Sound Attributes Research Articles

Midbrain encodes sound detection behavior without auditory cortex

Hearing involves analyzing the physical attributes of sounds and integrating the results of this analysis with other sensory, cognitive, and motor variables in order to guide adaptive behavior. The auditory cortex is considered crucial for the integration of acoustic and contextual information and is thought to share the resulting representations with subcortical auditory structures via its vast descending projections. By imaging cellular activity in the corticorecipient shell of the inferior colliculus of mice engaged in a sound detection task, we show that the majority of neurons encode information beyond the physical attributes of the stimulus and that the animals’ behavior can be decoded from the activity of those neurons with a high degree of accuracy. Surprisingly, this was also the case in mice in which auditory cortical input to the midbrain had been removed by bilateral cortical lesions. This illustrates that subcortical auditory structures have access to a wealth of non-acoustic information and can, independently of the auditory cortex, carry much richer neural representations than previously thought.

Felt Anticipation: Rhythm, Expectation, and Emotion in Friederike Mayröcker’s Poetic Spoken Atmospheres

Abstract This paper addresses the work of the Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker (1924–2021) with an interdisciplinary approach contextualised within Cognitive Poetics and Cognitive Literary Theory studies. The specific focus of this study is the voice and the meaning produced through the proposed notion of a ‘poetic spoken atmosphere’. The poetic spoken atmosphere is understood here not as the unique property of an audio-text but rather as an intersubjective phenomenon emerging at the intersection of the poetic language and a listener. This notion underlines the importance of voice and its effects in the dynamics of poetry reception in order to investigate sound patterns and meaning-making dynamics, approaching three specific processes – rhythm, expectation, and emotion. The general theoretical frame of this study is based on principles of both phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Likewise, the analysis of Mayröcker’s poems is based on her recordings, available on the Lyrikline platform of the Haus für Poesie Berlin, from which spectrograms were generated to complement the textual and acoustic analysis. The observations of this study address the vocal structures modulating what can be termed an ‘insideness’, which allows to analyze sound attributes such as duration, intensity, ubiquity, and disappearing. Recognising such attributes help us to understand the emotional level of poetic sounds, i. e. the relationship between feeling and meaning in listening, hypothesising that meaning is indeed felt. Finally, the paper offers a comparative perspective that suggests further research on the basis of the paper’s theoretical-analytical methodology, and it provides specific examples from several literary systems.

Data-driven modeling of consumer product satisfaction using an orthogonal arrangement of sound attributes

Sound quality attributes have been proven to be important predictors of customer satisfaction with consumer appliances. The results of several studies indicate that level-based, tonal, and temporal aspects of sound influence the perceived quality of consumer products. The current state-of-the-art of inferring consumer satisfaction with sound attributes is based on the jury test methodology. However, listening-based jury studies fail to capture interaction effects nor study sound samples based on an orthogonal arrangement of sound quality attributes. Therefore, this study aims to develop data-driven models to mathematically relate sound attributes to consumer satisfaction. A baseline sound obtained from the operational noise generated by a fan-powered home appliance was used as a reference sound for researching the importance of sound quality attributes. An orthogonal-designed experiment was conducted to prepare sound samples based on selected sound attributes, including loudness, sharpness, roughness, and prominence ratio. Consumer studies were conducted to measure the product satisfaction of the various sound samples, which were used to train the data-driven model. The data-driven model was shown to accurately predict consumer satisfaction metrics based on sound quality attributes. Therefore, the proposed methods are valuable for evaluating new products within the model inference space without conducting further listening-based jury studies.

