Sound

Based on the author's artistic research on migration, contemporary urban experience, and sonic alienation, The Nomadic Listener is composed of a series of texts stemming from psychogeographic explorations of contemporary cities, including Copenhagen, Berlin, Kolkata, Vienna, Delhi, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and New York, among others.
Each text is an act of listening, where the author records his surrounding environment and attunes to the sonic fluctuations of movement and the passing of events. What surfaces is a collection of meditations on the occurrences of life movingly interwoven with memories, associations, desires, and reflections. Readers are brought into a tender map of contemporary urban experience and the often lonely, surprising, and random interactions found in traveling. The Nomadic Listener includes parallel drawings based on the original audio recordings and appears as ghostly renderings of the corresponding experiences. The recordings are published by Gruenrekorder and accessed through a QR code in the book.

This course surveys the development of theater architectures, stage spaces and technologies from the ancient world through the 21 st century. The course satisfies the interdisciplinary college option. The survey will be contextualized in terms of prevailing social conditions and performance styles.

By varying the sound-absorption treatments in a simulated classroom, experimental results were compared with analytical and computer predictions of reverberation time. Analytical predictions were made with different absorption exponents, which are the result of different weighting procedures involving room surface areas and the sound-absorption coefficients. Sound scattering was found to influence measured reverberation times. With the amount of sound scattering provided, more accurate analytical predictions were obtained with absorption exponents that give reverberation times longer than those obtained with the Sabine absorption exponent, which consistently underpredicted reverberation times. However, none of the absorption exponents could be singled out as more adequate because of similar average accuracy. Computer predictions of reverberation time were accomplished with two commercially available ray-based programs, RAYNOISE 3.0 and ODEON 2.6, with specular and calibrated diffuse reflection procedures. Neither type of procedure, in either program, was more accurate than the best analytical predictions. With RAYNOISE, neither the specular nor the calibrated diffuse reflection procedure could be singled out as more adequate. For ODEON, the calibrated diffuse reflection procedure gave consistently more accurate predictions than its specular reflection procedure, with the best accuracy of the computer predictions. ͓S0001-4966͑00͒04710-X͔

This thesis examines seven films from the cinemas of Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky—Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963), and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), and The Sacrifice (1986).

These films were chosen as they represent the deepest periods of two directors’ engagements with the possible death of God and the subsequent loss of intrinsic existential meaning—topics with which this thesis is principally concerned.

As a starting point, this thesis argues that the films present the silence of God as the primary indicator of God’s absence from the human world. Becoming aware of this silence thus causes one to interrogate religious certainties which have hitherto been taken to be timeless and true. This thesis then contends that, when faced with this silence and its implications, Bergman desperately sought evidence of God’s existence while Tarkovsky unyieldingly maintained an attitude of faith.

The directors’ progressions toward these contrasting positions are evident through the uses of sound elements in their films. As Bergman unsuccessfully pursued evidence of God’s existence, the soundscapes in his four films become increasingly minimal. The sparse use of sound reveals Bergman’s conception of a Godless void. On the other hand, metaphysical silence in Tarkovsky’s films was not perceived as emptiness. Instead, “silence” in his films was, paradoxically, often depicted through complex layers of sounds. Presented as manifestations of the metaphysical, the sounds of “silence” in Tarkovsky’s films consequently become affirmations of faith.

Through this sound-based approach to film analysis, this thesis sets out to explain why Bergman and Tarkovsky understood metaphysical silence so differently by examining how they portrayed literal silences.

This chapter brings the practice of soundwalking, walking the landscape with a focus on listening to one’s environment to the museum, expanding the roaming pursuit of walking into the locale of its galleries, to use the boundariless ephemerality of sound to illuminate museological conventions and traditions and the way we interact with these. in this context the soundwalk stages a journey of exploration, a phonographic expedition, whose aim is to re-experience, question and expand stayed assumptions about the museum, curatorial practice and the contemplation of art.

