | slides | web)
"Impulse Response Measurements in the Presence of Clock Drift."
N. J. Bryan, M. A. Kolar, J. S. Abel
Presented at the 129th Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES), San Francisco, November 4-7, 2010.
(paper | slides | web)
"Estimating Room Impulse Responses from Recorded Balloon Pops."
J. S. Abel N. J. Bryan, P. Huang, M. A. Kolar, B. Pentcheva,
Presented at the 129th Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES), San Francisco, November 4-7, 2010.
(paper | slides | web)
"Approximating Measured Reverberation Using A Hybrid Fixed/Switched Convolution Structure."
K. Lee, N. J. Bryan, J. S. Abel
In the Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects (DAFX), Graz, Austria, September 6-10, 2010.
(paper | web)
"MoMu: A Mobile Music Toolkit."
N. J. Bryan, J. Herrera, J. Oh, G. Wang
In the Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). Sydney, Australia, 2010.
(paper | web | speaker hands | slides)
"Evolving The Mobile Phone Orchestra."
J. Oh, J. Herrera, N. J. Bryan, L. Dahl, G. Wang
In the Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME). Sydney, Australia, 2010.
(paper | speaker hands)
"A Configurable Microphone Array with Acoustically Transparent Omnidirectional Elements."
J. S. Abel N. J. Bryan, T. Skare, M. A. Kolar, P. Huang, D. Mostowfi, J. O. Smith III
Presented at the 127th Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES), New York City, September 6-10, 2009.
(paper | poster | web)
"Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk)."
G. Wang N. J. Bryan, J. Oh, R. Hamilton,
In the Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference. Montreal, Canada 2009.
(pdf: paper | web | speakers )


Press

"Audio Layers."
Adobe TV May 8th, 2013.
In collaboration with Gautham Mysore at Adobe Research.
"Automatic Synchronization of Crowd Sourced Videos."
Adobe TV October, 2011.
In collaboration with Gautham Mysore and Paris Smaragdis at Adobe's Advanced Technology Labs.
"Smartphone turntables put new spin on DJing."
NewScientist, May, 2011.

In addition to:
OH GIZMO, Geek.com, Engadget, DVICE, Gizmodo, musicradar.com, tecca, All about tech & gadgets, FUTUREMUSIC, InFlexWeTrust!, and Skratchworx.
"Air Instruments only."
The Stanford Daily, October 28, 2010. (link)
"From Pocket to Stage, Music in the Key of iPhone."
New York Times (Front Page), December 4, 2009. (link)
"Make-TV: Computer Making Music."
PBS TV, February 28, 2009. (link)
"The music machines."
The Stanford Daily, October, 2008. (comments regarding the slork speaker design) (link)
"Rhythm and Cubes."
Stanford Magazine, July, 2008. (link)
"Stanford Students invent new music."
Local ABC TV Drive to Discover (San Francisco, CA), April 6, 2008. (link)