Infrastructure

Listening room meets ITU-R
BS 1116-1 specifications

With respect to the most modern international standards, JOANNEUM RESEARCH has the best-equipped listening laboratory in Austria. “With the combination of the best infrastructure and independent experts, we lead acoustic research in Austria. We can not only perform professional listening tests, but tests with “Human Factors”. Thus, we can present general audio-visual demos of ongoing projects to our customers” explains Dr Franz Graf. The “room-within-a-room construction” ensures complete isolation from background noise. The listening laboratory provides perfect surround sound, but at the same time, high-quality video playback.

The listening laboratory is run with multiple partners from science and industry, especially the University of Music and Performing Arts the and TU in Graz.

The entire mobile telecommunications field represents a large area of activity for Intelligent Acoustic Solutions. To provide clear voice transmissions, is is particularly necessary to cancel out extraneous noise. Increasingly high quality requirements and the needs of industry have correspondingly increased the need for standardized test series. The spatial accommodation is a critical factor for the success of professional listening tests, while the level of training of professional listeners (expert listeners) and the performance of the test series are further key factors.

The assessment by the expert listeners is particularly important and can only be made by specially trained personnel. Expert listeners are the sommeliers in the field of acoustics: when is a sound “clear”? What is a “harsh” sound? These precise assessments of the experts are essential during the developmental work.

 

> Technical information: Harald Rainer