Aachen Impulse Response Database

The Aachen Impulse Response (AIR) database is a set of impulse responses that were measured in a wide variety of rooms. The initial aim of the AIR database was to allow for realistic studies of signal processing algorithms in reverberant environments with a special focus on hearing aids applications.

The first version was published in 2009 and offers binaural room impulse responses (BRIR) measured with a dummy head in different locations with different acoustical properties, such as reverberation time and room volume. Besides the evaluation of dereverberation algorithms and perceptual investigations of reverberant speech, this part of the database allows for the investigation of head shadowing influence since all recordings where made with and without the dummy head.

In a first update, the database was extended to BRIRs with various azimuth angles between head and desired source. This further allows to investigate (binaural) direction-of-arrival (DOA) algorithms as well as the influence of signal processing algorithms on the binaural cues.

Since dereverberation can also be applied to telephone speech, the latest extension includes (dual-channel) impulse responses between the artificial mouth of a dummy head and a mock-up phone. The measurements were carried out in compliance with the ITU standards for both the hand-held and the hands-free position. Additional microphone configurations were added in the latest extension.

For the third big extension, the IKS has carried out measurements of binaural room impulse responses in the Aula Carolina Aachen. The former church with a ground area of 570m² and a high ceiling shows very strong reverberation effects.

The database will successively be extended to further application scenarios.Please send us comments and feedback if you use the AIR database. Suggestions for further measurements are also very welcome.

All impulse responses of the AIR database are stored as double-precision binary floating-point MAT-files which can be imported directly into MATLAB. Additionally, a load function (load_air.m) as well as an example script (load_air_example.m) is provided to allow for a rapid integration into existing evaluation frameworks. Furthermore, wav file versions are included. For license information see the included MIT license file.

Download: AIR Database v1.4

Stefan Kühl 

• V1.0 – First official release (July 2009)
• V1.1 – Extension: Azimuth varying BRIRs (September 2009)
• V1.2 – Extension: Mobile phone RIRs (August 2010)
• V1.3 – Extension: Measurements taken in the Aula Carolina Aachen (July 2011)
• V1.4 – Extension: Additional configurations of mobile phones (October 2012)

[jeub10a]
Marco Jeub, Magnus Schäfer, Hauke Krüger, Christoph Matthias Nelke, Christophe Beaugeant, and Peter Vary
Do We Need Dereverberation for Hand-Held Telephony?
International Congress on Acoustics (ICA), August 2010

[jeub09a]
Marco Jeub, Magnus Schäfer, and Peter Vary
A Binaural Room Impulse Response Database for the Evaluation of Dereverberation Algorithms
Proceedings of International Conference on Digital Signal Processing (DSP), July 2009