HUMAN PERCEPTION AND SIGNAL PROCESSING - THE MISSING LINK?
Signal
processing is present and has a significant role in the daily life of
almost all human beings – from ordinary domestic appliances to echo
cancellation in mobile phones, compression of audio and video signals,
search engines for music and video and music databases and so on and so
on….and constantly increasing processing power makes for an almost
endless list of possible applications. But, and this is a significant
“but”, almost everybody has experienced a situation where all the
possibilities for control/adjustment/calibration is of no benefit to
the user either because it is impossible for the user to understand
what is going on or because the “processing” does not benefit the
specific intentions or context of the user. The missing link is often a
basic knowledge of the relationship between what is being controlled or
processed and the human perception of the introduced changes. The study
of the relationship between changes in the physical world and the
corresponding changes in human perception is the science called
“psychophysics” or sensory science in a broader context. The purpose of
this talk is to highlight a number of cases from Bang & Olufsen’s
audio/video portfolio where sensory science has been applied and the
results implemented in products such that, for example, the perceived
video quality remains constant independent of changes in the physical
environment surrounding the product or in the signal entering the
product. This talk will also include a discussion of the experimental
paradigms that make it possible to quantify perceived impressions into
objective data that can be used to establish valid psychophysical
relationships.
Head of Research, Dr. Søren Bech
Bang & Olufsen
Struer, Denmark