Chapter in The Multisensory Museum Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space, Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone (eds), Alta Mira Press, 2014

I have been working in the field of radio art, and through creative practice have been considering how the convergence of new media technologies has redefined radio art, addressing the ways in which this has extended the boundaries of the art form. This practice-based research explores the rich history of radio as an artistic medium and the relationship between the artist and technology, emphasising the role of the artist as a mediator between broadcast institutions and a listening public. It considers how radio art might be defined in relation to sound art, music and media art, mapping its shifting parameters in the digital era and prompting a consideration of how radio appears to be moving from a dispersed ‘live’ event to one consumed ‘on demand’ by a segmented audience across multiple platforms. Exploring the implications of this transition through my radio practice focuses upon the productive tensions which characterise the artist’s engagement with radio technology, specifically between the autonomous potentialities offered by the reappropriation of obsolete technology and the proliferation of new infrastructures and networks promised by the exponential development of new media. Switch Off takes as its overarching theme the possible futures for FM radio, incorporating elements from eight ‘trace’ stations, produced as a series of radio actions investigating these tensions. Interviews have been conducted with case study subjects Vicki Bennett, Anna Friz, LIGNA, Hildegard Westerkamp and Gregory Whitehead, whose work was chosen as being exemplary of the five recurrent facets of radio arts practice I have identified: Appropriation, Transmission, Activism, Soundscape and Performance. These categories are derived from the genealogy of experimental radiophonic practice set out in Chapter One.

This chapter examines the meaning-making functions of cinematic sound from the perspective of embodied cognition. Using embodied simulation theory (Gallese, 2005) as a unifying framework, and placing particular emphasis upon the affective aspects of ‘Feeling of Body’ (Wojciehowski & Gallese, 2011), an account of cinematic media emerges which puts into play Mark Johnson’s concept of ‘embodied meaning’ (Johnson, 2007). Central to Johnson’s concept is the assertion that all human meaning, abstract conceptual thinking, and imagination have basis in our sensorimotor interactions with the world. In the context of cinematic media, it suggests the stylistic crafting and patterning of perceptual content not only elicits an affective response but also shapes cognition. Drawing upon examples of cinematic sound design an embodied aesthetics is illustrated.

This project presents a model to sonify data. It uses a multichannel audio system to create a spatial illusion of the presence of the sound source. This in order to present with a way of translating information from other domains into sound, at the same time that the spatial position conveys information also from this data.

This paper claims that the spirited debates about game narratives in the game industry and academia have not seen much progress due to their being too stuck in classical notions of narrative developed for non-ergodic media such as film or literature. The argument forwarded here is, therefore, that we need to reconceptualize our notion of narrative considerably in order for the concept to be productive in the context of games. This reconceptualization needs to take into account the cybernetic nature of games and thus factor in the experiential dimension of the human as well as the formal properties of the game.

This article comparatively studies non-traditional trade marks that have recently gained popularity in the European Union (EU) and Japan. Businesses invest in sensory marketing strategies to build a long-lasting and unforgettable experience with their consumers. The strategies include branding colour, sound, or the scent of products in a manner that challenges the traditional understanding of what a trade mark is. Despite their clear market advantages, nontraditional trade marks leave the question of drawing the borders of protection to relevant authorities. This study refers to the expansion of trade mark protection to non-traditional signs through the trade mark-balloon phenomenon. The practical significance of this article lies in the analysis of the different responses to the inflating trade mark balloon in the EU and Japan, as well as the boundaries of trade mark protection and the flexibility of the requirements of distinctiveness and representation in these jurisdictions. The scope of this study limits the definition of nontraditional trade marks to colour (colour per se and colour combinations), sound and scent marks. The trade mark laws and case law of the EU and Japan have been utilized to outline the non-traditional signs that are afforded trade mark protection.

This paper presents a computational model to simulate normal and impaired auditory-nerve ͑AN͒ fiber responses in cats. The model responses match physiological data over a wider dynamic range than previous auditory models. This is achieved by providing two modes of basilar membrane excitation to the inner hair cell ͑IHC͒ rather than one. The two modes are generated by two parallel filters, component 1 ͑C1͒ and component 2 ͑C2͒, and the outputs are subsequently transduced by two separate functions. The responses are then added and passed through the IHC low-pass filter followed by the IHC-AN synapse model and discharge generator. The C1 filter is a narrow-band, chirp filter with the gain and bandwidth controlled by a nonlinear feed-forward control path. This filter is responsible for low and moderate level responses. A linear, static, and broadly tuned C2 filter followed by a nonlinear, inverted and nonrectifying C2 transduction function is critical for producing transition region and high-level effects. Consistent with Kiang's two-factor cancellation hypothesis, the interaction between the two paths produces effects such as the C1/C2 transition and peak splitting in the period histogram. The model responses are consistent with a wide range of physiological data from both normal and impaired ears for stimuli presented at levels spanning the dynamic range of hearing.

