— AES APEI initiative hosts online sessions on Automotive Audio, exploring practical approaches in designing and implementing automotive sound systems —

New York, NY, January 13, 2021 — The Audio Product Education Institute (APEI), an initiative of the Audio Engineering Society, will host the first of a series of webinars on Automotive Audio on Tuesday, January 19 (12:00pm EST). Titled “Direct Validation of Computational Acoustic Results for Automotive Cabin Simulations,” the webinar will explore automotive sound system implementation and design in a program presented by APEI’s Automotive Pillar Chair Roger Shively (Co-founder and Principal, JJR Acoustics, Seattle, WA). Featured presentations will explore simulation, visualization, tuning and auralization of a car cabin by industry experts Mads Herring Jensen (technical product manager for the Acoustics Module of COMSOL) and Christof Faller (founder and managing director, Illusonic).

Jensen’s session, “Modeling Strategies and Techniques in Car Cabin Acoustics” will cover the important role that simulation and virtual models play in the integration of sound systems into the car cabin environment as well as their calibration. Various modeling approaches and techniques used when assessing these systems will be discussed. Jensen will explain how the low to mid frequency behavior of car cabins is captured with a full wave models, while the high frequency behavior is typically captured with ray acoustics techniques, along with the emergence of new numerical methods and improved hardware shifts the frequency at which ray techniques are applied. The presentation also discusses boundary conditions as well as source characterization.

 Faller’s presentation, “Visualizing, Tuning, and Auralizing Car Cabin Simulation Results,” will discuss a useful method for visualizing the results from an FEA or Ray Tracing models, where impulse response information is taken directly from a simulation model or generated from amplitude and phase measurement and imported into an Illusonic tool for reviewing time and frequency data for each point in the measurement data file. In automotive applications, the number of data points could correspond with microphones set in an array for each listening position. The resulting data can be grouped for review and comparison to measured data for the purpose of model updates. The data can also be grouped and averaged for a virtual equalization as well as auralization. This process will be reviewed and demonstrated.

 Opening remarks and a question-and-answer period following the two sessions will be led by Shively, guided by the perspective of his 34 years of experience in engineering research and development, which includes significant experience in product realization and in launching new products at OEM manufacturers around the world.

This AES Audio Product Education Institute’s Automotive Audio webinar is part of an ongoing event series that underscores the AES’s commitment to providing its membership and the industry at large with practical knowledge in designing and implementing real-world applications and innovative sound systems.