Professor Tapio Lokki of the Virtual Acoustics team will get one of the most presitigous awards in the field of acoustics, the ICA Early Career Award. The award ceremony will take place in the International Congress in Acoustics in Montreal, Canada on June 5th. Tapio will get the award for his outstanding contributions to room acoustics, particularly for novel subjective and objective assessment methods of concert halls. 

This research attempts to explain why some concert halls sound better than others and what perceptual attributes contribute to the general opinion of extraordinary acoustics.  Subjective comparison of concert halls is not an easy task, because preferred acoustics depend on a number of elements. The music, the conductor, and the performance of the orchestra greatly affect the listening experience, and the contribution of the auditorium acoustics are hard to isolate with subjective surveys.

To overcome these challenges, we have developed several new technologies and techniques. The first is a loudspeaker orchestra, which standardizes the musical performance. The second is spatial sound field analysis, which allows us to evaluate the effect of the auditorium. And finally, sensory evaluation methodology borrowed from the food and wine industry allows us to evaluate the multidimensional perceptual aspects of the experience. The combination of sensory profiles and spatial analyses have resulted in an interpretation of what physical characteristics of the sound field result in the perception of great acoustics.  With these methods we have made major advances in room acoustic evaluation. More information on this research can be found here.

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