Творча діяльність із використанням звукових технологій в сфері музичного мистецтва є об’єктом усе більшого числа досліджень. Утворена розвитком технологій та сучасних мистецьких практик така
форма людської творчості втілюється у різних спеціалізаціях від звукового дизайну до музичного аранжування та звукорежисури.
Вже існуючі наукові праці тільки підтверджують обсяг об’єкту дослідження: серед авторів цієї проблематики: Д. Гібсон, Є. Давиденкова, Н. Дворко, В. Дінов, П. Ігнатов, Ю. Козюренко, А. Севашко, Ф. Ньюелл, В. Шликов, а також Н. Бєлявіна, О. Бут, І. Гайденко, В. Грищенко, В. Козлін, С. Лазарєв, К. Черевко, С. Шип, С. Шустов тощо.

Теза се бави истраживањем звука на градском тргу, начина за оплемењавање шума који се јавља као сума активности корисника простора, и превазилажења постојећих физичких препрека које ограничавају - у акустичном и визуелном смислу - просторе спољашњости и унутрашњости трга, те сједињавањем посматраног простора. Трг у изграђеном (старом културном) ткиву града чини физичка хоризонтална и вертикална структура. У случају Трга Републике: плато са изузетном рефлексијом у визуелном и акустичном смислу, као и ребрасте фасаде које га окружују и употпуњују вибрато. Сваки од набројаних ентитета - затворен је систем који не сарађује са околином. Постоји јасна граница завршетка платоа Трга Републике, јасна визуелна граница уласка у Народни Музеј, јасна акустичка граница уласка у Народно Позориште. Укидањем привременог објекта - Стакленца, отвара се рупа у (у великој мери затвореној) вертикалној опни око трга, на самом продору посматрача у простор, и тиме омогућава постављање нове, наглашене куће - која прати и подиже квалитет постојећих тонова Трга Републике - Опера. Једна од могућих особина будућег објекта представља могућност интеграције целокупног визуелног и акустичног доживљаја овог простора у једну целину, омогућавајући будућим перформансима да пруже додатни квалитет и комфор “спољним” посетиоцима, а да то буде више од визуелног надражаја као последице посматрања фасаде. Посетиоцима може бити омогућено ослушкивање Опере града - централног места и самог духа истог, када се налазе у затвореном - наглашавајући квалитет метрополе у којој се налазе, гужве, сусрета, уличних звукова; док би пролазницима (не корисницима) Трга био упућен визуелни и аудитивни позив за придружење церемонији која се одржава без престанка у самом нуклеусу српске историје. Очекивани резултати истраживања су аналитички дијаграми понашања звука (постојећих и постављених) у оквиру Трга у односу на постојеће изграђено стање, размишљања на које се тај звук може минимизирати, искористити и пласирати публици унутар објекта Опере, као и обратно, уз објашњења преламања и промена до којих долази приликом путовања тонова кроз овај простор.

Sustainable sound planning has been drawing more attention as citizens are demanding higher levels of comfort and livable environment while keeping the convenient access to transportation and neighborhood in urban settings. Particularly in Hong Kong, we see a lot of innovative building designs, such as smart facades, are there improving the overall indoor sonic environment of the premises. Apparently, different situations and designs can result in varying levels of costs and benefits. How to balance these becomes a challenge for the acoustical designers and sound planners. This paper presents a case study revealing how virtual reality technology can be applied to let the relevant stakeholders "experience" the noise benefits that a particular smart facade design can bring by "perceiving" the sonic environment and having it associated with different design options and costs.

