This collaborative project will undertake basic research leading to a means of measuring the perceived spatial quality of sound processing equipment in an objective fashion. This will enable the automatic evaluation of degradations in spatial quality, as compared with an unimpaired reference. Such a system needs to be able to evaluate the quality of spatial sound reproduced by arbitrary rendering formats and loudspeaker layouts, so the research is based on the idea of modelling and evaluating the reproduced sound field at the listening position rather than measuring the reproduced audio signals themselves. This is needed because current standards for audio quality measurement do not take spatial factors into account.Test signals and perceptually relevant measurements will be designed to evaluate the spatial performance of the device under test followed by the prediction of a perceptual 'difference grade' between a reference spatial audio representation and an impaired representation. This requires the mapping of objective measurements to listening test results and the development of context-senstive statistical models that take into account the type of programme material involved.

The SOUNDS European Training Network (ETN) revolves around a new and promising paradigm coined as Service- Oriented, Ubiquitous, Network-Driven Sound. Inspired by the ubiquity of mobile and wearable devices capable of capturing, processing, and reproducing sound, the SOUNDS ETN aims to bring audio technology to a new level by exploiting network-enabled cooperation between devices. We envision the next generation of audio devices to be capable of providing enhanced hearing assistance, creating immersive audio experience, enabling advanced voice control and much more, by seamlessly exchanging signals and parameter settings, and spatially analyzing and reproducing sound jointly with other nearby audio devices and infrastructure. Moreover, such functionality should be self-organizing, flexible, and scalable, requiring minimal user interaction for adapting to changes in the environment or network. It is anticipated that this paradigm will eventually result in an entirely new way of designing and using audio technology, by considering audio as a service enabled through shared infrastructure, rather than as a device-specific functionality limited by the capabilities and constraints of a single user device. To attain this paradigm shift in audio technology not only requires additional research but also calls for a new generation of qualified researchers with a transdisciplinary and international scientific profile, strong collaborative research and research management skills, and the intersectoral expertise needed to carry research results from academia to industry. It is believed that the SOUNDS ETN will offer the best possible framework for achieving these goals, by organizing advanced interdisciplinary research training, developing solid transferable skills, and providing intersectoral and international experience in a network of qualified and complementary industrial and academic institutions.

The aim of realistic digital imaging is the creation of high quality imagery, which faithfully represents the physical environment. The ultimate goal is to create images, which are perceptually indistinguishable from a real scene. The RealVision network brings together leading universities, centers focused on industrial development and companies in Multimedia, Optics, Visual Communication, Visual Computing, Computer Graphics and Human Vision research across Europe, with the aim of training a new generation of scientists, technologists, and entrepreneurs that will move Europe into a leading role in innovative hyper-realistic imaging technologies. Current imaging technologies capture only a fraction of visual information that the human eye can see. The colours and dynamic range are inadequate for most real-world scenes and not all depth cues required for natural 3D vision are captured. This limits the realism of the experience and has hampered the introduction of 3D technology. Advancement in imaging technologies makes it possible to circumvent these bottlenecks in visual systems. As a result, new visual signal-processing areas have emerged such as light fields, ultra-high definition, highframe rate and high dynamic range imaging. The novel combinations of those technologies can facilitate a hyper-realistic visual experience. This will without doubt be the future frontier for new imaging systems. However there are several technological barriers that need to be overcome as well as challenges in what are the best solutions perceptually. The goal of this network is to combine expertise from several disciplines as engineering, computer science, physics, vision science and psychology – usually disconnected – and train ESRs to be capable of working with all stages and aspects of visual processing to overcome existing interdisciplinary and intersectorial barriers to efficiently develop truly perceptually better visual imaging systems.