Enzo De Sena: Low-complexity Room Acoustic Rendering for AR/MR/VR

When: Tuesday 28th March 2023 @ 5:15 PM

Where: The Atrium (G.10), Alison House, 12 Nicholson Sq, University of Edinburgh

Title:  Low-complexity Room Acoustic Rendering for AR/MR/VR

Speakers: Dr Enzo De Sena (University of Surrey)

Abstract

In order to achieve a high level of immersion in interactive AR/MR/VR applications it is important to render room acoustics appropriately. Room acoustic rendering methods can be classified on a scale that goes from very high computational complexity and high physical accuracy to low computational complexity and accuracy. At the former end of the scale are methods based on space and time (or frequency) discretisation of the wave equation, followed by geometrical acoustics models, which make the simplifying assumption that sound travels as rays. On the other end of the scale are artificial reverberators, i.e. perceptual models that do not render the acoustics of a specific room but rather render certain desirable perceptual qualities of reverberated sound. This talk will focus on methods that aim at bridging the gap between physical and perceptual models, with the objective of achieving reasonably accurate perceptual rendering with a low computational complexity. 

Speaker Bio

Enzo De Sena is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Sound Recording at the University of Surrey. He received the M.Sc. degree (cum laude) in Telecommunication engineering from the Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II,” Italy, in 2009 and the PhD degree in Electronic Engineering from King’s College London, UK, in 2013. Between 2013 and 2016 he was a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, Belgium. He held visiting researcher positions at Stanford University, Aalborg University, Imperial College London and King’s College London. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a member of the IEEE Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing Technical Committee. He currently serves as Associate Editor for EURASIP JASM and IEEE/ACM TASLP. He is a recipient of an EPSRC New Investigator Award and a co-recipient of best paper awards at WASPAA-21 and AVAR-22. He is due to chair the 27th Int. Conf. On Digital Audio Effects (DAFx-24). His research interests include room acoustics modelling, sound field reproduction, beamforming and binaural modelling. For more information see: desena.org.