Press and Media

The measuring instrument manufacturer RTW and scientists from the Fraunhofer IDMT are developing a new analysis tool for sound engineers as part of the »SI4B« research project.

At this year’s NAB Show, the world’s largest convention for the digital media industry, taking place April 18 – 21 in Las Vegas, Fraunhofer IDMT for the first time will be presenting its “Audio Forensics Toolbox”. The software package allows users to detect traces of previous editing and encoding steps in audio material, in order to assess the quality of recordings and optimize workflows in production processes.

Tomorrow the international trade fair of technologies and services for entertainment, integrated systems and creation will start in Frankfurt am Main. Fraunhofer IDMT will be presenting »RSM Pro«, the new object based room simulation feature, which now has been integrated into »SpatialSound Wave«, Fraunhofer’s system for producing and replaying true-to-life 3D sound. Using RSM Pro, room parameters and sound reflections can be set individually to make things sound really natural.

On March 23, 2016, Zoo Leipzig will be presenting its new interactive great ape watching station to the public. Part of the station will be the intelligent face recognition software developed by Fraunhofer, which will be used for automatic identification of individual chimpanzees living in Pongoland (what the ape enclosure at Zoo Leipzig is called). Visitors at Zoo Leipzig may use the system to request information about each individual animal in the compound.

Aachen/Oldenburg. At this year’s Annual Conference on Acoustics (DAGA) in Aachen, the German Acoustical Society (DEGA) today gave the Lothar Cremer Award for outstanding achievements by young scientists to Dr. rer. nat. Jan Rennies-Hochmuth. With the award, the society thus recognises his research work on auditory perception and particularly on speech intelligibility in environments with reverberation, echo and interference noise.

There is a special piano teacher, always available and always listening closely to what the students are playing. His name is Skoove, and he has been around since November 2015. Skoove is a browser-based learning platform that offers interactive lessons for students who want to learn to play the piano, electric piano, or keyboard. What makes Skoove so special is that students receive immediate feedback on their performance as they play. This is made possible by the melody recognition algorithm developed by Fraunhofer IDMT.

Oldenburg/Berlin. Working in call and service centres demands a high level of concentration. Employees have to access information from different databases during communication with the customer. Listening to other people talk for hours on the telephone also demands mental effort – particularly if a large number of employees are talking on the phone at the same time in an open-plan office and the background noise level is correspondingly high. Scientists at the Fraunhofer IDMT will present a software application at this year’s Call Center World in Berlin from 23 to 25 February which allows service staff to adapt the telephone signal output to their individual hearing needs. Studies show that the technology permits a significant improvement in speech intelligibility particularly in conditions with ambient noise or poor signal quality.

Oldenburg. Loudspeaker announcements at railway stations are often incomprehensible, since the surroundings are noisy. With new software, the clarity of such announcements can be considerably improved. A microphone picks up ambient noise and adjusts the spoken messages perfectly to the noise level. Even calls over mobile phones will be understood more easily with the help of this technology.

At LEARNTEC, taking place January 26 – 28 in Karlsruhe, the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT will be presenting askMe!, a new interactive and personalized learning tool allowing users to test their knowledge and prepare themselves for exams. Optimized for with smartphones and tablet PCs, the tool can now be used also while being on the move.

»FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE« is a programme organised by the German Commission for UNESCO and L´Oréal Deutschland in collaboration with the foundation of Nobel Prize winner Christiane-Nüsslein-Volhard which recognises highly-qualified young female scientists with children who are destined for future management roles. Lena Schell-Majoor, a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, is one of this year’s award winners.

Until now, reporting and accounting of musical content used in TV shows, spots, intro sequences and as background music in talk-shows and TV interviews was only based on rough estimates. Given that these estimates have a critical impact on the remuneration of the right holders, Fraunhofer IDMT has developed a new technology that allows automatic and efficient detection of speech and music content in the daily or weekly TV broadcasts. The public German TV broadcasters ARD and ZDF now rely on Fraunhofer IDMT’s music and speech detection technology to analyze their channels in the German Broadcasting Archive.

