Digital signal processing for audio applications: Then, now and the future

Abstract

In the last fifty years, the development of new technologies has enabled machines to sustain the ever increasing computational load, thus providing the implementation capability requested by real time applications. In this context, digital signal processing played an important role especially with relation to audio systems. Several approaches have been proposed to solve the main issues of the audio field in complex scenarios, including advanced audio rendering applications and acoustic monitoring systems exploiting multirate adaptive algorithms, machine learning techniques and deep neural circuits. Following this trend and based on our experience, the future will witness the joint use of these techniques to design applications able to improve quality and comfort of people’s daily life. Among them, in this contribution we want to focus on the employment of advanced audio augmented reality solutions, involving both virtual audio sensors and transducers, to design enhanced spatial hearing experiences in diverse application contexts, spanning from entertainment to safety.