Advances in Fundamental and Applied Research on Spatial Audio
Musicians face challenges when using stereo headphones to perform with one another, due to a lack... more Musicians face challenges when using stereo headphones to perform with one another, due to a lack of audio intelligibility and the loss of their usual benchmarks. Also, high levels of click tracks in headphone mixes hinder performance subtleties and harm performers’ aural health. This chapter discusses the approaches and outcomes of eight case studies in professional situations that aimed at comparing the experiences of orchestra conductors and instrumentalists while monitoring their performances through binaural versus stereo headphones. These studies assessed three solutions combining augmented and mixed reality technologies that include binaural with head tracking to conduct a large film-scoring orchestra and jazz symphonic with a click track; binaural without head tracking to improvise in trio or on previously recorded takes in the studio; and active binaural headphones to record diverse genres on a click track or soundtrack. Findings concur to show that better audio intelligibi...
During recording sessions, record producers and sound engineers play the role of cultural interme... more During recording sessions, record producers and sound engineers play the role of cultural intermediaries between musicians and their future audience. Their role differs from that of artistic leaders, such as film directors, who express their own ideas through a collective creative process. Studio professionals aim to achieve the best possible representation of a given musical project, similarly to photographers, whose goal is to capture the most significant image of their models. Recently, the delocalisation of well-equipped studios to home studios, combined with the collapse of the traditional business model of record companies, has led musicians to produce their recordings without necessarily hiring studio professionals. And when hired by musicians, producers and engineers often take on both roles at once. This client relationship without the intermediary of record companies modifies the collaborative aspects of the production process. In such a do-it-yourself context, studio professionals need to reinvent their job while musicians need to learn the art of recording and define their expectations when collaborating with studio professionals. This chapter is based on my professional and teaching experience, as well as five research studies conducted with professional producers, engineers, and musicians. In three sections, it highlights the best practices in conducting recording sessions from the perspectives of musicians and studio professionals coming from different musical backgrounds, countries, and generations. The first section focuses on the preparation of studio sessions to produce successful musical recordings. The second discusses record producers' and sound engineers' skills, as well as the mission and specificities of each profession. The third addresses the myths of artistic direction by making explicit the impact of producers ' comments on musical performance.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 1, 2015
International audienceFollowing a cross-disciplinary approach, we will explore two different musi... more International audienceFollowing a cross-disciplinary approach, we will explore two different musical improvisation cultures, one issuing from the jazz tradition in the United States, the other from Northern Indian classical named Hindustani music. At the crossroads of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cognitive linguistics, this trans-cultural study stems from an ethnographic project lead within the New York free improvisation scene, carried out through the analysis of interviews and listening sessions following studio and public performance recordings (Cance & Cloiseau, 2015 ; Pras, in revision). In January 2015, two of the most active musicians taking part in the ethnographic study, Jim Black, (drums), and Mickaël Attias (saxophone), improvised for the first time with two Indian masters, Subhajyoti Guha (tabla), and Sougata Roy Choudhurym (sarod), both accustomed to improvising in musical contexts outside the Hindustani tradition. The gatherings mainly aim at bringing under scrutiny how these outstanding improvisers adapt to a totally novel situation.The idea of bringing into contact both these improvisation cultures came from a personal observation of the first author—listening to 60s’ Afro-American free jazz and traditional Hindustani music provided her with a similar type of energy, which is part and parcel of both musical genres. Both genres have met several times in the past, with the famous example of John Coltrane who went to study in India towards the end of his life in order to stretch out the limits of his improvisations (Turner, 1975), and that of the sitar player Ravi Shankar who might have described jazz as a child’s game (quoted by Farrell, 2000, p.189), but whose collaborations with American musicians significantly influenced Hindustani musical traditions (Slawek, 1993). Our transcultural study was conducted in close collaboration with Jonathan and Andrew Kay, two Toronto born jazz saxophone players who have been living for eight years in Kolkota where they are the students of a Hindustani music guru. In the wake of John Coltrane, J. and A. Kay are searching for an improvised music that transcends tradition and culture.Before the joint improvised sessions, the first author carried out individual interviews with the two Indian masters to investigate their personal improvisation processes. Our interview guide was made up of questions quite similar to those used for the