Oldenburg/London. The Fraunhofer IDMT will be represented at the “Summer Science Exhibition” of the Royal Society in London from 30 June to 5 July 2015 as part of the EU DREAMS project. Together with research partners, scientists from the Project Group for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology will demonstrate how audio signal processing can decisively improve the intelligibility of speech even in environments with a high level of reverberation and interference noise.

Oldenburg/Hamburg. Attending a public event, such as a theater performance, movie show, oral presentation, or football match, can be severely compromised if an individual has difficulties in understanding speech. »MobileConnect« and »CinemaConnect« are two apps made by Sennheiser which allow attendees to enjoy the live sound of a public event over WLAN streaming using their smartphones. The two apps now feature a new function, named »Personal Hearing«, which allows users not only to change the volume level of the audio signal they receive, but also to optimize speech intelligibility and sound quality according to their individual hearing requirements. The signal processing technology was developed by the Oldenburg-based Project Group for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology of Fraunhofer IDMT.

Oldenburg/Frankfurt. At this year’s »Zukunft Lebensräume« trade fair, the Fraunhofer IDMT and six of its industry partners will present hearing, speech and audio technologies that make life easier for older people in particular.

At Prolight & Sound, taking place April 15 – 18 in Frankfurt, Fraunhofer IDMT and Salzbrenner Stagetec Mediagroup will be presenting the new ’POLARIS evolution’ mixing console, which features Fraunhofer’s SpatialSound Wave technology.

At this year’s Hannover Messe, being on April 13th until 17th, Fraunhofer IDMT will present two new tools at the Thüringer Gemeinschaftsstand (common booth of Thuringian enterprises run by the Thuringian Ministry of Economy): the new version of the Micro-Sleep Alerter which recognizes when the driver has a micro sleep, comes with improved algorithms and hardware; the Eyetracker, a system for 3D monitoring of a person’s line of gaze, which can be used for a wide range of diverse applications.

At NAB Show, the world’s largest convention for the digital media industry, taking place April 13 – 16 in Las Vegas (Nevada, USA), Fraunhofer IDMT will be presenting it’s A/V Analyzing Toolbox, a collection of components for analyzing and optimizing processes for broadcasting, distributing, and archiving digital content. Besides a number of previously introduced components, such as quality control of audio and video content (QC Components) or automatic measurement of the exact amount of music in radio and TV programs, the Fraunhofer experts will be showcasing a new tool for efficient management of video data in large archives.

Playing an instrument is a lot of fun. But with the growing musicianship often the wish comes up with interpreting pieces of music freely and to jam accordingly to a song. With the new Emused app developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, you can learn musical improvisation in a completely interactive way.

To detect weak points of products preferably during the product development phase, and to assess a product’s market potential, usability tests are extremely helpful. Unfortunately, these tests are usually quite expensive and require a lot of time. CoALa (Collaborative Analysis Lab) by Fraunhofer IDMT is an easy to use tool for efficient determination of users’ assessments and preferences. The tool will be presented for the first time at the CeBIT 2015.

Oldenburg/Wedemark. Audio specialist Sennheiser has developed new wireless headphones with the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT. The RS 195 compensates for age-related hearing loss through personalized sound adjustments that can be adapted to each user’s preferences and individual hearing levels.

»Bringing music of the future into people’s everyday lives« - that is the vision of Stefan Zaradić, the CEO of zaraproduction, a renowned recording studio located in Munich. To turn this vision into reality, Stefan Zaradić has equipped his studio with the necessary technical infrastructure: with the help of Fraunhofer IDMT and Georg Neumann GmbH (a subsidiary of Sennheiser Group), zaraproduction has installed “SpatialSound Wave“, the 3D sound system developed by Fraunhofer IDMT.

Oldenburg. The sound of a cough can provide an initial indication of what therapy is required for treatment. Working on behalf of Boehringer Ingelheim, scientists in the Oldenburg Project Group for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology at the Fraunhofer IDMT have developed an app that analyzes cough noises and provides an assessment of whether the cough is a dry cough or a productive cough. The free app with the name “Silometer Husten-Tester” is available for iPhone and Android.