AFMG Network Forum

Lindsay Smith · Member

I am in the process of using AURA and EARS to create an auralization of a space with a paging system. I have an ambient crowd noise recording that I would like to add add for background noise. I intend to mix the auralized sound and the background but am having trouble determining what is an appropriate balance between the two. I don't want to auralize the background noise because its not coming from a speaker.

One approach would be to map a 1000Hz tone at 0dB and determine the level at a chosen listener's seat for a given amount of power feeding the speaker. Then auralize the same tone and compare those two levels and from there figure out the ratio between background and auralized sound.

At present I am not concerned with calibrating playback to a certain level although that shouldn't be too difficult using the same tone and a meter.

Will this work? Is there a more appropriate or easier way to do this? I am trying to create the most accurate simulation I can, so any tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Lindsay Smith

stevenliddle · Member

I'm just about to try a similar thing - did you get any results that worked for you?

I thought about mixing the convolved audio and the crowd noise in an external mixer pre the loudspeakers/headphones - that would allow you to play with the relative levels in real time but there is the problem of absolute calibration that you alluded to.

esonic · Member

Some wave editor programs have a metering function, i remember using early versions of cool-edit, here you can get a reading of relative/absolute leverls. EASERA should give you this, i use DIRAC, which can analyze both impulse responses, or plain recorded wav.

Auralize the speech file and mix it with the noise file, either recorded or generated, some information is listed in the help file of the named program.

This worked also with recorded stipa signals, as an equivalent of speech.

regards, audiopartner e-sonic