Sound events can carry multiple information, related to the sound source and to ambient environment. However, it is well-known that sound evokes emotions, a fact that is verified by works in the disciplines of Music Emotion Recognition and Music Information Retrieval that focused on the impact of music to emotions. In this work we introduce the concept of affective acoustic ecology that extends the above relation to the general concept of sound events. Towards this aim, we define sound event as a novel audio structure with multiple components. We further investigate the application of existing emotion models employed for music affective analysis to sonic, non-musical, content. The obtained results indicate that although such application is feasible, no significant trends and classification outcomes are observed that would allow the definition of an analytic relation between the technical characteristics of a sound event waveform and raised emotions.

Legacy technologies for word recognition can benefit from emerging affective voice retrieval, potentially leading to intelligent applications for smart houses enhanced with new features. In this work we introduce the implementation of a system, capable to react to common spoken words, taking into account the estimated vocal stress level, thus allowing the realization of a prioritized, affective aural interaction path. Upon the successful word recognition and the corresponding stress level estimation, the system triggers particular affective-prioritized actions, defined within the application scope of an intelligent home environment. Application results show that the established affective interaction path significantly improves the ambient intelligence provided by an affective vocal sensor that can be easily integrated with any sensor-based home monitoring system.

The use of reflectors for the optimal sound diffusion is a major issue in Room Acoustics. Up to now, the applied reflectors are stable, with certain shape and made by conventional materials. In the present is studied the possibility to replace the conventional reflectors by new, manufactured by composite materials. The aim is to design flexible “intelligent” reflectors that will adapt their shape depending on the certain acoustical needs of a room. This change is planned to be actuated using embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) wires. The adaptation process will be controlled automatically by an electronic system. In order to control damage initiation and growth within the composite panel, an optical fibres network will be applied.

A platform for a flexible, smart microphone system using available hardware components is presented. Three subsystems are employed, specifically: (a) a set of digital MEMs microphones, with a one-bit serial output; (b) a preprocessing/digital-to-digital converter; and (c) a CPU/DSP-based embedded system with I2S connectivity. Basic preprocessing functions, such as noise gating and filtering can be performed in the preprocessing stage, while application-specific algorithms such as word spotting, beam-forming, and reverberation suppression can be handled by the embedded system. Widely used high-level operating systems are supported including drivers for a number of peripheral devices. Finally, an employment scenario for a wireless home automation speech activated front-end sensor system using the platform is analyzed.

Modern mobile, hand-held devices offer enhanced capabilities for video and sound reproduction. Nevertheless, major restrictions imposed by their limited size render them inconvenient for headset-free stereo sound reproduction, since the corresponding short-distant loudspeakers placement physically narrows the perceived stereo sound localization potential. In this work, we aim at evaluating a spatial enhancement technique for small-size mobile devices. This technique extracts the original panning information from an original stereo recording and spatially extends it using appropriate binaural rendering. A sequence of subjective tests performed shows that the derived spatial perceptual impression is significantly improved in all test cases considered, rendering the proposed technique an attractive approach towards headset-free mobile audio reproduction.