MYRiAD: a multi-array room acoustic database

• Published in: EURASIP journal on audio, speech, and music processing Vol. 2023; no. 1; pp. 17 - 14
• Main Authors: Dietzen, Thomas, Ali, Randall, Taseska, Maja, van Waterschoot, Toon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 26.04.2023; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Acoustic signal processing; Acoustics; Algorithms; Arrays; Audio signals; Cocktail party noise; Configurations; Ear; Empirical Research; Engineering; Engineering Acoustics; Laboratories; Loudspeaker array; Loudspeakers; Mathematics in Music; Microphone array; Microphones; Programming languages; Recording; Room acoustic database; Room impulse response; Signal processing; Signal,Image and Speech Processing; Teleconferencing; Microphone array; Room impulse response; Cocktail party noise; Room acoustic database; Acoustic signal processing; Loudspeaker array
• ISSN: 1687-4722; 1687-4714; 1687-4722
• DOI: 10.1186/s13636-023-00284-9

In the development of acoustic signal processing algorithms, their evaluation in various acoustic environments is of utmost importance. In order to advance evaluation in realistic and reproducible scenarios, several high-quality acoustic databases have been developed over the years. In this paper, we present another complementary database of acoustic recordings, referred to as the Multi-arraY Room Acoustic Database (MYRiAD). The MYRiAD database is unique in its diversity of microphone configurations suiting a wide range of enhancement and reproduction applications (such as assistive hearing, teleconferencing, or sound zoning), the acoustics of the two recording spaces, and the variety of contained signals including 1214 room impulse responses (RIRs), reproduced speech, music, and stationary noise, as well as recordings of live cocktail parties held in both rooms. The microphone configurations comprise a dummy head (DH) with in-ear omnidirectional microphones, two behind-the-ear (BTE) pieces equipped with 2 omnidirectional microphones each, 5 external omnidirectional microphones (XMs), and two concentric circular microphone arrays (CMAs) consisting of 12 omnidirectional microphones in total. The two recording spaces, namely the SONORA Audio Laboratory (SAL) and the Alamire Interactive Laboratory (AIL), have reverberation times of 2.1 s and 0.5 s, respectively. Audio signals were reproduced using 10 movable loudspeakers in the SAL and a built-in array of 24 loudspeakers in the AIL. MATLAB and Python scripts are included for accessing the signals as well as microphone and loudspeaker coordinates. The database is publicly available ( https://zenodo.org/record/7389996 ).