New York study, which enablesus to compare the answers on both musicological and linguistic grounds. However, on consulting J. and A. Kay, some terms were adapted so that our questions might take into account the specificity of local improvisation tradition. The questions go over the earliest improvisation experiences, the current motivations of the musicians to keep on playing, and how their improvisation might be tied to their personal lives. « Improvised meetings » consisted of four duos each of which brought together an Indian and a New York musician, followed by a quatuor session and a quatuor concert. The experimental procedure for duos—an alternation of improvisation, listening and individual and collective interview phases was elaborated from Jacques Theureau’s (2010) self-assessment interview approach, from the meeting of two instigators of free jazz with a young artist from the NewYork noise scene (Pras & Lavergne, en révision), and from two psychology case studies about understanding and misunderstanding between improvisers who play together for the first time (Pras et al., 2015 ; Schober & Spiro, 2014).Our collaborative analysis of verbal descriptions is carried out simultaneously along three axes. The first author looks into the contents of the data, mainly for musicological and cultural aspects linked with the musical excerpts selected by the musicians. The second author focuses her linguistic and cognitive analysis on expression modes used in the discourse about musical improvisation as a practice and a synesthetic experience, and on how the musicians position themselves in relation with their discourses so as to identify their individual and/or collective conceptualisations of musical improvisation. The third author analyses the verbal data with a prosodic-semantic outlook, using prosody analysis tools developed by usingcontrastive oral corpora. Reusing the cross-disciplinary approach designed within the framework of the New York study makes it possible to shed light on different facets of the improvised meetings and to compare our results between the different studies.The four musicians showed remarkable open-mindedness all along the meetings during which unexpected musical moments took place. Notions of language and vocabulary kept cropping up in individual interviews and listening sessions as tools the improvisers could use to communicate with another culture. Differences in the relationship with the audience and the way to go about concentration also emerged from the data.Thanks to the mixity of verbal and…
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Nov 6, 2015
International audienceWe collected musicians’ discourse about their practices of joint improvisat... more International audienceWe collected musicians’ discourse about their practices of joint improvisation within listening sessions that we conducted with 3 established free jazz trios a few days after the recording of their concert performance. In keeping with the self-confrontation method of Theureau (2003),we asked the musicians to exchange collectively about what they could remember of their experience and feelings on stage, and what they thought about the musical result while listening to the recording.We will present a multi-layer analysis of these verbal interactions. Our methods combine discourse and interaction analysis (Mondada & Dubois, 1995; Sawyer 2001) with semantic-prosodic analysis (Cloiseau, 2007). In addition to shedding light on joint improvisation in music, this linguistic and cognitive approach also investigates joint improvisation in discourse.We will illustrate our analysis with examples where the trios (re)build what happened during the performance based on their individual memory and through recurrent collective listening. We will focus both on deep interpersonal synchronization moments and on problematic moments where the improvisers identified discrepancies between their interpretations of each one’s actions on stage and their retrospective understanding of the musical event.To involve musicians in group discussions building on a playback of their own performance allows us to draw out collaborative reconstructions of their experience (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986), and thus contributes to a better understanding of verbal and musical improvisation processes. This study takes place in a wider research and creation project that involves outstanding free improvisers from the jazz scene of New York City (Pras, 2015). It extends a first study based on individual interviews about free improvisation practices, for which we have developed the multi-layer analysis that we present here (Cance et al., 2014)
Through a sequence of empirical studies, Paula Wolfe demonstrates how the patriarchal structure o... more Through a sequence of empirical studies, Paula Wolfe demonstrates how the patriarchal structure of our industry isolates women in music production. As an artist-producer-researcher, she spotlights the life experiences of women artists-producers who stay the course despite all the blocks. Giving a tribute to women singer-songwriters who have developed their production and promotion skills alone in their home studio, her book elaborates on the new opportunities that the digital industry offers to marginalized producers, apart from major labels. From the perspectives of an insider, researcher, and educator, I propose to also consider collective empowerment, feminist approaches of creation, and improvisation processes to preserve our inner power and stand against the status quo. Eventually, I call for 'the female gaze' inspiration that would benefit the industry at large because our globalized world needs more diversity to keep our listeners interested.
Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, 2016
Cette enquête sur la pratique de la composition improvisée a été menée auprès de 12 musiciens pro... more Cette enquête sur la pratique de la composition improvisée a été menée auprès de 12 musiciens professionnels vivant à New York et menant une carrière internationale en tant qu’improvisateurs. Ces musiciens ont été sélectionnés pour la puissance et le caractère unique de leur voix artistique, aussi pour représenter autant que possible les diversités culturelles et générationnelles qui caractérisent cette scène. Après une introduction situant leurs pratiques vis à vis de l’improvisation libre et du free jazz tels que définis dans la littérature, l’article est basé sur des citations issues d’entretiens individuels de ces musiciens, suivant un protocole de recueil et d’analyse rigoureux. Les citations sont organisées selon trois thèmes : leur définition de la composition improvisée ; leurs différentes approches artistiques ; et les liens entre leur pratique musicale et leur philosophie de vie, incluant d’éventuelles connexions politiques et/ou spirituelles. Cette analyse est illustrée d...
High-level improvising musicians master idiosyncratic gesture vocabularies that allow them to exp... more High-level improvising musicians master idiosyncratic gesture vocabularies that allow them to express themselves in unique ways. The full use of such vocabularies is nevertheless challenged when improvisers incorporate electronics in their performances. To control electronic sounds and effects, they typically use commercial interfaces whose physicality is likely to limit their freedom of movement. Based on Jim Black's descriptions of his ideal digital musical instrument, embodied improvisation gestures, and stage performance constraints, we develop the concept of a modular wearable MIDI interface to closely meet the needs of professional improvisers, rather than proposing a new generic instrument that would require substantial practice to adapt improvisational techniques already acquired. Our research draws upon different bodies of knowledge, from theoretical principles on collaboration and embodiment to wearable interface design, in order to create a digital vest called Track I...
How can you make a guitar sound full, large, and deep even if it was recorded in a bedroom? In th... more How can you make a guitar sound full, large, and deep even if it was recorded in a bedroom? In this advanced lesson, I introduce the “standard 3-point micing technique,” which picks up the different personalities of an electric guitar and amplifier with a “bright” mic, a “dark” mic, and a “back” mic. This recording approach mirrors the “standard 3-point lighting technique” and its “key” light, “fill” light, and “back” light to form the basis of most lighting approaches for video, film, and still photography. The “standard 3-point micing technique” offers multiple mixing options based on different mic combinations, creative panning, and time delay.
This study uses binaural technology for headphone monitoring in world music, jazz and free improv... more This study uses binaural technology for headphone monitoring in world music, jazz and free improvisation recording sessions. We first conducted an online survey with twelve musicians to identify the challenges they face when performing in studio with wearable monitoring devices. Then, to investigate musicians' perceived differences between binaural and stereo monitoring, we carried out three comparative tests followed by semi-directed focus groups. The survey analysis highlighted the main challenges of coping with an unusual performance situation and a lack of realism and sound quality of the auditory scene. Tests showed that binaural monitoring improved the perceived sound quality and realism, musicians' comfort and pleasure, and encouraged better musical performances and more creativity in the studio.
Special issue editor Amandine Pras introduces this issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / E... more Special issue editor Amandine Pras introduces this issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Etudes critiques en improvisation.