Three experiments were carried out to examine the cues that are used in learning to read and spell new words. In a reading task (Experiment 1), even preschoolers who could not read simple real words were able to benefit from print-sound relationships that were based on letter names. They found it easier to learn that the made-up word TM was pronounced as "team" (name condition) than that TM was pronounced as "tame" (sound condition) or as "wide" (visual condition). The letter-name strategy persisted among college students (Experiment 2). In a spelling task (Experiment 3), prereaders and novice readers again did better in the name condition than in the sound condition. The ability to use relationships based on letter sounds emerged later than the ability to use relationships based on letter names. However, sound-based relationships were used to a greater extent in spelling than in reading.

Objectives/Hypothesis: To determine whether speech recognition scores (SRS) differ between adults with long-term auditory deprivation in the implanted ear and adults who received cochlear implant (CI) in the nonsound-deprived ear, either for hearing aid-assisted or due to rapidly deteriorating hearing loss. Study Design: Retrospective study. Methods: Speech recognition scores at evaluations (3 and 14 months postimplantation) conducted with CI alone at 60-dB sound pressure level intensity were compared in 15 patients (4 with bilateral severe hearing loss; 11 with asymmetric hearing loss, 7 of which had contralateral hearing aid), all with long-term auditory deprivation (mean duration 16.9 years) (group A), and in 15 other patients with postlingual hearing loss (10 symmetric, 5 asymmetric with bimodal stimulation) (controls, group B). Results: Comparison of mean percentage of correctly recognized words on speech audiometry at 3 and 14 months showed improvement within each group (P < 0.05). Between-group comparison showed no significant difference at 3 (P 5 0.17) or 14 months (P 5 0.46). Comparison of SRSs in group A (bimodal stimulation [n 5 7] and binaural sound deprivation [n 5 4]) versus group B showed no significant differences at 3 (bimodal stimulation P 5 0.16; binaural sound deprivation P 5 0.19) or 14 months (bimodal stimulation P 5 0.14; binaural sound deprivation P 5 0.82). Conclusions: Speech recognition scores in monaural and binaural sound-deprived ears did not significantly differ from ears with unilateral cochlear implantation in nonsound-deprived ears when tested with CI alone. Improvement in the implanted worse ear indicates that it could be a potential candidate ear for cochlear implantation even when sound deprived.

ABSTRACT The sound of a solid body electric guitar comes from the loudspeaker transducing into sound the string velocity. Because of mechanical string-structure coupling, the string vibration, and therefore the sound, substantially depends on the lutherie parameters. This study focuses on the comparison between ebony-fingerboard and rosewood-fingerboard guitars: is a change in the fingerboard wood perceived by the guitar players? In order to test the hypothesis that it is actually perceived, a psychological investigation is carried out. Two experimental methods are used: a free sorting task with recorded stimuli from the guitars (listening test) and a free verbalisation task where the guitarists play the guitars. In the listening test, the guitarists perceive differences between guitars, but the resulting clusters do not show an ebony/rosewood dichotomy. A linguistic analysis of the verbalisations exhibits psychological descriptors that are relevant for the discrimination of the wood of the fingerboard: PRECISION (referring to how each note stands out from others), and to a lesser extent ATTACK (referring to the guitar&amp;#39;s response to musician&amp;#39;s gesture) and BALANCE (referring to the frequency content). This study is part of a broader project aiming at establishing an explicite relation between mechanics, perception, and lutherie. A physical interpretation of the psychologically-relevant descriptors is eventually proposed in order to use them as hypotheses in a further hypothetico-deductive approach starting from physics and using psychophysical methods.

Sound affects and pervades our body in a physical as well as a phenomenological sense: a notion that may sound fairly trivial today. But for a long time in Western history 'sound' was no scientific entity. It was looked upon merely as the lower, material appearance of truly higher forces: of more ephemeral, angel-, spirit-or godlike structures -and later of compositional knowledge. To be interested in sound was to be defamed as being unscientific, noncompositional, unmanly. Which steps were taken historically that gradually gave sound the character of a scientific entity? This article moves along recent science history: since the nineteenth century when the physicality of sound and later the corporeality of sonic experiences were first discovered and tentatively described. Exemplary studies from the science history of acoustics, musicology and anthropology of the senses are analysed and restudied -from Hermann von Helmholtz to Michel Serres.

