MTD205

Timed Online Assignment – July Semester 2021

Audio Technology
Wednesday, 17 November 2021 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm

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Time allowed: 2.5 hours

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INSTRUCTIONS TO STUDENTS:

1. This Timed Online Assignment (TOA) contains FOUR (4) questions and comprises
SEVEN (7) pages (including cover page).

2. You must answer ALL questions.

3. If you have any queries about a question, or believe there is an error in the question,
briefly explain your understanding and assumptions about that question before
attempting it.

4. You MUST submit your answers via Canvas (similar to TMA submission) at the
end time of this TOA (as stated on this cover page). The 15 minutes grace period as
shown on Canvas is strictly meant for technical issues encountered during
submission. Thereafter, you will not be able to submit your answers and you will be
considered as having withdrawn from the course. No appeal will be allowed.

5. You are to include the following particulars in your submission: TOA Course Code,
your Full Name, and SUSS PI Number. Name your submission file as
TOACourseCode_FullName_StudentPI. Use underscore and NOT Space. Example:
TOAXYZ_RaphaelLee_T1923161 (omit D/O, S/O).

6. Your submission should consist of only one file and must not exceed 500MB in size.
The file must be a Microsoft Word file saved in .doc or .docx format. All answers
are to be typed except for codes, formulas, calculation workings, flowcharts and
graphs which can be handwritten. Handwritten codes, formulas, calculation
workings, flowcharts and graphs may be scanned or photographed and embedded in
the Word file provided it does not exceed the file size limit of 500MB. Please review
your submitted TOA work after uploading it into Canvas to make sure that any
handwritten work can be seen clearly.

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TOA –July Semester 2021
7. To prevent plagiarism and collusion, your submission will be reviewed by Turnitin.
The Turnitin report will only be made available to the marker and you will not be
able to view it.

8. The University takes plagiarism and collusion seriously, and your Turnitin report will
be examined thoroughly as part of the marking process.

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TOA –July Semester 2021
Answer all questions. (Total 100 marks)

Question 1

The audio signal that is transmitting wirelessly from earpieces to the laptop has a
frequency component of 4 𝑘𝐻𝑧 with an amplitude of 2 volts. It passes through the small
signal non-linear amplifier insides the laptop’s audio chipset with gain of 1.5. The
amplifier output also contains third and fifth order harmonics at 1 volt and 0.5 volts
respectively. The amplifier outputs are then fed to an anti-aliasing filter which is followed
by of a 6-bit successive 2’s complement ADC of the audio chipset.

(a) Execute the calculation of the anti-aliasing filter bandwidth. Hence, sketch its
3 dB bandwidth spectrum of the anti-aliasing filter.
(5 marks)

(b) Draw the output amplitude spectrum of the audio signal amplifier. Hence,
describe the performance of total harmonic distortion (THD) of the amplifier.
(6 marks)

(c) Analyse the performance of ADC by calculating its quantisation level for a full
voltage swing of 6 volts peak-to-peak of the input audio signal. Hence, determine
the quantisation error range if rounding rule is used and explain the effect of such
error.
(6 marks)

(d) Calculate the binary representation for a given audio signal input having an
instantaneous input of -2.0 volts using the quantisation level obtained in Question
1(c). Comment on the relationship between frequency of the signal and
quantisation level.
(8 marks)

Question 2

(a) A music signal at a concert has a fundamental human intelligible frequency at

4 kHz at 2 volts. It has an accompanying low piano A note and its 2nd order and
4th harmonics with amplitude of 1 volt, 0.5 volts and 0.2 volts peak respectively.
The music signal is fed into a multiplicative audio mixer.

(i) Calculate the fundamental frequency of the low piano A note and hence
𝑓
its various harmonics where 𝑝 = 21. Hint: 𝑝 = 69 + 12 𝑙𝑜𝑔2 ( ) 𝐻𝑧
440
(3 marks)

(ii) The music signal is passed through the multiplicative audio mixer and
generated various mixed and beat frequencies among each other. Through
calculation of the mixing process, explain how both mixed and beat
frequencies are generated. Ignore the same frequency squared mixing.
(8 marks)

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TOA –July Semester 2021
 (iii) Illustrate to describe the amplitude spectrum including the original audio
signal after the mixing in Question 2a(ii). Clearly indicate the beat
frequencies in the plot.
(5 marks)

(b) The music signal is broadcasted to other part of the country through the LEO
satellite at Very High Frequency (VHF) transmission. It is modulated with an
Amplitude Modulation (AM) stereo system given as 𝑏(𝑡) = 1 + 𝑀 cos(2𝜋𝑓𝑡) V.
𝑀 and 𝑓 are the modulating index and modulating audio frequency. The carrier
is given as 𝑝(𝑡) = 10 cos(100000000𝜋𝑡) V.