Embodied/Encoded: A Study of Presence in Digital Music

Presence in Embodied/Encoded is concerned with the physical and embodied dimensions of musicking in relation to digital-informational representations of such phenomena. I explore presence through practices of recording, creative coding, audio production, and spatial electronic music composition. Of particular interest is the link between presence and the sensual/corporeal aspects of sound production and listening. Research in embodied music cognition and extended reality provide a foundation for this type of meaning formation. In the context of immersive electronic music, I suggest that physical presence – a sense of ‘being somewhere’—emerges not just from images/representations of place, but from peripheral aspects of the (embodied) acoustic experience such as spatial proximity and distance, diffuseness, resonance and reverberation, noise floor, etc. Consequently, musical meaning in “Embodied/Encoded” moves away from the symbolic dimension of electronic sounds toward meaning as an outcome of embodied interaction with the environment. The concept of presence can also apply to ‘mixed’ music, or combinations of acoustic and electronic sources, in which virtual presence is complicated by real bodies and spaces. Digital technology renders sound a flexible, malleable entity—a ‘flickering’ signifier to borrow from Hayles—capable of reconfiguring presence in creative ways. The dance between encoded and embodied dimensions inspires and informs this artistic research. Through a body of immersive music and multimedia documentation, I unpack connections between presence and its digital abstractions.

Analysis and Model of Temporal Sound Attributes from Recorded Audio

A computational framework is proposed for analyzing the temporal evolution of perceptual attributes of sound stimuli. As a paradigm, the perceptual attribute of envelopment, which is manifested in different audio sound reproduction formats, is employed. For this, listener temporal ratings of the envelopment for mono, stereo, and 5.0-channel surround music samples, serve as the ground truth for establishing a computational model that can accurately trace temporal changes from such recordings. Combining established and heuristic methodologies, different features of the audio signals were extracted at each segment that envelopment ratings were registered, named long-term (LT) features. A memory LT computational stage is proposed to account for the temporal variations of the features through the duration of the signal, based on the exponentially weighted moving average of the respective LT features. These are utilized in a gradient tree boosting, machine learning algorithm, leading to a Dynamic Model that accurately predicts the listener’s temporal envelopment ratings. Without the proposed memory LT feature function, a Static Model is also derived, which is shown to have lower performance for predicting such temporal envelopment variations.

Surveillance of mosquitoes harnessing their buzzing sound

Mosquito surveillance for vector-borne disease management relies on traditional morphological and molecular techniques, which are tedious, time-consuming, and costly. The present study describes a simple and efficient recording device that analyzes mosquito sound to estimate species composition, male-female ratio, fed-unfed status, and harmonic convergence interaction using fundamental frequency (F0) bandwidth, harmonics, amplitude, and combinations of these parameters. The study examined a total of 19 mosquito species, including 3 species of Aedes, 7 species of Anopheles, 1 species of Armigeres, 5 species of Culex, 1 species of Hulecoetomyia, and 2 species of Mansonia. Among them, the F0 ranges between 269.09 ± 2.96 Hz (Anopheles culiciformis) to 567.51 ± 3.82 Hz (Aedes vittatus) and the harmonic band (hb) number ranges from 5 (An. culiciformis) to 12 (Ae. albopictus). In terms of species identification, the success rate was 95.32 % with F0, 84.79 % with F0-bandwidth, 84.79 % with harmonic band (hb) diversity, and 49.7 % with amplitude (dB). The species identification rate has gone up to 96.50 % and 97.66 % with the ratio and multiplication of F0 and hb, respectively. This is because of the matrices that combine multiple sound attributes. Comparatively, combinations of the amplitude of the F0 and the higher harmonic frequency band were non-significant for species identification (60.82 %). The fed females have shown a considerable increase in F0 in comparison to the unfed. The males of all the species possessed significantly higher frequencies with respect to the females. Interestingly, the presence of male-female of Ae. vittatus together showed harmonic convergence between the 2nd and 3rd harmonic bands. In conclusion, the sound-based technology is simple, precise, and cost-effective and provides better resolution for species, sex, and fed-unfed status detection in comparison to conventional methods. Real-time surveillance of mosquitoes could potentially utilize this technology.