Sounds convey information about the materials composing an object. Stimuli were synthesized using a computer model of impacted plates that varied their material properties: viscoelastic and thermoelastic damping and wave velocity ͑related to elasticity and mass density͒. The range of damping properties represented a continuum between materials with predominant viscoelastic and thermoelastic damping ͑glass and aluminum, respectively͒. The perceptual structure of the sounds was inferred from multidimensional scaling of dissimilarity judgments and from their categorization as glass or aluminum. Dissimilarity ratings revealed dimensions that were closely related to mechanical properties: a wave-velocity-related dimension associated with pitch and a damping-related dimension associated with timbre and duration. When asked to categorize sounds, however, listeners ignored the cues related to wave velocity and focused on cues related to damping. In both dissimilarity-rating and identification experiments, the results were independent of the material of the mallet striking the plate ͑rubber or wood͒. Listeners thus appear to select acoustical information that is reliable for a given perceptual task. Because the frequency changes responsible for detecting changes in wave velocity can also be due to changes in geometry, they are not as reliable for material identification as are damping cues.

The ability to detect and localize sounds in an environment is critical for survival. Localizing sound sources is a computational challenge for the human brain because the auditory cortex seems to lack a topographical space representation. However, attention and task demands can modulate localization performance. Here, we investigated whether the localization performance for sounds occurring directly in front of or behind people could be modulated by emotional salience and sound-source location. We measured auditory-induced emotion by ecological sounds occurring in the frontal or rear perceptual fields, and employed a speeded localization task. The results showed that both localization speed and accuracy were higher, and that stronger negative emotions were induced when sound sources were behind the participants. Our results provide clear behavioral evidence that auditory attention can be influenced by sound-source location. Importantly, we also show that the effect of spatial location on attention is mediated by emotion, which is in line with the argument that emotional information is prioritized in processing. Auditory system functions as an alarm system and is in charge of detecting possible salient events, and alarming for an attention shift. Further, spatial processing in the auditory dorsal pathway has a function of guiding the visual system to a particular location of interest. Thus, an auditory bias toward the space outside the visual field can be useful, so that visual attention could be quickly shifted in case of emotionally significant information.

Objectives: To assess audiological performance, satisfaction rate, and side effects of 100 patients who have been using the middle ear implant Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB) for 5 to 8 yr when compared with data collected from 3 to 18 mo postsurgery.

CALL FOR PAPERS: "Italian Sonorities and Acoustic Communities: Listening to the Soundscapes of Italianità" conference, April 27-29, 2017 at Queens College's John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, 25 West 43rd Street, Manhattan. DEADLINE:  September 16, 2016.

In anthropology and across the humanities and social sciences, zoos have tended to be theorized as places of spectacle. Scholars often focus on the ways in which these institutions enable the viewing of other-than-human animals by human publics. This article, however, uses sound-focused ethnographic fieldwork to engage with two UK zoos and to describe a particular mode of cross-species listening which is enacted by zookeepers. The concepts of pastoral care and control discussed by Foucault and applied to the zoo context by Braverman are productively reworked and reoriented in order to understand this form of listening. The article also demonstrates the interconnectedness of keeper, visitor and animal sound worlds, in the process generating an original perspective that complements and enriches conventional zoo studies.

Since the productivity of soybean in Indonesia is still low, a new innovation is needed to improve it. The objectives of this study are to determine a pattern of the stomatal opening of soybean's leaves which exposed by high-frequency sound waves with different duration time and age of soybean plants. This study was carried out at the Experimental Farm Agriculture Faculty and Biology Laboratory of Science Faculty of the Islamic University of Malang, East Java in April to August 2013.The first factor was duration time of the exposure which consist of three levels: 20 minutes (D 1), 40 minutes (D 2) and 60 minute (D 3).The second factor was the age of the soybean which consist of three levels: 15 days after planting (dap) (A 1), 25 dap (A 2) and 35 dap (A 3). The soybean plants were exposure by the 5000 hertz frequency. The variables measured consisted of stomatal opening width, plant height, leaf area, fresh weight of pods, fresh weight of seed, oven dry weight of beans and harvest index. Increase of the duration time of exposure of high frequency sound waves by 20 to 60 minutes, tends to decrease the width of stomatal opening. The treatment of duration of exposure by 40 minutes at the age of 15 dap had the highest soybean grain yield by 24.10 g.plant-1 , equivalent to 3.93 ton.ha-1. The relationship between the widths of the stomatal opening with soybean production showed no significant correlation. The results of this study suggest that maintaining stomatal opening at optimum width through the manipulation of high-frequency sound waves will increase the yield of soybean plants.

