Perception Of Sound Sources Research Articles

Exploring the Impact of Visual and Aural Elements in Urban Parks on Human Behavior and Emotional Responses

As cities progress into high-quality developments, the demand for urban parks that enhance residents’ well-being and sustainability is increasing. Traditional visual-centric design methods no longer suffice. Given that vision and hearing are the primary sensory pathways through which people perceive their environment, exploring their relationship with landscape experiences offers a novel perspective for optimizing the audiovisual perception quality of urban parks. This study explores the relationship between visual and auditory elements and landscape experiences to optimize urban parks’ sensory quality. Using visual perception, soundscape perception, sound source perception, and behavioral vitality, this study evaluates the audiovisual perception quality of a representative wetland park in Chengdu’s ring ecological zone. By quantifying relationships between audiovisual characteristics, behavioral vitality, and emotional feedback, several emotional assessment models were constructed. The results show that lawns, pavements, and sound pressure levels significantly impact vitality. A sound pressure level of 77 dB has been identified as a critical threshold in emotional perception models. Consequently, distinct emotional prediction models can be employed to enhance landscape design across various sound pressure level zones. This research provides scientific evidence and flexible strategies for designing urban open spaces that improve landscape experiences based on multisensory perception.

A Study on Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Spatial Dependence of Sound Source Perception in Fuzhou Historical and Cultural Districts

As a carrier of cultural characteristics of historic districts, the soundscape has unique advantages in shaping regional cultural personality, and mastering its spatiotemporal characteristics is crucial for preserving soundscape heritage with natural and humanistic environments as its kernel. Focusing on the Three Square and Seven Alleys historic and cultural district in Fuzhou, this paper analyzes the spatial and temporal patterns of the physical acoustic indicators of the soundscape, the spatial dependence of the sound source harmony, and the spatial relationship between the two. It was found that the physical acoustic indicators showed dynamic changes in spatial and temporal scales and reflect specific human activity and behavioral patterns; sound source harmony showed spatial autocorrelation in both global and local models, with prominent spatial characteristics; and the physical acoustic indicators may negatively affect soundscape perception. The study emphasizes the importance of the regional cultural connotation of soundscape in urban planning. It provides a scientific basis for the planning, designing, and managing of soundscape resources in historic and cultural districts and world heritage sites.

A Study on the Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Soundscape Perception in Landscape Spaces of Urban Greenways

The acoustic landscape directly affects people’s perceptual experience, which is crucial to enhancing urban greenways’ visibility experience. This study analyzed data from three typical urban greenways in Fuzhou City. By classifying and combining the landscape space into two levels of “enclosure–coverage”, the space was categorized into six types: covered, uncovered, open, semi-open, semi-enclosed, and enclosure space. We explored the characteristics of soundscape perception and the factors affecting the evaluation of soundscape perception in different landscape spaces. The results showed that differences in sound sources between day and night led to differences in the soundscape of different spatial types. The sound pressure level decreased with an increasing degree of enclosure and coverage. The evaluation scores of sound source perception and soundscape perception were significantly different in different degrees of spatial enclosure and coverage, where the open space and covered space were the most sensitive to sound, and the open space played a positive role in enhancing the harmony of the artificial sound. Pleasantness and richness were the main factors influencing overall perception, contributing 50% and 17%, respectively. Visitors’ age, residence type, and visit frequency were the main factors affecting the evaluation of soundscape perception. The conclusions provide a reference and data for improving urban greenways’ soundscape quality.

A Study of the Effects of Historical Block Context on Soundscape Perception

This study aims to explore the influence of spatial functional differences on the overall relationship between soundscape and visual landscape in the context of historical blocks and then propose design guidelines for audiovisual elements. Audiovisual stimulus materials were collected from 11 representative locations in typical urban historical blocks along the southeast coast of China and classified into residential, cultural leisure, and commercial spaces based on their primary function, activity, and visual environment characteristics. An evaluation environment was created in the laboratory using virtual reality technology, and a subjective evaluation questionnaire was administered to 71 volunteers regarding the perception of audiovisual elements and the evaluation of the overall environment. Structural equation modeling was used to elucidate the relationships between sound source perception, soundscape perception, visual landscape satisfaction, and overall harmony of the environment and to compare the effects of functional differences at different locations on the overall relationships. The results show significant differences in the types of perceived sound sources at different functional locations, which makes the sound sources affecting soundscape perception and visual landscape satisfaction different. Residential space is mainly affected by artificial sound and mechanical noise; in cultural and leisure spaces, all three types of sound sources have a significant impact, and only natural sound has enhanced subjective perception; the impact of artificial sound in commercial space is crucial. In addition, visual landscape satisfaction should be prioritized over soundscape pleasure to enhance the overall harmony of the environment. In residential and commercial spaces, reducing artificial and mechanical noise can effectively enhance the harmony of the environment; in cultural and leisure areas, reducing artificial sounds and increasing natural sounds or historical landscape elements can enhance the overall harmony of the environment. The results of this paper provide empirical evidence for understanding the overall relationship between soundscape factors in urban contexts and suggest that place function should be considered an important context when designing soundscapes.

Virtual sound source perception challenges of binaural audio systems with head-tracking

With the recent leaps in spatial audio technology, the use of binaural head-tracking for spatial audio can revolutionize the way how music and audio are experienced. Moreover, to research noise-related perception in laboratories, binaural head-tracking is frequently used as an audio reproduction system. Although this technology is getting significantly better in recent years, signal processing of binaural audio is often experiencing problems such as non-adequate sound source externalization and unacceptably high values of system response time since it influences the usability of the technology at fast head rotation. In this paper, the results of an experiment are presented, in which test subjects are determining the direction of a virtual sound source in the horizontal plane with multiple parameter changes. The experiment is done in a controlled environment in a listening room with known acoustical properties. Parameter variation includes: hardware head-tracker variation (commercial one and head-tracker based on simple embedded system), various software solutions for real-time binaural synthesis, and variation in the used Head-Related Transfer Functions. The problem of externalization of a virtual sound source via headphones is discussed, and possible solutions to the problem are given. Results of the experiment and recorded data are presented.