We evaluate the efficiency of a 3D spatialization software named Transpan in the context of mixin... more We evaluate the efficiency of a 3D spatialization software named Transpan in the context of mixing acoustic recordings on a 5.1 reproduction system. The study aims to investigate if the use of the binaural with cross-talk cancellation (XTC) processing implemented in Transpan can improve the localization of lateral sources and their stability through listeners' movements. We administered a listening test to 22 expert listeners in Paris and in Berlin. The test consisted in comparisons among two mixes with and without binaural/XTC panning, for four classical music excerpts under five listening conditions, i.e., at the sweet spot and while performing specific movements. Quantitative analysis of multiple choice questions showed that Transpan can enlarge the 5.1 sweet spot area toward the rear speakers. From qualitative analysis of participants' feedback emerged five main categories of comments, namely Localization stability; Precise localization accuracy; Vague localization accuracy; Timbral and spectral artifacts; and Spatial differences. Together the results show that Transpan allows for better source lateralization in 5.1 mixing.
Conductors face challenges when conducting the orchestra with headphones to synchronize with a so... more Conductors face challenges when conducting the orchestra with headphones to synchronize with a soundtrack or a click track. We sent a survey to 12 international conductors to identify and classify those challenges. They primarily reported on balance issues, aggressive click tracks, and the difficulty of hearing the acoustic sound of the orchestra, leading 70% of them to remove one ear out of the headphones. A solution using augmented reality monitoring through binaural rendering and head tracking was tested in various situations and showed that it could successfully reproduce the acoustic sound of the orchestra into the headphones. Another perceptual experiment evaluated the potential of realism of this solution when merging two binaural auditory scenes recorded in the same acoustic space together. Results encourage us to further develop immersive monitoring systems for conductors, with the soundtrack integrated in the real acoustic space.
While sound mixers of popular music may share common principles across cultures, different engine... more While sound mixers of popular music may share common principles across cultures, different engineers produce different mixes, and different listeners judge a mix differently. We designed a mixed-methods approach to examine this highly multidimensional problem in both style and perceived quality. Five student sound engineers from the Paris Conservatoire mixed the multitrack source of two pop songs and fully documented their mixing process. The resulting mixes were then used as stimuli for a blind, multi-stimulus listening test in a high-quality listening room, that 13 students and one faculty member commented on and rated in terms of preference. Our outcomes highlight cultural and generational mixing specificities and offer a better understanding of the artistic side of the practice.
Advances in Fundamental and Applied Research on Spatial Audio
Musicians face challenges when using stereo headphones to perform with one another, due to a lack... more Musicians face challenges when using stereo headphones to perform with one another, due to a lack of audio intelligibility and the loss of their usual benchmarks. Also, high levels of click tracks in headphone mixes hinder performance subtleties and harm performers’ aural health. This chapter discusses the approaches and outcomes of eight case studies in professional situations that aimed at comparing the experiences of orchestra conductors and instrumentalists while monitoring their performances through binaural versus stereo headphones. These studies assessed three solutions combining augmented and mixed reality technologies that include binaural with head tracking to conduct a large film-scoring orchestra and jazz symphonic with a click track; binaural without head tracking to improvise in trio or on previously recorded takes in the studio; and active binaural headphones to record diverse genres on a click track or soundtrack. Findings concur to show that better audio intelligibi...