(i) Derive and sketch the amplitude spectrum of the modulated signal given
that 𝑀 is 0.7. Hint: Use the high frequency component in Question 2(a)(ii)
as the frequency 𝑓 in 𝑏(𝑡)
(6 marks)

(ii) Determine the receiver carrier and the bandwidth of the anti-aliasing filter
to recover the modulating signal.
(3 marks)

Question 3

(a) A CD sampling rate is 44.1 kHz and a 16 bits coding scheme is employed to
record 100 two channel stereo uncompressed musical songs of each 4 minutes
with interval of 10 seconds of silence between each song. Execute the calculation
to analyse the number of CD required to store the songs assuming a CD size is
700 MB.
(6 marks)

(b) Explain the relationship between the critical bandwidth and frequency masking
with illustration. Demonstrate how such relationship is used in MPEG
compression. Hence explain the effect of using MPEG compression in Question
3(a) in storage capacity for CD.
(8 marks)

(c) MIDI protocol demonstrates the use of audio technology in multimedia. It is

mainly written in C- programming language to manage the various MIDI musical
instrument as shown below. Appendix I also shows the MIDI specification which
specifies the parameters of the MIDI subroutine.

Midi_note (pitch, channel, velocity)

Midi_cmd(message_type, channel, dataByte1, dataByte2)
Pause(delayTime); [in milliseconds]
All parameters are hexadecimal

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TOA –July Semester 2021
 (i) System Active Sensing
(2 marks)

(ii) Select song number 15 at starting song position count of 800

(3 marks)

(iii) Channel 12 plays note at 7040 Hz for 1000 ms at half of the maximum
volume and then maximum volume following formula to obtain pitch
value given as P = 69 + 12log2(f/440).
(3 marks)

(iv) Channel 14 plays note at 8372 Hz for 5000 ms at mid volume and then
quarter of maximum volume following formula to obtain pitch value
given as P = 69 + 12log2(f/440).
(3 marks)

Question 4

The intelligent Alibaba Tmall Genie X5 system with two speakers and one woofer
produces a 360-degree immersive sound.

(a) Analyse the audio signal strength difference in dB received at the two human
positions when the Tmall Genie speakers are playing some audio music. The two
positions are 5 m and 10 m respectively. Assume uniform media transmission.
What is the effect when the two speakers create direct and reflected sound which
are totally in phase with each other in equal strength at the human?
(10 marks)

(b) The audio signal from the right speaker arrives at 35 degrees with respect to the
centre of a human audience head. The distance between the two ears is 35 cm and
the speed of sound wave is assumed to be 340 m/s in the air. Analyse the
Inter-aural delay (ITD) effect and discuss the perception capability of the ear for
the calculated ITD.
(6 marks)

(c) Assuming the woofer system has an echo filter that can be used to synthesise the
spatial audio effect with an infinite impulse response (IIR) single delay tap filter.
The IIR filter output is defined as 𝑦(𝑛) = 𝑥(𝑛 − 1) − 𝑔 ∗ 𝑦(𝑛 − 2). 𝑥(𝑛) is the
input power level sequence due to Inter Intensity difference (IID) at {8, 8, 6, -2,
-2, -10, -10, 2...0} and 𝑔 is the coefficient that determines the decay level of
reverberation with a value of 0.8. Draw the IIR filter and analyse the filter output
at 9 seconds. Assume input and output remains 0 when 𝑛 = 0 and 𝑛 is an integer.
(9 marks)

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TOA –July Semester 2021
 Appendix I
Table Q3-1: MIDI Message Types
Binary Hex Message Type Channel Data Required
Data Byte 1 Date Byte 2
1000 8 Note off 1-16 Pitch (0-127) Velocity (0-127)
1001 9 Note on 1-16 Pitch (0-127) Release Velocity (0-127)
1010 A Polyphonic 1-16 Pitch (0-127) Aftertouch value
aftertouch
1011 B Control change 1-16 Controller type (0-127) Value (0-127)
1100 C Program change 1-16 Program-change value
(0 – 127)
1101 D Aftertouch 1-16 Aftertouch Value (0-128)
1110 E Pitch bend 1-16 Bend value (0 – 127), often (0 -16383)
1111 F System 1-16 Variable number of bytes

Table Q3-2: MIDI Control Change Messages

Table Q3-3: MIDI Control Messages

Status Byte Followed by
Binary Hex Message Type Data Bytes
1111 0000 F0 System exclusive Various number
1111 0001 F1 Quarter frame message 1
1111 0010 F2 Song position pointer 2
1111 0011 F3 Song select 1
1111 0110 F6 Tuning request 0
1111 0111 F7 End-Of-Exchange (EOX) 0
1111 1000 F8 MIDI clock 0
1111 1010 FA Start 0
1111 1011 FB Continue 0
1111 1100 FC Stop 0
1111 1110 FE Active sensing 0
1111 1111 FF System reset 0

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TOA –July Semester 2021
Table Q3-4: MIDI NOTE NUMBER TO EQUAL TEMPERAMENT SEMITONE
TO HERTZ CONVERSION TABLE
o Middle C = MIDI Note #60 • Low Piano A = MIDI Note #21 • MIDI Note # range 0-127

o Approximate ideal human hearing range 20-20,000 Hz

o Ratio Between Consecutive Semitones = 1:12th Root of 2 or 1:1.05946

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TOA –July Semester 2021