Sound Design Research Articles

Towards extraordinary sound absorption using coupled resonances

In this paper, we provide an overview of recent advancements in novel sound absorption designs, predominantly based on optimized coupling between resonances. First, we present a sound absorption panel design capable of achieving high absorption in the low-frequency broadband range (50–63 Hz, one-third octave band). This panel demonstrates an average absorption coefficient of approximately 93%, all while maintaining a thickness of 15.4 cm (equivalent to 1/45 of the wavelength at 50 Hz). Transitioning from the one- port system, we delve into the realm of the two-port system, introducing an ultra-sparse structure for flow-free sound absorption. This structure exhibits near-perfect absorption (∼99%), and this absorption capability is achieved when the spatial period of monopole–dipole resonators is close to one working wavelength (95% wavelength). These developments signify significant strides in sound absorption technology, presenting innovative solutions with enhanced efficiency and performance across various frequency ranges and environments.

Musical timbre with varied amplitude envelope improves efficacy in auditory alarms

Current alarm standards used in safety critical environments (e.g., medical alarms used in hospitals) suffer from a myriad of complications with detectability, annoyance, and alarm fatigue affecting the wellbeing of patients and staff. To a large extent, these are based on the same simplistic, temporally invariant tones. Here we explore how insights from the acoustic properties of the musical triangle can aid in detection, reducing overall levels hence reducing annoyance ratings. Two tones are used, (1) a standard tone similar to those used in current medical devices, and (2) a tone synthesized based on the spectral-temporal structure of a concert triangle. We conducted a detection experiment where participants indicated if the auditory stimulus is heard when presented a range of signal-to-noise (SNR) ratios and a two-alternative force choice task to measure annoyance ratings. Although reductions in SNRs reduced detectability for the standard tone, similar deductions had no meaningful effect on detectability of tones modeled off the musical triangle. Crucially, we identified a number of triangle inspired tones which are both less annoying and more detectable than standard tones. This suggests that these more complex sounds can reduce annoyance without harming detection, offering useful insight to medical device sound design.

Network reliability evaluation of a supply chain under supplier sustainability

The United Nations’ sustainable development goals have brought attention to the pressing issue of enhancing supply chain sustainability and ensuring equitable order allocation. In contrast to the previous research, this study involves sustainability in network reliability evaluation. A new algorithm is proposed for computing network reliability, the probability that the current supply chain not only meets demand, budget, and suppliers’ production capacity but also considers the level of supplier sustainability. In the constructed multistate supply chain network (MSCN), a node represents a supplier, warehouse, assembler, or market, and a route connecting the nodes represents a carrier. The capacity of each carrier, represented by the available delivery containers, should not be deterministic as they may be partially reserved by other markets. Grounded in the Method Based on the Removal Effects of Criteria (MEREC) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), the supplier sustainability can be assessed, facilitating the selection of sustainable suppliers and the determination of feasible order allocations, which are essential for various industries. An audio production cooperation is used as a case study to demonstrate the utility of the proposed algorithm.

Facing the Limitations of Teaching and Learning Committed to Solidarity and Social Justice: A Feminist Approach

This study examines how 52 graduate students enrolled in a social justice program in a large urban university in Canada relate to others in and outside the college classroom. Using a method involving creative student audio productions and self-reflections, the study finds that despite extensive learning about others and engaging with postcolonial, race, feminist, Indigenous and other critical theories and knowledges in the program, both racially privileged students and those who are members of disadvantaged and marginalized social groups enact relations extending power structures imagined as “solidarity.” These relations have important gender aspects and are shaped by broader historical forces, such as racism and colonization, as well as contemporary aspects of Canadian academia that have not been studied fully in relation to social justice education. These findings call for social justice curriculum and pedagogies that move learners from thinking critically and feeling empathy for others to behaving ethically and standing in political togetherness with those others as equals. The study suggests that transnational women and feminist political practices of solidarity mobilizing cross-racial and cross-national women’s movements in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s present valuable pedagogies that could position college students for such relating.