During recording sessions, record producers and sound engineers play the role of cultural interme... more During recording sessions, record producers and sound engineers play the role of cultural intermediaries between musicians and their future audience. Their role differs from that of artistic leaders, such as film directors, who express their own ideas through a collective creative process. Studio professionals aim to achieve the best possible representation of a given musical project, similarly to photographers, whose goal is to capture the most significant image of their models. Recently, the delocalisation of well-equipped studios to home studios, combined with the collapse of the traditional business model of record companies, has led musicians to produce their recordings without necessarily hiring studio professionals. And when hired by musicians, producers and engineers often take on both roles at once. This client relationship without the intermediary of record companies modifies the collaborative aspects of the production process. In such a do-it-yourself context, studio professionals need to reinvent their job while musicians need to learn the art of recording and define their expectations when collaborating with studio professionals. This chapter is based on my professional and teaching experience, as well as five research studies conducted with professional producers, engineers, and musicians. In three sections, it highlights the best practices in conducting recording sessions from the perspectives of musicians and studio professionals coming from different musical backgrounds, countries, and generations. The first section focuses on the preparation of studio sessions to produce successful musical recordings. The second discusses record producers' and sound engineers' skills, as well as the mission and specificities of each profession. The third addresses the myths of artistic direction by making explicit the impact of producers ' comments on musical performance.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 1, 2015
International audienceFollowing a cross-disciplinary approach, we will explore two different musi... more International audienceFollowing a cross-disciplinary approach, we will explore two different musical improvisation cultures, one issuing from the jazz tradition in the United States, the other from Northern Indian classical named Hindustani music. At the crossroads of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cognitive linguistics, this trans-cultural study stems from an ethnographic project lead within the New York free improvisation scene, carried out through the analysis of interviews and listening sessions following studio and public performance recordings (Cance & Cloiseau, 2015 ; Pras, in revision). In January 2015, two of the most active musicians taking part in the ethnographic study, Jim Black, (drums), and Mickaël Attias (saxophone), improvised for the first time with two Indian masters, Subhajyoti Guha (tabla), and Sougata Roy Choudhurym (sarod), both accustomed to improvising in musical contexts outside the Hindustani tradition. The gatherings mainly aim at bringing under scrutiny how these outstanding improvisers adapt to a totally novel situation.The idea of bringing into contact both these improvisation cultures came from a personal observation of the first author—listening to 60s’ Afro-American free jazz and traditional Hindustani music provided her with a similar type of energy, which is part and parcel of both musical genres. Both genres have met several times in the past, with the famous example of John Coltrane who went to study in India towards the end of his life in order to stretch out the limits of his improvisations (Turner, 1975), and that of the sitar player Ravi Shankar who might have described jazz as a child’s game (quoted by Farrell, 2000, p.189), but whose collaborations with American musicians significantly influenced Hindustani musical traditions (Slawek, 1993). Our transcultural study was conducted in close collaboration with Jonathan and Andrew Kay, two Toronto born jazz saxophone players who have been living for eight years in Kolkota where they are the students of a Hindustani music guru. In the wake of John Coltrane, J. and A. Kay are searching for an improvised music that transcends tradition and culture.Before the joint improvised sessions, the first author carried out individual interviews with the two Indian masters to investigate their personal improvisation processes. Our interview guide was made up of questions quite similar to those used for the New York study, which enablesus to compare the answers on both musicological and linguistic grounds. However, on consulting J. and A. Kay, some terms were adapted so that our questions might take into account the specificity of local improvisation tradition. The questions go over the earliest improvisation experiences, the current motivations of the musicians to keep on playing, and how their improvisation might be tied to their personal lives. « Improvised meetings » consisted of four duos each of which brought together an Indian and a New York musician, followed by a quatuor session and a quatuor concert. The experimental procedure for duos—an alternation of improvisation, listening and individual and collective interview phases was elaborated from Jacques Theureau’s (2010) self-assessment interview approach, from the meeting of two instigators of free jazz with a young artist from the NewYork noise scene (Pras & Lavergne, en révision), and from two psychology case studies about understanding and misunderstanding between improvisers who play together for the first time (Pras et al., 2015 ; Schober & Spiro, 2014).Our collaborative analysis of verbal descriptions is carried out simultaneously along three axes. The first author looks into the contents of the data, mainly for musicological and cultural aspects linked with the musical excerpts selected by the musicians. The second author focuses her linguistic and cognitive analysis on expression modes used in the discourse about musical improvisation as a practice and a synesthetic experience, and on how the musicians position themselves in relation with their discourses so as to identify their individual and/or collective conceptualisations of musical improvisation. The third author analyses the verbal data with a prosodic-semantic outlook, using prosody analysis tools developed by usingcontrastive oral corpora. Reusing the cross-disciplinary approach designed within the framework of the New York study makes it possible to shed light on different facets of the improvised meetings and to compare our results between the different studies.The four musicians showed remarkable open-mindedness all along the meetings during which unexpected musical moments took place. Notions of language and vocabulary kept cropping up in individual interviews and listening sessions as tools the improvisers could use to communicate with another culture. Differences in the relationship with the audience and the way to go about concentration also emerged from the data.Thanks to the mixity of verbal and…
