Gian Marco De Bortoli

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Gian Marco De Bortoli is a PhD student at Acoustics Lab, Aalto University, Finland.
He works on reverberation enhancement systems inside the project Augmented Acoustics for Music Performances. The project belongs to a larger shell named Collective Experiences of Music Performances with Augmented Acoustics (CExAM). The supervisor of the project is Prof. Tapio Lokki and the advisors are Prof. Sebastian J. Schlecht and Dr. Karolina Prawda.

Reverberation Enhancement System

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Combining digital signal processing with acoustic feedback to transform the acoustics of any space.

Concept

A reverberation enhancement system is an active system capable of controlling the room acoustics of a physical space. Microphones capture the sound present in the room, a digital signal processor enhances the signals, and loudspeakers reproduce them back into the room. This pipeline simulates changes in the geometry and absorption properties of the original space.

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The video was shot in the acoustics lab Mozart at the Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen, Germany.
Additional information regarding the specific reverberation enhancement system adopted can be found here.

Music

Beyond engineering and room acoustics, reverberation enhancement systems unlock new possibilities for artistic expression.

Kaikuja Säiliöstä

Corresponding author: Andrea Mancianti.

A collection of site-specific immersive sound studies for brass ensemble and live electronics, written for Öljysäiliö 468, a decommissioned oil tank in East Helsinki.

Additional information regarding the musical piece and the creative process can be found here.
Paradosso

Corresponding author: Eduard Tampu.

An exploration of the influence of reverberation enhancement systems in the production and performance of electroacoustic music.

Additional information regarding the study[7] that led to the creation of this musical piece can be found here.

Tools

Open-source resources to facilitate the study and the use of reverberation enhancement systems.

Time-Varying Feedback Delay Network plugin

Real-time audio plugin implementing a Time-Varying Feedback Delay Network.

This plugin is a multi-input multi-output reverberator based on a standard feedback delay network with a time-varying feedback matrix. This architecture was originally designed and proposed for reverberation enhancement systems[2]. It is built in C++ using the JUCE framework.
DIY-RES

Setting up a reverberation enhancement system can be a challenge. DIY-RES is a guide on how to install a system using open-source software only. The proposed installation uses the Time-Varying Feedback Delay Network plugin as the system DSP.

DIY-RES offers:
- Installation instructions
  
  A written guide to setting up the transducers and using the Time-Varying Feedback Delay Network plugin in the installation.
- Signal routing templates
  
  Max/MSP and Reaper templates for routing signals from the microphones through the plugin to the loudspeakers.
DataRES

Dataset for research on reverberation enhancement systems.

Measurements from rooms with installed reverberation enhancement systems have been collected in a single open database[8]. This work facilitates the study of real-world system implementations and improves result reproducibility.
PyRES

Python library for reverberation enhancement system development and simulation.

PyRES is open-source software for testing digital signal processing architectures in reverberation enhancement systems[8]. It interfaces with DataRES, enabling simulation of real-world systems. Using FLAMO as a back-end enables the generation of custom-made DSPs as chains of elementary processing blocks. Each block operation is defined as differentiable, allowing each architecture to be trained in a DDSP fashion.
PyRES includes additional functionalities for visualization, evaluation, and auralization.

Publications

	Year	Authors	Article & accompanying material
[1]	2012	Sebastian J. Schlecht & Emanuël A. P. Habets	Reverberation enhancement from a feedback delay network perspective
[2]	2015	Sebastian J. Schlecht & Emanuël A. P. Habets	Reverberation Enhancement Systems with Time-Varying Mixing Matrices
[3]	2015	Sebastian J. Schlecht & Emanuël A. P. Habets	Time-varying feedback matrices in feedback delay networks and their application in artificial reverberation
[4]	2016	Sebastian J. Schlecht & Emanuël A. P. Habets	The stability of multichannel sound systems with time-varying mixing matrices
[5]	2024	Gian Marco De Bortoli, Karolina Prawda, & Sebastian J. Schlecht	Active Acoustics with a Phase Cancelling Modal Reverberator Accompanying material
[6]	2024	Gian Marco De Bortoli, Gloria Dal Santo, et al.	Differentiable Active Acoustics: Optimizing Stability via Gradient Descent Accompanying material
[7]	2024	Eduard Tampu	Active Acoustics: A compositional and performative approach to regenerative systems Accompanying material
[8]	2025	Gian Marco De Bortoli, Karolina Prawda, Philip Coleman, & Sebastian J. Schlecht	DataRES and PyRES: A Room Dataset and a Python Library for Reverberation Enhancement System Development, Evaluation, and Simulation Accompanying material

Gian Marco De Bortoli | Artificial Audio