An improved method to determine the onset timings of reflections in an acoustic impulse response

Determining the absolute onset time of reflections in an acoustic impulse response (IR) has applications for both subjective and physical acoustics problems. Although computationally simple, a first-order energetic analysis of the IR can lead to false-positive identification of reflections. This letter reports on a method to determine reflection onset timings using a modified running local kurtosis analysis to identify regions in the IR where the distribution is non-normal. IRs from both real and virtual rooms are used to validate the method and to find optimum analysis window sizes.