Introduction 3. Practical Applications of Environmental Sound Research 3.1. Restoring the Awareness of Environment through Sound 3.2. Diagnostic applications of environmental sounds 3.3. Noise control and the design of acoustic environments 3.4. Sound synthesis: auralization, audification and sonification 4. Environmental Sounds and Listening In the World 4.1. Historical role of environmental sounds research 4.2. Studying meaningful sounds 4.3. The problem of auditory scenes 4.4. Coding in the auditory system 5. Outstanding Issues in Environmental Sound Research 6. A Vision of the Future 7. References

A dry skull added with damping material was used to investigate the vibratory pattern of bone conducted sound. Three orthogonal vibration responses of the cochleae were measured, by means of miniature accelerometers, in the frequency range 0.1-10 kHz. The exciter was attached to the temporal, parietal, and frontal bones, one at the time. In the transmission response to the ipsilateral cochlea, a profound low frequency antiresonance ͑attenuation͒ was found, verified psycho-acoustically, and shown to yield a distinct lateralization effect. It was also shown that, for the ipsilateral side, the direction of excitation coincides with that of maximum response. At the contralateral cochlea, no such dominating response direction was found for frequencies above the first skull resonance. An overall higher response level was achieved, for the total energy transmission in general and specifically for the direction of excitation, at the ipsilateral cochlea when the transducer was attached to the excitation point closest to the cochlea. The transranial attenuation was found to be frequency dependent, with values from Ϫ5 to 10 dB for the energy transmission and Ϫ30 to 40 dB for measurements in a single direction, with a tendency toward higher attenuation at the higher frequencies.

This essay introduces a large and diverse special issue on 'The Acoustics of Justice: Law, Listening, Sound'. Until recently the acoustic dimensions of law and justice were not a major concern in the academy, either in self-consciously legal scholarship, or elsewhere. Things are changing, as indeed the size of this collection suggests. And our hope is that the work gathered here will go some way to addressing this deficit. Nevertheless, this introduction does not attempt to theorise how. Though the collection was conceived in 2019, it was mostly produced since the arrival of COVID-19. And we are tired. We have been working from home too long; or rather our homes have been 'requisitioned' for work. Our teaching loads have increased and the teaching itself rapidly onlined. All while separated from loved ones and attempting to school or otherwise entertain our kids at home. And we are the lucky ones. This introduction is, in a sense, an anti-introduction, or a non-introduction then: a strategic withdrawal of labour that opens the door onto the collection but offers little in the way of guidance to readers once they step through. Whether that is generous or irresponsible we leave to readers to decide.

Today's society has accompanied the evolution of the internet connecting more and more people each day, people who keep demanding more from it, unleashing a technological proliferation never seen before. The usage of resources such as video and audio on the Internet has gained an increased importance over the past years. However, there is a noticeable lack of educational digital resources in audio, which are capable of presenting a sufficiently efficient pedagogy in regards to such a complex and extended theme, to whoever wants to learn audio as a deeper engineering component. On the Internet, video sites such as YouTube teach to use audio editing software such as Audacity, concepts about sound and audio, yet these are spread around across the Internet being that the vast majority of them do not possess the scientific fundaments or a bibliography to accompany them. The objective of this investigation is to research about knowledge and audio resources integrating them in a learning object, investigating theoretical notions about sound, equipment and techniques used in audio, as well as obtaining better results in a recording space the student might assemble. Putting together these concepts in a reasonably developed prototype. A lot of investigation was required on the subject on whether DALCH was a viable teaching resource of audio relation concept, which on itself is a very complex objective. Once realized, this investigation it was necessary to develop, test and evaluate a Learning Object product, which can present audio in its all, from basic concepts to more complex aspects such as production. It was possible to assess that this solution may contribute to the shaping of these students by means of a pleasantly intuitive experience.