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Nov 6, 2015
International audienceWe collected musicians’ discourse about their practices of joint improvisat... more International audienceWe collected musicians’ discourse about their practices of joint improvisation within listening sessions that we conducted with 3 established free jazz trios a few days after the recording of their concert performance. In keeping with the self-confrontation method of Theureau (2003),we asked the musicians to exchange collectively about what they could remember of their experience and feelings on stage, and what they thought about the musical result while listening to the recording.We will present a multi-layer analysis of these verbal interactions. Our methods combine discourse and interaction analysis (Mondada & Dubois, 1995; Sawyer 2001) with semantic-prosodic analysis (Cloiseau, 2007). In addition to shedding light on joint improvisation in music, this linguistic and cognitive approach also investigates joint improvisation in discourse.We will illustrate our analysis with examples where the trios (re)build what happened during the performance based on their individual memory and through recurrent collective listening. We will focus both on deep interpersonal synchronization moments and on problematic moments where the improvisers identified discrepancies between their interpretations of each one’s actions on stage and their retrospective understanding of the musical event.To involve musicians in group discussions building on a playback of their own performance allows us to draw out collaborative reconstructions of their experience (Clark & Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986), and thus contributes to a better understanding of verbal and musical improvisation processes. This study takes place in a wider research and creation project that involves outstanding free improvisers from the jazz scene of New York City (Pras, 2015). It extends a first study based on individual interviews about free improvisation practices, for which we have developed the multi-layer analysis that we present here (Cance et al., 2014)
Through a sequence of empirical studies, Paula Wolfe demonstrates how the patriarchal structure o... more Through a sequence of empirical studies, Paula Wolfe demonstrates how the patriarchal structure of our industry isolates women in music production. As an artist-producer-researcher, she spotlights the life experiences of women artists-producers who stay the course despite all the blocks. Giving a tribute to women singer-songwriters who have developed their production and promotion skills alone in their home studio, her book elaborates on the new opportunities that the digital industry offers to marginalized producers, apart from major labels. From the perspectives of an insider, researcher, and educator, I propose to also consider collective empowerment, feminist approaches of creation, and improvisation processes to preserve our inner power and stand against the status quo. Eventually, I call for 'the female gaze' inspiration that would benefit the industry at large because our globalized world needs more diversity to keep our listeners interested.
Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, 2016
Cette enquête sur la pratique de la composition improvisée a été menée auprès de 12 musiciens pro... more Cette enquête sur la pratique de la composition improvisée a été menée auprès de 12 musiciens professionnels vivant à New York et menant une carrière internationale en tant qu’improvisateurs. Ces musiciens ont été sélectionnés pour la puissance et le caractère unique de leur voix artistique, aussi pour représenter autant que possible les diversités culturelles et générationnelles qui caractérisent cette scène. Après une introduction situant leurs pratiques vis à vis de l’improvisation libre et du free jazz tels que définis dans la littérature, l’article est basé sur des citations issues d’entretiens individuels de ces musiciens, suivant un protocole de recueil et d’analyse rigoureux. Les citations sont organisées selon trois thèmes : leur définition de la composition improvisée ; leurs différentes approches artistiques ; et les liens entre leur pratique musicale et leur philosophie de vie, incluant d’éventuelles connexions politiques et/ou spirituelles. Cette analyse est illustrée d...
High-level improvising musicians master idiosyncratic gesture vocabularies that allow them to exp... more High-level improvising musicians master idiosyncratic gesture vocabularies that allow them to express themselves in unique ways. The full use of such vocabularies is nevertheless challenged when improvisers incorporate electronics in their performances. To control electronic sounds and effects, they typically use commercial interfaces whose physicality is likely to limit their freedom of movement. Based on Jim Black's descriptions of his ideal digital musical instrument, embodied improvisation gestures, and stage performance constraints, we develop the concept of a modular wearable MIDI interface to closely meet the needs of professional improvisers, rather than proposing a new generic instrument that would require substantial practice to adapt improvisational techniques already acquired. Our research draws upon different bodies of knowledge, from theoretical principles on collaboration and embodiment to wearable interface design, in order to create a digital vest called Track I...
