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Aalto Acoustics Lab

Restoration of Music Recordings Using Generative Models (REMUS)

The REMUS project, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2025–2029), restores degraded historical music recordings to high quality, making them enjoyable again. The main tools to achieve this goal are generative AI models, which are based on deep neural networks.
REMUS cropped

Description

In 2022, the audio signal processing research team achieved a landmark result by demonstrating that a deep neural network based on a two-stage U-net architecture outperforms prior methods in denoising historical music recordings. However, even after this dramatic improvement, old recordings still do not sound great, since other degradations remain. The REMUS project’s objectives extend far beyond denoising. It tackles the demanding challenges of reconstructing missing high-frequency content and repairing physical damage, such as scratches on gramophone and vinyl records, that corrupt long audio segments. A central open challenge is audio source separation of historical music, which decomposes a degraded recording into its constituent instrument stems. This would allow each instrument to be restored individually with high fidelity, addressing specific tasks including audio bandwidth extension, distortion removal, and audio inpainting. The restored stems could then be recombined into a final mix with the clarity, full frequency range, and naturalness of a modern recording. 

News

Gloria Dal Santo (middle) and her advisors, Prof. Sebastian Schlecht (left) and Prof. Vesa Välimäki (right) received the Best Paper Award diploma at the MIT Music building.
Awards and Recognition, Research & Art Published:

Shimmering Success: Aalto Acoustics Lab team wins Best Paper at DAFx 2026

The paper reimagines the popular 'shimmer' effect, known for its ethereal, pitch-shifted ambience
Winners on stage for the EAA best student paper award
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EAA Best Paper and Presentation Award for Young Researchers for postdoctoral researcher Thomas Deppisch

The awarded work shows how speech can be made clearer in noisy environments while still preserving directional cues
From left: Prof. Stefan Weinzierl (TU Berlin), Prof. Johannes M. Arend (Aalto University), and Prof. Christoph Pörschmann (TH Köln) after the Lothar-Cremer Award ceremony at DAGA 2026 in Dresden, Germany.
Awards and Recognition, Research & Art Published:

Professor Johannes M. Arend from Acoustics Lab receives Lothar-Cremer Award

Professor Johannes M. Arend was honoured for his innovative and groundbreaking work in the fields of binaural technology and virtual acoustics
Four scenes: anechoic chamber, yellow robotic dog, people in blue chamber, and a person working with equipment.
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Visit the electrical engineering laboratories in spring 2026

Welcome to visit the Robotics Lab, the Acoustics Lab, the Electronics-ICT laboratory, and the ePowerHub laboratory!
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