How a Technology Identity Can Enhance the Diffusion of Good Design Practices in Product Sound Design

People are plugged into an intangible sound universe. But only a tiny part of the sounds we are exposed to have been purposefully designed. Recently, designers are bashfully approaching these intangible products’ quality. Product Sound Design represents, in fact, a promising research field still scarcely explored. The design community is answering this concern through new design methods. An Italian university developed a patented method-and-tool, conceived to collect, analyze, and recreate various sounds to develop a new generation of products with designed mechanical (and, eventually, digital) sounds. Spreading this innovation within the design community is fundamental to stimulate future more focused and aware practices. As well as all new technologies, the new patent didn’t have its own identity from the beginning. Extensive work conducted with the scientific approach has therefore been undertaken to redesign its identity to make its disruptiveness intelligible and understandable.

Sonic Sleight of Hand: Sound Induces Illusory Distortions in the Perception and Prediction of Robot Action

AbstractFor efficient human–robot interaction, human operators need to be able to efficiently represent the robot’s movements in space and predict its next steps. However, according to frameworks of Bayesian multisensory integration, features outside the motion itself—like the sounds a robot makes while it moves—should affect how otherwise identical motions are perceived. Here, we translate an established psychophysical task from experimental psychology to a human–robot interaction context, which can measure these distortions to motion perception. In two series of preregistered studies, participants watched a humanoid robot make forward and backward reaching movements. When the robot hand suddenly disappeared, they reported its last seen location, either with the mouse cursor (Experiment 1a and 1b) or by matching it to probe stimuli in different locations (Experiment 2a and 2b). The results revealed that even small changes to the robot’s sound robustly affect participants’ visuospatial representation of its motions, so that the motion appeared to extend further in space when accompanied by slightly (100 ms) longer sounds compared to slightly shorter sounds (100 ms shorter). Moreover, these sound changes do not only affect where people currently locate the robot’s motion, but where they anticipate its future steps. These findings show that sound design is an effective medium for manipulating how people represent otherwise identical robot actions and coordinate its interactions with it. The study acts as proof of concept that psychophysical tasks provide a promising tool to measure how design parameters influence the perception and prediction of robot motion.

Pembuatan Studio Podcast SMK Pangeran Antasari Medan

This journal reviews the implementation of community service activities aimed at building a Podcast studio at SMK Pangeran Antasari. This research was carried out with the aim of improving students' skills in Audio content production and stimulating the development of creativity through Podcast media. The service method includes training, coaching and maintenance of studio facilities. The training involves various aspects, such as technical Audio production, editing, and Podcast marketing. Coaching focuses on idea development, script writing, and presentation skills. Studio facility maintenance includes Hardware and Software management to ensure smooth production. The research results show an increase in students' technical skills in producing Podcasts, along with an increase in their interest and participation in creative activities. The Podcast studio becomes a platform for students to express their ideas, views and talents. In addition, this activity forms a close collaboration between the school and the surrounding community, creating positive synergy and empowering the local community. In conclusion, this community service activity makes a significant contribution to increasing students' media literacy and strengthening the role of SMK Pangeran Antasari as an agent of change in community empowerment through Podcast media.

Soundscapes of a Century: The Art and Transmission of Irish Broadcasting’s 100-Year Milestone

Abstract This article examines two renditions of an artwork titled 100, which celebrate a historic radio transmission in 1916 during the Irish war for independence. The centenary artwork delves into the concept of radio transmission as an artistic expression rather than solely a practical function. The work explores the intersection of radio transmission with installation art, as well as its connections to sound art and sound design. Engaging with diverse theoretical frameworks, the article interrogates the boundaries of radio and its relationship with other media expressions. It also seeks to understand important historical works and events within radio, with a focus on exploring the roots of radio and its history in Ireland.

