Sean Cragg

What is your PhD is about?
The title of my PhD project is ‘Evaluation of complex acoustic environments using sound source separation methods’. I’m looking to develop models to identify the dominant sources present in an acoustic environment and their direction from binaural and ambisonic recordings as well as separating these sources for individual auralisation.       

Why is it important to do this research?
Previous studies have suggested that the sound sources that listeners perceive to be most dominant in a soundscape may affect how it is perceived as a whole, as well as that – sounds with a clearly perceived direction may also be perceived differently to those which are less directional. Identifying the dominant sources and their direction will help us to better understand how acoustic environments are perceived as a whole.

What drew you to studying this PhD?
I‘ve had an interest in acoustics since my undergraduate in marine biology where I focussed my learning on topics such as animal communication and bioacoustics. When decided I wanted to pursue a PhD I was looking to carry out a project which involved a lot of signal processing with the opportunity to use machine learning. This project is one I found particularly interesting especially as I feel the output of this could be applied to various uses (and not only for assessing acoustic environments). Also, as I did not come from a traditional background in acoustics the fact the CDT will provide additional training above a standard PhD made this a perfect opportunity for me.

What does a Sustainable Sound Future mean to you?
To me a large part of a sustainable sound future is about reducing the harm caused by noise pollution, both for humans and other animals. Particularly now that many new sound sources are becoming increasingly common (such as drones, electric vehicles etc). However, in order to reduce the negative impacts of noise we need to better understand how noise is perceived by humans and animals.

What were you doing before joining the CDT?
Before joining the CDT, I was working as a software engineer predominantly working with C++. In my last role, I was working on financial risk platform. Prior to that I worked on a LCEVC video codec project.

What do you do on a typical PhD day so far?
At this point in the PhD a typical day mostly consists of reading as well as getting to grips with some of the tools I’ll require for my project such as getting comfortable loading and analysing binaural/ambisonic audio files using Python and carrying out basic analyses and building simple neural networks. In the first couple months I’ve also been attending generic postgraduate research training sessions as well as attending some of the undergraduate lectures to fill some knowledge gaps.

Tell us a fun acoustic fact!
In an evolutionary arms race between predator and prey, some species of tiger moths have developed the ability to ‘jam’ the sonar of bats by producing ultrasonic clicks when attacked to avoid being eaten.