MODALITY

Multimodal system supporting acoustic communication with computers

Smart Sound technology

Miniaturization and mass production of mobile computers has a negative impact on the quality of the equipped acoustic transducers. This results in irregularities of the device's frequency response, in particular poor reproduction of low frequencies. Another important issue is the impact of disturbing sounds present in the surroundings on the comfort of sound perception. The researchers working on this project develop methods for improvement of sound quality which take into account the characteristics of the device, played content and user's hearing preferences, as well as the surroundings of the listener:

  • objective measurements of acoustic characteristics of mobile devices employing professional acoustic measurement equipment;
  • linearization of device characteristics in order to ensure balanced projection of all frequencies;
  • enhancement of low frequencies with the use of psychoacoustic techniques;
  • speech intelligibility enhancement, in particular related to dialogue in movie soundtrack;
  • fitting of the sound to the user's individual hearing preferences.


Multimodal system supporting acoustic communication with computers. Project financed by the National Centre for Research and Development within the Applied Research Programme.