Bez obrazu, czyli seriale audio. Problematyka kreacji świata przedstawionego i jego recepcji

The aim of the article is to show the issues related to the world-building present in audio series in relation to various types of acoustic spaces, a bank of sounds specific to real spaces and the creation of shared fields of action and relations within a given universe in the mind of the recipient. Further attention is paid to the issue of differentiating individual characters by creating distinctive language and sound profiles that mark them out as individuals, as well as assigning them specific sound attributes related to verbal and non-verbal communication and the soundscape characteristic of a specific place of action or social environment. The analysis also takes into account the role of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds in creating the imaginary world and controlling the recipient’s expectations, as well as the processes of understanding and interpreting (or analyzing) the audio series. The article also draws attention to the role of silence, (un)silence and various types of pauses as meaningful aspects of communication and interactions between the characters of the audio series. A separate section is devoted to the characteristics of the elements of the imaginary audio space in the context of individual cognitive universals. The conceptual framework for the analysis of these issues will be intermediality treated as (a) a process of adaptation, but also, in “adjectival” form, as (b) a specific attribute of an audio-series, i.e. an intermedia message and as (c) a user competency attribute. The article is not normative, but descriptive, i.e. it describes creative and reception practices related to the eponymous phenomenon. Due to the breadth of the research field, two perspectives are used in the article: the medium-oriented approach and the user-oriented approach.

The Mitigating Effects of Water Sound Attributes on Stress Responses to Traffic Noise

Traffic noise is a significant risk factor for adverse health outcomes. Despite burgeoning interest in reducing the harmful health effects of traffic noise, research on the influence of physical and psychoacoustic attributes has been sparse. Consequently, this study examines the impacts of various acoustic attributes on mitigating stress response to traffic noise using dependent variables derived from electrodermal activity. The results indicate that: (a) mixing water sound (noise) at a low signal-to-noise ratio effectively mitigated stress response to traffic noise (signal), whereas mixing white noise with high fractal complexity (noise) significantly induced stress; and (b) sound pressure and acoustic sharpness significantly reduced stress response to traffic noise. Conversely, attributes such as high fractal complexity, moderate and high signal-to-noise ratios, acoustic loudness, and mean frequency significantly increased stress. This research offers a viable blueprint for creating evidence-based noise mitigation strategies that focus on intervention sound attributes.

Perceptual dimensions of fan sounds with different tonal characteristics

Fan noise is a common tonal noise source in people's everyday life. While tonal sounds at high frequencies often contribute to annoyance, the perception and evaluation of low-frequency tones is not fully understood. In the present study, the perceptual dimensions of 24 tonal prototype fan sounds were explored using a semantic differential consisting of 21 adjective scales that were rated by 40 participants. The synthesized sounds had the same sound pressure level of 55 dB(A) but differed in fundamental frequency and spectral envelope of the embedded tonal signatures Using a factor analysis, four perceptual dimensions were found that explain 59 % of the variance. Fan sounds with a fundamental frequency of 60 Hz were rated to be more "humming" (1st dimension) and more "pleasant" (2nd dimension) but less "buzzing" and less "beeping" (3rd dimension) in comparison to sounds with higher fundamental frequencies of 180 Hz and 300 Hz. An analysis of the relationships between the adjective scales and psychoacoustic metrics show that the "humming" ratings were highly correlated to a metric describing the relative contribution of low frequencies to the overall loudness. In contrast, psychoacoustic sharpness and tonality had smaller correlation coefficients with the "humming" ratings.

SQAT: a MATLAB-based toolbox for quantitative sound quality analysis

Literature suggests that psychoacoustic metrics, which are established by models firmly based on the human auditory system, are able to better approximate perceptual attributes of sounds in a quantitative manner than conventional metrics based on the sound pressure level. Therefore, psychoacoustic metrics are commonly used as sound quality indicators in practical applications, such as product design or environmental noise assessment, in which human perception plays an important role. However, their calculation is not straightforward and the non-availability of verified, well-documented, open-source implementations in a single environment poses a challenge to reproducible research. In this contribution, we introduce the sound quality analysis toolbox (SQAT), an open-source compilation of MATLAB codes containing the implementation of the following key psychoacoustic metrics: loudness (ISO 532-1:2017), sharpness (DIN 45692:2009), roughness (Daniel & Weber's model), fluctuation strength (Osses et al. model), and tonality (Aures' model). A comprehensive description of the implemented psychoacoustic metrics is provided. Furthermore, a verification study is presented in order to demonstrate the reliability of the implementations, supporting the use of SQAT as a reliable tool for future works in the field of sound quality assessment based on psychoacoustic metrics.