How can you make a guitar sound full, large, and deep even if it was recorded in a bedroom? In th... more How can you make a guitar sound full, large, and deep even if it was recorded in a bedroom? In this advanced lesson, I introduce the “standard 3-point micing technique,” which picks up the different personalities of an electric guitar and amplifier with a “bright” mic, a “dark” mic, and a “back” mic. This recording approach mirrors the “standard 3-point lighting technique” and its “key” light, “fill” light, and “back” light to form the basis of most lighting approaches for video, film, and still photography. The “standard 3-point micing technique” offers multiple mixing options based on different mic combinations, creative panning, and time delay.
This study uses binaural technology for headphone monitoring in world music, jazz and free improv... more This study uses binaural technology for headphone monitoring in world music, jazz and free improvisation recording sessions. We first conducted an online survey with twelve musicians to identify the challenges they face when performing in studio with wearable monitoring devices. Then, to investigate musicians' perceived differences between binaural and stereo monitoring, we carried out three comparative tests followed by semi-directed focus groups. The survey analysis highlighted the main challenges of coping with an unusual performance situation and a lack of realism and sound quality of the auditory scene. Tests showed that binaural monitoring improved the perceived sound quality and realism, musicians' comfort and pleasure, and encouraged better musical performances and more creativity in the studio.
Special issue editor Amandine Pras introduces this issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / E... more Special issue editor Amandine Pras introduces this issue of Critical Studies in Improvisation / Etudes critiques en improvisation.
We evaluate the efficiency of a 3D spatialization software named Transpan in the context of mixin... more We evaluate the efficiency of a 3D spatialization software named Transpan in the context of mixing acoustic recordings on a 5.1 reproduction system. The study aims to investigate if the use of the binaural with cross-talk cancellation (XTC) processing implemented in Transpan can improve the localization of lateral sources and their stability through listeners' movements. We administered a listening test to 22 expert listeners in Paris and in Berlin. The test consisted in comparisons among two mixes with and without binaural/XTC panning, for four classical music excerpts under five listening conditions, i.e., at the sweet spot and while performing specific movements. Quantitative analysis of multiple choice questions showed that Transpan can enlarge the 5.1 sweet spot area toward the rear speakers. From qualitative analysis of participants' feedback emerged five main categories of comments, namely Localization stability; Precise localization accuracy; Vague localization accuracy; Timbral and spectral artifacts; and Spatial differences. Together the results show that Transpan allows for better source lateralization in 5.1 mixing.
Conductors face challenges when conducting the orchestra with headphones to synchronize with a so... more Conductors face challenges when conducting the orchestra with headphones to synchronize with a soundtrack or a click track. We sent a survey to 12 international conductors to identify and classify those challenges. They primarily reported on balance issues, aggressive click tracks, and the difficulty of hearing the acoustic sound of the orchestra, leading 70% of them to remove one ear out of the headphones. A solution using augmented reality monitoring through binaural rendering and head tracking was tested in various situations and showed that it could successfully reproduce the acoustic sound of the orchestra into the headphones. Another perceptual experiment evaluated the potential of realism of this solution when merging two binaural auditory scenes recorded in the same acoustic space together. Results encourage us to further develop immersive monitoring systems for conductors, with the soundtrack integrated in the real acoustic space.
While sound mixers of popular music may share common principles across cultures, different engine... more While sound mixers of popular music may share common principles across cultures, different engineers produce different mixes, and different listeners judge a mix differently. We designed a mixed-methods approach to examine this highly multidimensional problem in both style and perceived quality. Five student sound engineers from the Paris Conservatoire mixed the multitrack source of two pop songs and fully documented their mixing process. The resulting mixes were then used as stimuli for a blind, multi-stimulus listening test in a high-quality listening room, that 13 students and one faculty member commented on and rated in terms of preference. Our outcomes highlight cultural and generational mixing specificities and offer a better understanding of the artistic side of the practice.
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