‘Othering’ the Mothers’ Needs: Pregnant and New Mothers’Access to Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in Bangladesh

Since the turn of the 21st century, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) have been a growing priority in the international development paradigm. This study intends to investigate expecting and new mothers’ experiences in accessing WASH and the long-term effects on their socioeconomic and psychosocial development. It also aims to comprehend the gendered dimension of WASH. The Inequality Approach by Amartya Sen was used as the theoretical framework to assess the study’s findings. Purposive sampling was used to choose respondents, and in-depth interviews were done to collect data. According to the findings, expecting and new mothers who are also academics or professionals suffer a slew of issues owing to poor WASH and which impacts their education, job, and mobility. However, they used to cope with the vulnerabilities in order to continue with their regular activities. Similarly, WASH is more than simply a structural issue; it has several overlapping variables that impede pregnant and new mothers’ development. As a result, policy execution and sound structural design, along with a gender perspective, are essential to improve WASH facilities for pregnant and new mothers in all social institutions.

An efficient equalization filter design approach for the accurate sound reproduction in a room environment with wide-band content

In some sound reproduction applications, a desired sound field needs to be reproduced by remote loudspeakers in a room with sufficient accuracy over a wide frequency band. When low-frequency room modes exist and the low-frequency content is required to be reproduced accurately, an equalization filter with a long time-domain response may be necessary, resulting in a filter with a significantly high filter order, especially when the sampling rate is high for the high-frequency content. This imposes computational challenges on both filter design and implementation. In this article, a convex formulation is proposed for the wide-band sound reproduction filter design. To address issues due to the low-frequency room modes, a reduced-order technique is then proposed based on a sub-band filter structure where a low sampling rate is used to equalize the low-frequency room mode characteristics, and a high sampling rate is used for high-frequency features which usually has a short time span in response. The computational time can be reduced by several orders of magnitude and the numerical stability can be improved when the proposed order reduction method is used to eliminate redundant orders. Simulation and experimental results confirm the accuracy and efficiency advantages of the proposed method.

Speech Intelligibility versus Congruency: User Preferences of the Acoustics of Virtual Reality Game Spaces

3D audio spatializers for Virtual Reality (VR) can use the acoustic properties of the surfaces of a visualised game space to calculate a matching reverb. However, this approach could lead to reverbs that impair the tasks performed in such a space, such as listening to speech-based audio. Sound designers would then have to alter the room’s acoustic properties independently of its visualisation to improve speech intelligibility, causing audio-visual incongruency. As user expectation of simulated room acoustics regarding speech intelligibility in VR has not been studied, this study asked participants to rate the congruency of reverbs and their visualisations in 6-DoF VR while listening to speech-based audio. The participants compared unaltered, matching reverbs with sound-designed, mismatching reverbs. The latter feature improved D50s and reduced RT60s at the cost of lower audio-visual congruency. Results suggest participants preferred improved reverbs only when the unaltered reverbs had comparatively low D50s or excessive ringing. Otherwise, too dry or too reverberant reverbs were disliked. The range of expected RT60s depended on the surface visualisation. Differences in timbre between the reverbs may not affect preferences as strongly as shorter RT60s. Therefore, sound designers can intervene and prioritise speech intelligibility over audio-visual congruency in acoustically challenging game spaces.

Subtle Sound Design: Designing for Experience Blend in a Historic House Museum

In this article, we present and discuss a user-study prototype, developed for the Bakkehuset historic house museum in Copenhagen. We examine how the prototype—a digital sound installation—can expand visitors’ experiences of the house and offer encounters with immaterial cultural heritage. Historic house museums often hold back on utilizing digital communication tools inside the houses, since a central purpose of this type of museum is to preserve an original environment. Digital communication tools, however, hold great potential for facilitating rich encounters with cultural heritage and in particular with the immaterial aspects of museum collections and their histories. In this article, we present our design steps and choices, aiming at subtly and seamlessly adding a digital dimension to a historic house. Based on qualitative interviews, we evaluate how the sound installation at Bakkehuset is sensed, interpreted, and used by visitors as part of their museum experience. In turn, we shed light on the historic house museum as a distinct design context for designing hybrid visitor experiences and point to the potentials of digital communication tools in this context.