Development of soundscape evaluation method: an application of Psychoacoustics Perception Scale (PPS)

There is a growing awareness of the standard development for soundscape evaluation. Although soundscape evaluation of environmental noise is not a new concept, the heterogenous between the soundscape studies will increase the difficulty in integrating the findings of the studies. Recently, the findings of the fundamental human perceptual dimensions of sounds and the design of the Psychoacoustics Perception Scale (PPS) provided an insightful solution to the development of soundscape evaluation. The perceptual model, called EPA model, was designed to quantitively assess the context content of acoustic environments regarding the human general judgment (Evaluation, E), sensitivity to the magnitude (Potency, P), and sensation of the temporal and spectral compositions (Activity, A) of sounds by using the PPS. In this study, the PPS was applied to the soundscape evaluation of various public urban spaces. The construct validity of the EPA model by the PPS was verified. The application of the PPS in soundscape evaluation will be a novel and practical way in the standard development of soundscape evaluation.

From noise to sound: Setting the base of packaging sound design for cosmetics by physical, sensory and cognitive characterization of lipstick closing sounds

When envisioning a tube of lipstick, the initial impressions are typically centered around its visual appearance and fragrance. Its sound, specifically the sound of closing the tube, is unlikely to be the first perception to be spontaneously imagined. Even so, consciously or not, a beauty experience is multisensorial, and the overall perception is a weighted combination of all sensory dimensions. Lipstick closing is defined as a noise as it comes from a side effect of packaging produced by the interaction between the packaging conception and the closing gesture. However, this “noise” can become a sound if it is designed specifically to carry functional or emotional cues. This study aims to support sound design for packaging in cosmetics. It consists of a combination of three approaches to better understand the mental categories associated with lipstick closing sounds. Through this combined approach of 1) a Sequential Agglomerative Sorting task with consumers, 2) a sensory decoding by a panel and 3) physical analyses of the sounds, this study provides new evidence of how the sound is perceived with an emphasis on cultural similarities and differences. The results show clear perceptual differences between lipstick sounds but no strong cultural difference between France and China. The description of sound by physical and sensorial measurement highlights the key role of sound duration and frequency in sound discrimination. The goal of this work is to influence the design of lipstick and, more globally, product design by introducing the sound dimension as an essential consideration.

Harmony of senses: Exploring the impact of sound aesthetic features' on taste imagery

People reliably associate visual aesthetic features such as curvature and symmetry with tastes. In the present study, considering the transitive hypothesis of crossmodal correspondences, we evaluated whether these findings would extend to the relationship between sound aesthetic features and tastes, and whether feature-based congruency or affective priming would explain the influence of melodies on taste imagery. In Experiment 1, we evaluated how people associate different melody profiles (balanced vs. unbalanced, smooth vs. jagged, symmetrical vs. asymmetrical, simpler vs. more complex) with different tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty), as well as the melodies' associated fluency, valence, and arousal. Smooth and complex melodies were perceived as sweeter, jagged and unbalanced melodies as sourer, asymmetrical and jagged melodies as more bitter, and jagged and balanced melodies as saltier. In Experiment 2, we selected the most strongly associated aesthetic sound dimension with tastes, namely contour, and evaluated whether crossmodal congruency, based on crossmodal correspondences, or affective priming would influence people’s sensory and hedonic imagery associated with sweet and sour foods. In the imagery tasks, the participants showed higher sour ratings in the sourness task and higher sweetness ratings in the sweetness task. In the sweet imagery task, smooth melodies led to sweeter and less sour food imagery, whereas jagged melodies in the sourness task led to more sour and less sweet food imagery. These results favour the crossmodal congruency explanation rather than the affective alternative, which we ponder in the general discussion.

