AES Virtual Vienna Presents Paper Awards Before a Worldwide Audience

During the recent AES Virtual Vienna Convention, the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society Best Paper Award 2019 was presented to (top, L-R) Benoit Alary, Archontis Politis, (middle, L-R) Sebastian Schlecht and Vesa Välimäki. The Convention’s Best Student Paper Award was presented to (bottom, L-R) Annika Neidhardt and coauthor Boris Reif

Winners of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society Best Paper Award for 2019 and the AES Virtual Vienna Convention Best Student Paper Award were announced on Tuesday, June 2, at the AES Virtual Vienna Convention. The awards highlight outstanding research Paper contributions from authors around the world covering a wide range of the latest audio science research topics and innovations. The awards were presented during the Opening Ceremony of the AES Virtual Vienna Convention. The Opening Ceremony, along with complete convention proceedings and its Technical Program, is available for viewing through June 30 by AES Virtual Vienna attendees and new registrants at AESEurope.com.

The 2019 Journal of the Audio Engineering Society Best Paper Award was presented by JAES Editor Bozena Kostek and was awarded to Benoit Alary, Archontis Politis, Sebastian Schlecht and Vesa Välimäki for their paper “Directional Feedback Delay Network.” The paper’s abstract reads in part:
Artificial reverberation algorithms are used to enhance dry audio signals. Delay-based reverberators can produce a realistic effect at a reasonable computational cost. While the recent popularity of spatial audio algorithms is mainly related to the reproduction of the perceived direction of sound sources, there is also a need to spatialize the reverberant sound field. This paper proposes a new method to control the directional distribution of energy over time, within a delay-based reverberator, capable of producing a directional impulse response with anisotropic energy decay.
The paper can be found in the JAES October 2019 issue or, as an Open Access document, it can be downloaded at aes.org/e-lib/download.cfm/20693.pdf?ID=20693.

The Best Student Paper Award, submitted to AES Virtual Vienna and peer-reviewed, was presented by AES Virtual Vienna Papers Co-chair Areti Andreopoulou and was awarded to Annika Neidhardt and Boris Reif for their paper “Minimum BRIR Grid Resolution for Interactive Position Changes in Dynamic Binaural Synthesis.” The paper’s abstract reads in part:
This paper presents a psychoacoustic study on the minimum BRIR grid resolution required for a smooth transition in an interactive listener translation in virtual acoustic environments produced over headphones. The results show that the required resolution depends on the signal. While for white noise, only the highest resolution brought the best results; for sounds with limited bandwidth, lower resolutions sufficed.

The author’s presentation of the Best Student Paper is included in the complete AES Virtual Vienna Technical Program of presentations, including Research Papers, Workshops, Posters, Engineering Briefs, Technical Tours and more, available online through June 30 at AESEurope.com, with registration still open for those who wish to experience AES Virtual Vienna on their own schedule through the on-demand archive.