Development of embodied listening studies with multimodal and wearable haptic interfaces for hearing accessibility in music

IntroductionThe intersection of hearing accessibility and music research offers limited representations of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) individuals, specifically as artists. This article presents inclusive design practices for hearing accessibility through wearable and multimodal haptic interfaces with participants with diverse hearing backgrounds.MethodsWe develop a movement-based sound design practice and audio-tactile compositional vocabulary, co-created with a Deaf co-designer, to offer a more inclusive and embodied listening experience. This listening experience is evaluated with a focus group whose participants have background in music, dance, design, or accessibility in arts. By involving multiple stakeholders, we survey the participants' qualitative experiences in relation to Deaf co-designer's experience.ResultsResults show that multimodal haptic feedback enhanced the participants' listening experience while on-skin vibrations provided more nuanced understanding of the music for Deaf participants. Hearing participants reported interest in understanding the Deaf individuals' musical experience, preferences, and compositions.DiscussionWe conclude by presenting design practices when working with movement-based musical interaction and multimodal haptics. We lastly discuss the challenges and limitations of access barrier in hearing accessibility and music.

Exploring the Impact of Ambient and Character Sounds on Player Experience in Video Games

Elaborate sound design, including background music, ambient sounds (sounds describing the game world), and character sounds (sounds generated by the character’s actions), plays a pivotal role in modern video games. However, the influence of these different types of sound on the player’s experience has not been extensively researched. This study examines the influence of these sound types on immersion, avatar identification, fun, and perceived competence. In two experiments, participants played League of Legends under four different sound conditions. The first experiment (N1 = 32) revealed a non-significant trend in the effect of character sounds on avatar identification. Ambient sounds, however, were limited because the task restricted participants’ movement across the game map. Consequently, we adapted the task to allow for a wider variety of ambient sounds in the second experiment (N2 = 32). Here, a significant impact of character sounds on immersion, avatar identification, and fun was observed, as well as an interaction effect of character sounds and ambient sounds on fun. Furthermore, we observed a trend, though not statistically significant, suggesting that ambient sounds may influence the player’s sense of flow. These findings underline the distinct effects of different sound types, and we discuss implications for the design of sound in video games.

The Practical Application of Film and Television Packaging Art in Television News Programs

Film and television packaging art plays a crucial role in television news programs. By employing film and television packaging, television news programs can achieve more sophisticated production and higher levels of visual effects, thereby enhancing the program's visibility and appeal and strengthening its communication effectiveness. The application of film and television packaging art is wide-ranging, including aspects such as title design, image and visual effects, sound design, and color and style. Successful television news programs often leverage the advantages of film and television packaging art to garner audience recognition and attention. With the continuous innovation and development of film and television packaging technology, the film and television packaging of television news programs in the future will have more possibilities, bringing viewers more rich, vivid, and immersive visuals.

Acoustical and behavioral heuristics for fast interactive sound design.

During their creative process, designers routinely seek the feedback of end users. Yet, the collection of perceptual judgments is costly and time-consuming, since it involves repeated exposure to the designed object under elementary variations. Thus, considering the practical limits of working with human subjects, randomized protocols in interactive sound design face the risk of inefficiency, in the sense of collecting mostly uninformative judgments. This risk is all the more severe that the initial search space of design variations is vast. In this paper, we propose heuristics for reducing the design space considered during an interactive optimization process. These heuristics operate by using an approximation model, called surrogate model, of the perceptual quantity of interest. As an application, we investigate the design of pleasant and detectable electric vehicle sounds using an interactive genetic algorithm. We compare two types of surrogate models for this task, one based on acoustical descriptors gathered from the literature and the other based on behavioral data. We find that reducing by a factor of up to 64 an original design space of 4096 possible settings with the proposed heuristics reduces the number of iterations of the design process by up to 2 to reach the same performance. The behavioral approach leads to the best improvement of the explored designs overall, while the acoustical approach requires an appropriate choice of acoustical descriptor to be effective. Our approach accelerates the convergence of interactive design. As such, it is particularly suitable to tasks in which exhaustive search is prohibitively slow or expensive.