Revealing the stimulus-driven component of attention through modulations of auditory salience by timbre attributes

Attention allows the listener to select relevant information from their environment, and disregard what is irrelevant. However, irrelevant stimuli sometimes manage to capture it and stand out from a scene because of bottom-up processes driven by salient stimuli. This attentional capture effect was observed using an implicit approach based on the additional singleton paradigm. In the auditory domain, it was shown that sound attributes such as intensity and frequency tend to capture attention during auditory search (cost to performance) for targets defined on a different dimension such as duration. In the present study, the authors examined whether a similar phenomenon occurs for attributes of timbre such as brightness (related to the spectral centroid) and roughness (related the amplitude modulation depth). More specifically, we revealed the relationship between the variations of these attributes and the magnitude of the attentional capture effect. In experiment 1, the occurrence of a brighter sound (higher spectral centroid) embedded in sequences of successive tones produced significant search costs. In experiments 2 and 3, different values of brightness and roughness confirmed that attention capture is monotonically driven by the sound features. In experiment 4, the effect was found to be symmetrical: positive or negative, the same difference in brightness had the same negative effect on performance. Experiment 5 suggested that the effect produced by the variations of the two attributes is additive. This work provides a methodology for quantifying the bottom-up component of attention and brings new insights on attention capture and auditory salience.

Human-Like Modulation Sensitivity Emerging through Optimization to Natural Sound Recognition.

Natural sounds contain rich patterns of amplitude modulation (AM), which is one of the essential sound dimensions for auditory perception. The sensitivity of human hearing to AM measured by psychophysics takes diverse forms depending on the experimental conditions. Here, we address with a single framework the questions of why such patterns of AM sensitivity have emerged in the human auditory system and how they are realized by our neural mechanisms. Assuming that optimization for natural sound recognition has taken place during human evolution and development, we examined its effect on the formation of AM sensitivity by optimizing a computational model, specifically, a multilayer neural network, for natural sound (namely, everyday sounds and speech sounds) recognition and simulating psychophysical experiments in which the AM sensitivity of the model was assessed. Relatively higher layers in the model optimized to sounds with natural AM statistics exhibited AM sensitivity similar to that of humans, although the model was not designed to reproduce human-like AM sensitivity. Moreover, simulated neurophysiological experiments on the model revealed a correspondence between the model layers and the auditory brain regions. The layers in which human-like psychophysical AM sensitivity emerged exhibited substantial neurophysiological similarity with the auditory midbrain and higher regions. These results suggest that human behavioral AM sensitivity has emerged as a result of optimization for natural sound recognition in the course of our evolution and/or development and that it is based on a stimulus representation encoded in the neural firing rates in the auditory midbrain and higher regions.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT This study provides a computational paradigm to bridge the gap between the behavioral properties of human sensory systems as measured in psychophysics and neural representations as measured in nonhuman neurophysiology. This was accomplished by combining the knowledge and techniques in psychophysics, neurophysiology, and machine learning. As a specific target modality, we focused on the auditory sensitivity to sound AM. We built an artificial neural network model that performs natural sound recognition and simulated psychophysical and neurophysiological experiments in the model. Quantitative comparison of a machine learning model with human and nonhuman data made it possible to integrate the knowledge of behavioral AM sensitivity and neural AM tunings from the perspective of optimization to natural sound recognition.

Body, Voice and Noise: Acting for Sound Films as Debated in the Interwar Romanian Press

"Sound cinema arrived on Romanian screens in 1929 to a moderate response. Critics and artists alike pondered over their status as an altered version of silent cinema, filmed theatre or a new art form. All three alternatives were further confronted to the status of the actor, as delineated by theatre, in an attempt to clarify the uncertain future of the film actor who used both his body and voice. This paper conducts a survey of articles on these issues published by Romanian interwar newspapers. Their authors reached various conclusions, from predicting the imminent failure of sound cinema and, thus, the disappearance of the spoken film actor, temporarily subjected to enacting on celluloid a shadow of his defining stage performance, to examining solutions that conciliated spoken dialogue with the sound dimension of film. Keywords: acting, sound cinema, sound film, spoken film, silent cinema, theatre, Romanian press, interwar period. "