This booklet gives answers to some of the basic questions
asked by the newcomer to a noise measuring
programme. It gives a brief explanation to questions
like:
What is sound ?
Why do we measure sound ?
What units do we use ?
How do we hear ?
What instruments do we use for measurement ?
What is a weighting network ?
What is frequency analysis ?
What is noise dose ?
How does sound propagate ?
Where should we make our measurements ?
How does the environment influence measurements ?
How should the microphone be positioned
in the sound field ?
How do we make a measurement report ?
What do we do when levels are too high ?

The stability of the motion of an oscillator with a periodically time-varying mass is under consideration. The key idea is that an adequate change of variables leads to a newtonian equation, where classical stability techniques can be applied: Floquet theory for the linear oscillator, KAM method in the nonlinear case. To illustrate this general idea, first we have generalized the results of [W.T. van Horssen, A.K. Abramian, Hartono, On the free vibrations of an oscillator with a periodically time-varying mass, J. Sound Vibration 298 (2006) 1166–1172] to the forced case; second, for a weakly forced Duffing’s oscillator with variable mass, the stability in the nonlinear sense is proved by showing that the first twist coefficient is not zero.

The aim of this study is to investigate whether or not spatial congruency between tactile and auditory stimuli would influence the tactile roughness discrimination of stimuli presented to the fingers or cheeks. In the experiment, when abrasive films were passively presented to the participants, white noise bursts were simultaneously presented from the same or different side, either near or far from the head. The results showed that when white noise was presented from the same side as the tactile stimuli, especially from near the head, the discrimination sensitivity on the cheeks was higher than when sound was absent or presented from a different side. A similar pattern was observed in discrimination by the fingers but it was not significant. The roughness discrimination by the fingers was also influenced by the presentation of sound close to the head, but significant differences between conditions with and without sounds were observed at the decisional level. Thus, the spatial congruency between tactile and auditory information selectively modulated the roughness sensitivity of the skin on the cheek, especially when the sound source was close to the head.

An efficient and modular numerical prediction model is developed to predict vibration and re-radiated noise in adjacent buildings from excitation due to metro trains in tunnels for both newly built and existing situations. The three-dimensional dynamic tunnel-soil interaction problem is solved with a subdomain formulation, using a finite element formulation for the tunnel and a boundary element method for the soil. The periodicity of the tunnel and the soil in the longitudinal direction is exploited using the Floquet transform, limiting the discretization effort to a single bounded reference cell. It is demonstrated in the paper how the boundary element method can efficiently be extended to deal with periodic media, reusing the available three-dimensional Green's tensors for layered media. The efficiency of the method is demonstrated with a numerical example, where the case of harmonic and transient point loading on the invert of a shallow cut-and-cover masonry tunnel in Paris is considered. The work described here was carried out under the auspices of the CONVURT project sponsored by the European Community. r

Exact formulas of the acoustic radiation force and torque exerted by an arbitrary time-harmonic wave on an absorbing compressible particle that is suspended in an inviscid fluid are presented. It is considered that the particle diameter is much smaller than the incident wavelength, i.e. the so-called Rayleigh scattering limit. Moreover, the particle absorption assumed here is due to the attenuation of compressional waves only. Shear wave propagation inside and outside the particle is neglected, since the inner and outer viscous boundary layer of the particle are supposed to be much smaller than the particle radius. The obtained radiation force formulas are used to establish the trapping conditions of a particle by a single-beam acoustical tweezer based on a spherically focused ultrasound beam. In this case, it is shown that the particle absorption has a pivotal role in single-beam trapping. Furthermore, the axial radiation torque induced by a Bessel vortex beam is calculated. It is found that only the first-order Bessel vortex beam can generate the radiation torque on a small particle. In addition, numerical evaluation of the radiation force and torque exerted on a benzene and an olive oil droplet suspended in water are presented and discussed.