Assessment and Optimization Strategies of Campus Sound Environment

A good sound environment is essential in creating a harmonious and peaceful campus, improving students’learning outcomes, promoting physical and mental health, and creating a green and healthy campus. This study investigated the impact of new buildings on existing ones by optimizing the spacing between new buildings and the sound insulation structure of building enclosures. The results indicated that building 4 was affected by the noise from new building 1 and its surroundings, with a maximum outdoor daytime noise level reaching 69 dB, and the indoor background noise level in the least favorable classroom was 43.73 dB, less than 45 dB, which was within the acceptable range. It is recommended that the sound insulation design be improved in the planning of new teaching buildings. Besides, the surrounding traffic conditions should be improved, and the usage time of sports facilities should be scheduled appropriately to prevent the noise from sporting activities from affecting the classroom activities. The findings of this study provide valuable references for future architectural acoustics design and campus planning, contributing to the creation of peaceful and comfortable campus environments.

Erim Savaş: "Sound is always the second partner of a project"

Üsküdar University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Radio, Television and Cinema, 'Sound Design' event was held within the scope of the Shooting Scales in Cinema and Television course.

Танцевальное искусство в художественном проектировании титров иранского кино

Iranian dance is distinguished by a number of specific features, one of which is the graceful movements of the hands, wrists, and legs, combined with lively facial expressions and body positions. The refined, intricate, and flirtatious gestures and symbols of Persian courtiers, solo, improvisational dances, and the spiritual dance of Sufis reflect the richness of Persian culture. After the 1979 revolution, in accordance with the new revolutionary realities, dance in Iran came under restrictions. However, dance art as a pillar of Persian culture remains an important social phenomenon for the nation, transforming and flowing into other types of art. Using the titles of Iranian films created after the 1979 revolution as examples, this paper traces the designers’ appeal to the dance heritage of Iran and reveals the similarity of the design of film credits with the basic elements of choreography, in particular, ballet, theater, and folk dance. The title is considered as a product of complex design (sound design, kinetic typography, animated graphics), whose fundamental elements (composition, color, visual forms of communication) are similar to the basis of choreographic / ballet art (dance movements, costumes, background). When designing film credits, Iranian designers use references to dance movements (circular, spiral, improvisational), movements of hands, legs (arabesque, petit allegro, folk dances of Khorasani, Bakhtiari, Keshmeh kermanji), fingers, hips, neck, and shoulders (urban dance of jakheli). It is revealed that such borrowings simplify for Iranian designers the task of preparing the viewer for the perception of a movie

Understanding Auditory Space in Digital Games for Visually Impaired People

The article seeks to establish a foundational framework for comprehending crucial definitions and concepts related to auditory space in digital gaming, particularly focusing on audio games designed for visually impaired individuals (VI), often devoid of graphical interfaces. While existing studies often emphasize players’ interactions with interfaces and the acquisition of real-life skills, this text explores audio games through the lens of entertainment and immersion. Numerous studies indicate a demand among visually impaired players for more intricate and challenging games, incorporating elements usually used in standard digital gaming experiences. By combining definitions from both audio and traditional digital games, this article broadens the scope of sound design considerations, encompassing various aspects and classifications. It presents several auditory dimensions, consolidating them into a comprehensive dimension called attenuation, putting their roles within a game’s context. The author is a sound designer currently working on an audio game; therefore, many of the presented definitions are also a guide that will represent some of his own considerations while working on this game. These include not only the use of binaural or ambisonic sound but also understanding the ways and means of how to work with (3D) space in the context of audio and its possible functions.