Across Acoustics

Because cardiovascular disease is the world's leading cause of death, researchers have been looking for ways to diagnose it early. Low-frequency sounds have been used to assess the elasticity of blood vessels, but until now,  the elastic waves being studied were too fast to get precise measurements. Sibylle Gregoire (INSERM) discusses how here team has been able to image a different type of elastic wave, opening up the possibility to more precise assessments and diagnosis of cardiovascular disease in the future. 

Associated paper: Sibylle Gregoire, Gabrielle Laloy-Borgna, Johannes Aichele, Fabrice Lemoult, and Stefan Catheline. "Flexural pulse wave velocity in blood vessels." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 155, 2948–2958 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0025855.

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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. 

We have yet to fully understand the wind on Mars, even though it transfers heat, momentum, and molecules from the surface. Traditionally, heat loss and motion detectors have been used to measure wind speeds. Robert D. White (Tufts University) discusses his team's work on ultrasound transducers that may offer a more precise way to measure turbulent eddies on the  Red Planet.

Associated paper: Robert D. White, Rishabh Chaudhary, Zijia Zhao, Luisa Chiesa, Ian Neeson, and Don Banfield. "Modeling and characterization of gas coupled ultrasonic transducers at low pressures and temperatures and implications for sonic anemometry on Mars." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 156, 968- 988 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0028008.

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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. 

In this episode, we dive into the world of acousto-optics, where light is used to visualize and measure sound-- particularly acoustic phenomena that are difficult to observe. Samuel Verburg (Technical University of Denmark) and Kenji Ishikawa (NTT Communication) share the history of this field of research, as well as discuss modern day applications and potential uses for acousto-optic sensing in the future.

Read the associated article: Samuel A. Verburg, Kenji Ishikawa, Efren Fernandez-Grande, and Yasuhiro Oikawa. (2023) “A Century of Acousto-Optics: From Early Discoveries to Modern Sensing of Sound with Light,” Acoustics Today 19(3). https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2023.19.3.54

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Intro/Outro Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. 

This episode highlights three recent articles from the field of musical acoustics. First, we talk to Elvira Brattico (Aarhus University) about her research into what causes a person to experience music as noise. Next, Stefan Weinzierl (Technical University of Berlin) discusses how a musician's movement during a performance will impact the notes listeners hear. Finally, Pablo Miranda Valiente (University of Southampton) discusses his work to develop a model that shows the impact a piano soundboard has on the note played.

Associated papers:
- Giulio Carraturo, Marina Kliuchko, and Elvira Brattico. "Loud and unwanted: Individual differences in the tolerance for exposure to music."  J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 155, 3274–3282 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0025924.
- David Ackermann, Fabian Brinkmann, and Stefan Weinzierl. "Musical instruments as dynamic sound sources." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 155, 2302–2313 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0025463.
- Pablo Miranda Valiente, Giacomo Squicciarini, and David J. Thompson. "Influence of soundboard modelling approaches on piano string vibration." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 155, 3213–3232 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0025925.

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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. 

Most people have encountered speech recognition software in their day-to-day lives, whether through personal digital assistants, auto transcription, or other such modern marvels. As the technology advances, though, it still fails to understand speakers of African American English (AAE). In this episode, we talk to Michelle Cohn (Google Research and University of California Davis) and Zion Mengesha (Google Research and Stanford University) about their research into why these problems with speech recognition software seem to persist and what can be done to make sure more voices are understood by the technology.

Associated paper: Michelle Cohn, Zion Mengesha, Michal Lahav, and Courtney Heldreth. "African American English speakers’ pitch variation and rate adjustments for imagined technological and human addressees." JASA Express Letters  4,  047601 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0025484.

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 Music: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. 

This episode, we talk to a new round of POMA Student Paper Competition winners from the 185th ASA Meeting in Sydney about their exciting research endeavors:
- An analysis of how drums convey emotion
- A method to assess stress caused by vibration in acoustic black holes
- An improved estimator for background noise in underwater signals
- A model to help remove distortion from the sound fields of parametric array loudspeakers
- A numerical study of a little-understood phenomenon in bowed-string instruments

Associated papers:

Zeyu Huang, Wenyi Song, Xiaojuan Ma, and Andrew Brian Horner. "The emotional characteristics of bass drums, snare drums, and disengaged snare drums with different strokes and dynamics." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 52, 035005 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001834

Archie Keys and Jordan Cheer. "Experimental measurements of stress in an Acoustic Black Hole using a laser doppler vibrometer." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 52, 065003 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001829

David Campos Anchieta and John R. Buck. "Robust power spectral density estimation via a performance-weighted blend of order statistics." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 52, 055006 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001849

Wenyao Ma, Jun Yang, and Yunxi Zhu. "Identification of the parametric array loudspeaker system using differential Volterra filter." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 52, 055005 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001850

Shodai Tanaka, Hiroshi Kori, and Ayumi Ozawa. "A mathematical study about the sustaining phenomenon of overtone in flageolet harmonics on bowed string instruments." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 52, 035006 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001835

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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=1022

The tiny microphones used inside hearing aids can be very sensitive to vibration of the device, resulting in annoying feedback. Testing how sensitive these microphones are to vibration has been a problem that plagued engineers. In this episode, we talk to Charles King and Chris Monti of Knowles Electronics about their innovation to measure microphone vibration sensitivity.

Associated paper: Charles B. King and Chris Monti, "Microphone vibration sensitivity: What it is, why it is important, and how to measure it," Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 50, 065001 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001702

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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=music&utm_content=1022

Speech Science courses are a key component to the curriculum within a variety of disciplines, but coursework is frequently lacking in terms of representation of those from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In this episode, we talk to Melissa Baese-Berk (University of Chicago) and Paul Reed (University of Alabama), about why it's so important for instructors to use a variety of voices in the classroom, and how to talk about other ways of speaking when one feels ill-equipped to do so. 

Associated paper: Melissa Baese-Berk and Paul E. Reed. "Addressing diversity in speech science courses." J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 154, 918–925 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0020613.

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Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. 

In the aftermath of World War II, New York City wanted to built a new home for its orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and secure its place a cultural center of the world. In this episode, we talk to the Paul H. Scarbrough (Akustiks, LLC) about where these plans went awry and the multiple renovations over many decades to fix the hall. 

Read the associated article: Paul H. Scarbrough. (2023) “David Geffen Hall and the Evolution of Acoustics at Lincoln Center,” Acoustics Today 19(4). https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2023.19.4.41

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Intro/Outro Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay. 

It's not always feasible to measure the sound field generated by an acoustic source; instead, scientists have to model to come up with a best guess for the missing pieces of the sound field. In this episode, we talk to Efren Fernandez-Grande and Xenofon Karakonstantis (Technical University of Denmark) about their new machine learning method to reconstruct sound fields.

Associated paper: Efren Fernandez-Grande, Xenofon Karakonstantis, Diego Caviedes-Nozal, and Peter Gerstoft. "Generative models for sound field reconstruction" J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 153, 1179-1190 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0016896 .

Read more from The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA).
Learn more about Acoustical Society of America Publications.

Music Credit: Min 2019 by minwbu from Pixabay.