Automatic Quality Assessment of Digitized and Restored Sound Archives

Archiving digital audio is conducted to preserve and make records accessible. However techniques for assessing the quality of experience (QoE) of sound archives are usually neglected. This paper presents a framework to assess the QoE of sound archives in an automatic fashion. The QoE influence factors, stakeholders, and audio archive degradations are described, and the above concepts are explored through a case study on the NASA Apollo audio archive. Each component of the framework is described in the audio archive life cycle based on digitization, restoration, and consumption. Insights and real-world examples are provided on why digitized and restored audio archives benefit from QoE assessment techniques similar to other multimedia applications, such as video calling and streaming services. The reasons why stakeholders, such as archivists, broadcasters, or public listeners, would benefit from the proposed framework are also provided.