Ravi and BenZhen on the Awesome Dolby Listening Tests Project

15th May 2011

  • Our original scheduled meeting with Poppy and Patrick got cancelled today. It's likely they would come down to CCRMA on Thursday, the 19th.

    10th May 2011

  • We had a short discussion with one of the IRB staff members and the good news is this project doesn't require IRB mentoring. Nevertheless, we need to take an approval in writing from the IRB staff, Lauri Kanerwa, that we don't need to take any permission from IRB to do the project over summer, just in case.
  • We also went to Dolby and had a 2-hr session with Patrick Saunders. The session was meant to be a preliminary exposure to the audio quality cues and artifacts that we should look at when conducting the tests.
  • The samples played were mostly extracts from audio samples from different movies and some SQAM material.

    3rd May 2011

  • The next session is going to be with Patrick Saunders, a listening test expert at Dolby.
  • The second session at Dolby is going to be on this coming Tuesday, the 10th of May.
  • We are also working on the IRB stuff, starting with the eProtocol application. Unfortunately, there are approval-and-review meetings once a month and the date for this month's review has already passed.The next one's on 6/4 and we will most certainly make it by then.
  • Next steps: 1) Get to Dolby next week 2) Probably organise a mock demo with the classmates 3) Invite the officials from Dolby to CCRMA for a tour and 4) Wait for the competitor's laptop to arrive at CCRMA.

    27th April 2011

    Next Steps:

  • Evaluating the logistics
  • Gathering a pool of subjects (You get paid, so please volunteer :-)
  • Visit by Poppy and Patrick
  • Finish IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval and take the test
  • Hopefully demo the listening tests to the 220c class in the coming weeks

    25th April 2011


    Image Source:http://zapp5.staticworld.net/news/graphics/216202-dolby-profile-editor-dolby-home-theater_350.jpg

    All about PCEEv4

  • PCEEv4 is version 4 of a flagship Dolby product. PCEE stands for PC Entertainment Experience.
  • The immersed dude http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGcDyHVKFAw&feature=relmfu
  • The happy homemaker http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IRcSr4P_Uk&feature=relmfu
  • Listening test on audio quality and experience on different laptops. We would receive a laptop form a competitor.
  • Listening tests would be conducted at CCRMA over end-of-spring and through summer. A set of standardized tests for describing the audio quality. The statistics of these tests would be presented back to Dolby at the end of the experiment.
  • Bring in a pool of people from different age groups

    What we did at Dolby:

  • Preview of PCEE4 on Win. 7 running on Macbook Air with Phil Brown
  • Listening test with Poppy Crum and Louis Fielder, in the Dolby Theater, we heard 50 clips from cinema audio and SQAM (Sound Quality Assessment Material), equalised in different ways
  • The purpose of the listening test was to assess the a possible rework of the equalization curves (the X-Curves) currently being applied to the cinema audio.
  • A tour of the facilities