Deputy Director
Hearing Cluster
Head of Binaural Audio and Auditory Modelling
Head of Lab
Tel. +43 1 51581-2511
Email: piotr.majdak(at)oeaw.ac.at
Scientific IDs:
ORCID (0000-0003-1511-6164), Scopus, Research Gate, Google Scholar
Academic background
After completing a technical school for electrical engineering, Piotr Majdak studied audio engineering at the University of Technology in Graz (TU-Graz) and at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz (KUG). During his studies, he developed hardware and software for measurement tools and process-controlling devices.
Piotr Majdak graduated with the Master's thesis entitled "Implementation of a head related binaural technique", in which he dealt with a real-time binaural system called Ambisonics. In that project, Ambisonics allowed the inclusion of the listener’s head movements without the need for time-variant filtering, and therefore a reduction of the computational power. As part of the thesis, the binaural system was implemented for a digital signal processor platform including a head-tracker. The Master's thesis was done jointly with Markus Noisternig.
In 2002, he joined ARI as a junior researcher being involved in setting-up the group "Psychoacoustics and experimental audiology".
In 2008, he finished his PhD about sound lateralization in cochlear-implant listeners, in which the effects of different aspects of the interaural time differences on sound lateralization are described.
In 2015, his habilitation for the area "Acoustics and audio engineering" was approved, which allows him to supervise PhD students at the KUG.
Current research
General research field is spatial hearing, in particular:
- Sound localization in normal-hearing, hearing-impaired, and cochlear-implant listeners;
- Virtual acoustics;
- Effects of head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) and its numerical simulation;
- General binaural effects in electric hearing.
Piotr Majdak was the main developer of ExpSuite, an open-source software framework for psychoacoustic experiments in normal-hearing and cochlear-implant listeners, used at ARI since 2003 and now mainly developed by Michael Mihocic. Piotr Majdak is also the main developed of SOFA, the file format to store spatially oriented acoustic data. Piotr initiated the development of the corresponding SOFA Toolbox, which is now mantained by Michael Mihocic. Further, Piotr is the leader of the AMT project: The Auditory Modeling Toolbox.
Projects
Publications
Publications
- Reichinger A.; Majdak P; Maierhofer S. (2013) Evaluation of Methods for Optical 3-D Scanning of Human Pinnas. Proceedings of the 3D Vision Conference 2013, Third Joint 3DIM/3DPVT Conference. Seattle, WA S. 390-397.
- Majdak P.; Walder T.; Laback B. (2013) Effect of long-term training on sound localization performance with spectrally warped and band-limited head-related transfer functions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Bd. 134, S. 2148-2159.
- Majdak P.; Carpentier Th.; Nicol R.; Roginska A.; Suzuki Y.; Watanabe K.; et al. (2013) Spatially Oriented Format for Acoustics: A Data Exchange Format Representing Head-Related Transfer Functions. Proceedings of 134th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society (AES). Rome, Italy S. Convention Paper 8880.
- Kasess C. H.; Noll A.; Majdak P.; Waubke H. (2013) Effect of train type on annoyance and acoustic features of the rolling noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Bd. 134 (2), S. 1071-1081.
- Ziegelwanger H.; Reichinger A.; Majdak P. (2013) Calculation of listener-specific head-related transfer functions: Effect of mesh quality. Proceedings of the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA), POMA. Montreal, Canada Bd. 19 S. pp.0050017.
- Ziegelwanger H.; Majdak P. (2013) Modeling the broadband time-of-arrival of the head-related transfer functions for binaural audio. Proceedings of 134th Convention of the Audio Engineering Society (AES). Rome, Italy S. ConventionPaper8884.
- Ziegelwanger H.; Kreuzer W.; Majdak P. (2013) Effect of element size and microphone model on the numerically calculated head-related transfer functions. AIA-DAGA 2013. Meran, Italy S. 600-603.
- Ziegelwanger H.; Majdak P.; Laback B. (2012) Modell der Signallaufzeiten für die binaurale Wiedergabe virtueller Schallquellen. Fortschritte der Akustik, DAGA 2012. Darmstadt, Germany S. 629-630.
- Majdak P (2011) Two-dimensional localization of virtual sound sources in cochlear-implant listeners. , Bd. 32, S. 198-208.
- Majdak P.; Balazs P.; Kreuzer W.; Dörfler M. (2011) A time-frequency method for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in system identification with exponential sweeps. 2011 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. Prag S. 3812-3815.
- Sondergaard P.; Culling J. F.; Dau T.; Le Goff N.; Jepsen M. L.; Majdak P.; et al. (2011) Towards a binaural modelling toolbox. Proceedings of the EAA Forum Acusticum. Aalborg, Denmark S. 2081-2086.
- Best V.; Laback B.; Majdak P. (2011) Binaural interference in bilateral cochlear-implant listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Bd. 130, S. 2939-2950.
- Laback B.; Zimmermann I.; Majdak P.; Baumgartner W.; Pok S. M. (2011) Effects of envelope shape on interaural envelope delay sensitivity in acoustic and electric hearing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Bd. 130, S. 1515-1529.
- Goupell M.; Hancock K.; Majdak P.; Laback B.; Delgutte B. (2010) Binaurally-coherent jitter improves neural and perceptual ITD sensitivity in normal and electric hearing. In: The Neurophysiological Bases of Auditory Perception.. Springer, New York S. 303-313.
- Goupell M. J.; Majdak P.; Laback B. (2010) Median-plane sound localization as a function of the number of spectral channels using a channel vocoder. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Bd. 127, S. 990-1001.
- Majdak P.; Goupell M.; Laback B. (2010) 3-D localization of virtual sound sources: Effects of visual environment, pointing method, and training. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, Bd. 72, S. 454-469.
- Majdak P.; Laback B. (2009) Effects of center frequency and rate on the sensitivity to interaural delay in high-frequency click trains. J Acoust Soc Am, Bd. 125, S. 3903-3913.
- Kreuzer W.; Majdak P.; Haider A. (2009) A boundary element model to calculate HRTFs. Comparison between calculated and measured data. NAG/DAGA 2009 (M. M. Boone, ed.). Rotterdam S. 196-199.
- Kreuzer W.; Majdak P.; Chen Z. (2009) Fast multipole boundary element method to calculate head-related transfer functions for a wide frequency range. J. Acoust .Soc. Am., Bd. 126, S. 1280-1290.
- Goupell M. J.; Laback B.; Majdak P. (2009) Enhancing sensitivity to interaural time differences at high modulation rates by introducing temporal jitter. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Bd. 126, S. 2511-2521.
Additional Information
Additional Information
Functions
Piotr Majdak is responsible for ARI's experimental facilities. Since January 2016, he is the deputy director of the ARI.
Teaching
He teaches "Algorithmen in Akustik und Computermusik" (algorithms in acoustic and computer music) at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics, KUG in Graz. Since 2014, he also teaches "Audiotechnik" at the Fachhochschule Technikum Wien.
Professional societies and activities
Piotr Majdak is member of the ASA, AAA ,DEGA, ARO, and the president of the Austrian section of the AES.
Since December 2020 Piotr Majdak is chairing the technical comittee of the Psychological and Physiological Acoustics (PPA) of the European Acoustics Association (EAA)