Listening to The Intrepid Alix: audio experience of a classical bande dessinée

Although digitization and transmedia storytelling broaden our sensory experience of comics nowadays, adaptation and merchandising have long been offered similar opportunities. As Ian Hague’s book Comics and the Senses has pointed out, admitting the obviousness that “materiality matters” implies “challenging the idea that comics are a purely visual medium.” Engaging Hague’s proposition, this article focuses on a “Disque d’aventure” produced by Festival, a French record label, in 1960: Alix l’intrépide. The first episode in the French-language comics series Alix by Jacques Martin, The Intrepid Alix, had been serialized in Tintin magazine (1948-49), then released as a comics album (1956), before being adapted by Jean Maurel into an audiobook on LP vinyl record (1960). As a first step towards a multisensory approach to comics, this article deals with the sound dimension of the comic strip and the audiobook. Analysis of the record broadens our understanding of the audio experience of The Intrepid Alix. However, we will see that it cannot be considered simply as a soundtrack to the comic. Indeed, I will demonstrate that The Intrepid Alix does not need an audiobook edition in order to integrate a sound experience.

Blowing up Ti3C2TX MXene membrane for robust sound detection

Flexible pressure sensors have attracted great attention in health monitoring, human–machine interface, and soft robotics because of their simple device structure and easy to read signals. Two-dimensional (2D) materials (e.g., MXene) are promising candidates for constructing flexible pressure sensors due to their high conductivity and solution-based processability. Typically, during filtration, micrometer-sized MXene nanosheets are assembled into a thin membrane with plenty of wrinkles and folds in order to minimize the total energy. Herein, by taking advantage of this phenomenon, hydrazine hydrate is employed as a foaming agent to blow up the wrinkles and folds of MXene nanosheets in the membrane by gas species generated from the redox reactions, forming a porous foam. The as-prepared pressure sensor shows high sensitivity for a wide linear range (102.89 kPa−1 for 0–0.5 kPa and 2.86 kPa−1 for 2–10 kPa), low detection limit (1 Pa), fast response time (132 ms), and excellent durability (over 5000 cycles). As a detector, the MXene sensor can not only identify different sound signals and sound attributes by monitoring the vocal cord vibration but also distinguish various natural sounds transmitted through the air pressure waves caused by the sound transmission.

Psychoacoustic parameters in noise assessment – A research within the BMDV Network of Experts

This paper is dedicated to the applicability of psychoacoustic parameters for the evaluation of traffic noise. To characterize road traffic noises in detail and to demonstrate the perceptual impact, knowledge of the underlying dimensions that influence the evaluation of traffic sounds in everyday situations is required. In a study, stimulus-dyad comparisons were used to investigate underlying descriptive variables and attributes describing the latent perceptual dimensions of road traffic sounds. The dyads covered the feature space of road traffic sounds and systematically took into account factors such as traffic volume, traffic flow, traffic composition and road surface. The paper explains the experimental methodology, shows the derived attributes, and outlines the development of a questionnaire as a measurement tool to determine the perception of road traffic sounds in detail.

Historias y narrativas que conforman la identidad de ecosistemas sonoros.

The identity of the sound ecosystem is a set of systems that form ephemeral spatio-tempo- ral interrelationships and are manifested in a certain territory and moment, perceived by subjectivity, in our case, by artists. This identity helps us to get to know the multiple sound dimensions of a place and, in turn, enables the creation of new sound identities through art. The research question is about how the recording of a sound tells us something about the identity of the ecosystem. The aim of this article is to analyse this question on the basis of the works “In the heart of Tlanchana. Stories from the lagoon of San Miguel Almaya, State of Mexico” (2017) and “Bolibarko Erreka” (2018), works that converge in the construction of the identity of sound ecosystems. The methodology is based on a typology of artistic attitudes towards the ecosystem, developed in the doctoral thesis entitled “The identity of sound ecosystems as a basis for artistic creation”, which establishes three forms of relation- ship between the artistic subject and the ecosystem through sound: 1) more active, 2) less active and 3) hybrid.