aiqbench analysis
This research demonstrates the feasibility of estimating room impulse responses directly from natural handclaps using a deep neural network, eliminating the need for known excitation signals or specialized equipment. By training on a diverse dataset of 2,540 claps, the proposed method significantly outperforms traditional windowing baselines and ensures consistent spectral inference across different acoustic environments. This advancement in signal processing leverages machine learning to solve long-standing challenges in room acoustics without relying on artificial sound sources.
Estimation of Room Impulse Responses from Handclaps
arXiv:2609.35839v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Handclaps provide an equipment-free excitation for room acoustics, but their unknown and variable source waveform makes room impulse response (RIR) estimation challenging. In this work, we investigate whether RIRs can be estimated directly from handclaps. To this end, we introduce an anechoic handclap dataset containing 2,540 claps from 17 participants, designed to capture variability across natural claps and different hand configurations. We first establish the performance attainable when the excitation clap is known using regularized deconvolution, and show that approximating the unknown excitation by windowing the direct sound from the reverberant recording is insufficient. To estimate the RIR without a known excitation, we propose using the anechoic handclap recordings to train a deep neural network with a supervised regression objective. Evaluated on a controlled synthetic benchmark, the proposed neural regressor significantly outperforms windowing-based baselines across all instrumental metrics. Furthermore, we test the proposed method on handclap recordings measured in real acoustic spaces, showing that the inferred RIR spectra are consistent across different handclap measurements taken in the same room location. These results showcase the feasibility of directly estimating RIRs from natural handclaps without requiring knowledge of the excitation signal.
Abstract:Handclaps provide an equipment-free excitation for room acoustics, but their unknown and variable source waveform makes room impulse response (RIR) estimation challenging. In this work, we investigate whether RIRs can be estimated directly from handclaps. To this end, we introduce an anechoic handclap dataset containing 2,540 claps from 17 participants, designed to capture variability across natural claps and different hand configurations. We first establish the performance attainable when the excitation clap is known using regularized deconvolution, and show that approximating the unknown excitation by windowing the direct sound from the reverberant recording is insufficient. To estimate the RIR without a known excitation, we propose using the anechoic handclap recordings to train a deep neural network with a supervised regression objective. Evaluated on a controlled synthetic benchmark, the proposed neural regressor significantly outperforms windowing-based baselines across all instrumental metrics. Furthermore, we test the proposed method on handclap recordings measured in real acoustic spaces, showing that the inferred RIR spectra are consistent across different handclap measurements taken in the same room location. These results showcase the feasibility of directly estimating RIRs from natural handclaps without requiring knowledge of the excitation signal.
Sound (cs.SD); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2609.35839 [cs.SD]
(or arXiv:2609.35839v1 [cs.SD] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.35839 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 283 words
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