Experimental Methods in Acoustics

The first day builds a solid foundation in the signal processing techniques behind acoustic measurements. In the morning, participants explore LTI systems, noise and nonlinearity handling, windowing and zero-padding, and deconvolution methods for sweep excitation signals — with hands-on notebooks covering signal deconvolution and IR post-processing. The day further covers the calibration of the measurement chain from single-value and frequency-dependent calibration to FIR/IIR filter design, with interactive tutorials on common applications.

This day addresses how to quantify, model, and manage uncertainty in acoustic measurements. It starts with the fundamentals — models of measurement uncertainty, the GUM framework, and round robin testing — before turning to sources of uncertainty in the measurement chain itself, such as transducers, ADCs, and noise. The day also covers hands-on application examples.

State of the art measurement of structural vibrations

This day focuses on the use of microphone arrays to decompose complex sound fields. Participants learn how array measurements can be used to decompose and analyze as well as reconstruct and extrapolate sound field quantities such as pressure, particle velocity, and intensity, with applications to sound fields in reverberant rooms.

This day covers the identification and characterization of non-LTI acoustic systems, such as those involving moving sound sources or receiver arrays. Topics will include estimating spatially dynamic room impulse responses and state-space estimation approaches using room acoustic model-based priors.