Effects of Sound Source Landscape in Urban Forest Park on Alleviating Mental Stress of Visitors: Evidence from Huolu Mountain Forest Park, Guangzhou

Urban Forest parks are indispensable areas in cities and have ecological and social advantages, and the quality of their acoustic landscapes is an important factor influencing visitors’ visiting experience. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors influencing the acoustic landscape on psychological stress relief in selected urban forest parks in China. This study used a questionnaire to construct an index system for psychological stress reduction and designed a questionnaire for the perceived impact of stress-reducing acoustic sources with user perception and stress-reducing restoration evaluation as the entry point. The research team conducted field research and online questionnaire survey on the questionnaire.com platform from 1–5 July 2022, in Huolu Mountain Forest Park, an urban forest park in Guangzhou, and collected 266 valid questionnaires. SPSS26.0 was used to analyze the results of the impact of the urban forest park on users’ psychological stress relief. Spearman’s rho correlation analysis and a Kruskal–Wallis nonparametric test were used to reveal the relationship between social, demographic and behavioral factors of tourism and sound source perception, and multiple regression analysis was used to identify the key factors of urban forest park. The results showed that, first, there were significant individual differences and correlations between respondents’ age, education level, visit time and frequency on soundscape perceptions; the older the respondent or the higher the education level, the higher the psychological stress relief evaluation of natural sounds such as birdsong in urban forest parks; the more frequent the visit, the more sensitive the users were to sound source perceptions; and the different visit time periods showed that, when the frequency of the visit was higher, the more sensitive the users were to the sound source. Secondly, natural sounds are important factors for psychological stress relief in soundscape, and natural sounds such as birdsong, cicadas, flowing water, and the sound of breeze blowing leaves have positive benefits and significant contributions to psychological stress relief. Third, the overall restorative evaluation of soundscape perception and the separate evaluation of natural, mechanical, and human-made sounds had significant effects, and the overall restorative evaluation showed that the cumulative contribution value of attractiveness was greater than that of compatibility and consistency. Fourth, soundscape plays a role in psychological stress relief, as evidenced by significant differences in pleasure and arousal levels but not in control.

Hearing water temperature: Characterizing the development of nuanced perception of sound sources.

Without conscious thought, listeners link events in the world to sounds they hear. We study one surprising example: Adults can judge the temperature of water simply from hearing it being poured. We test the development of the ability to hear water temperature, with the goal of informing developmental theories regarding the origins and cognitive bases of nuanced sound source judgments. We first confirmed that adults accurately distinguished the sounds of hot and cold water (pre-registered Experiments. 1, 2; total N=384), even though many were unaware or uncertain of this ability. By contrast, children showed protracted development of this skill over the course of middle childhood (Experiments. 2, 3; total N=178). In spite of accurately identifying other sounds and hot/cold images, older children (7-11 years) but not younger children (3-6 years) reliably distinguished the sounds of hot and cold water. Accuracy increased with age; 11-year old's performance was similar to adults. Adults also showed individual differences in accuracy that were predicted by their amount of prior relevant experience (Experiment 1). Experience may similarly play a role in children's performance; differences in auditory sensitivity and multimodal integration may also contribute to young children's failures. The ability to hear water temperature develops slowly over childhood, such that nuanced auditory information that is easily and quickly accessible to adults is not available to guide young children's behavior. HIGHLIGHTS: Adults can make nuanced judgments from sound, including accurately judging the temperature of water from the sound of it being poured. Children showed protracted development of this skill over the course of middle childhood, such that 7-11-year-olds reliably succeeded while 3-6-year-olds performed at chance. Developmental changes may be due to experience (adults with greater relevant experience showed higher accuracy) and the development of multimodal integration and auditory sensitivity. Young children may not detect subtle auditory information that adults easily perceive.

The role of early and late reflections on perception of source orientation.

Sound radiation of most natural sources, like human speakers or musical instruments, typically exhibits a spatial directivity pattern. This directivity contributes to the perception of sound sources in rooms, affecting the spatial energy distribution of early reflections and late diffuse reverberation. Thus, for convincing sound field reproduction and acoustics simulation, source directivity has to be considered. Whereas perceptual effects of directivity, such as source-orientation-dependent coloration, appear relevant for the direct sound and individual early reflections, it is unclear how spectral and spatial cues interact for later reflections. Better knowledge of the perceptual relevance of source orientation cues might help to simplify the acoustics simulation. Here, it is assessed as to what extent directivity of a human speaker should be simulated for early reflections and diffuse reverberation. The computationally efficient hybrid approach to simulate and auralize binaural room impulse responses [Wendt et al., J. Audio Eng. Soc. 62, 11 (2014)] was extended to simulate source directivity. Two psychoacoustic experiments assessed the listeners' ability to distinguish between different virtual source orientations when the frequency-dependent spatial directivity pattern of the source was approximated by a direction-independent average filter for different higher reflection orders. The results indicate that it is sufficient to simulate effects of source directivity in the first-order reflections.

Perception of Sound Source Localization in Wave Field Synthesis

The subjective perception of traditional spatial sound reproduction is limited by the position of the listener. Wave field synthesis (WFS) generate accurate sound reproduction in a large area by using speaker array without the limitation of the position of the listener. In the past, the research of WFS mainly focused on theoretical algorithm and simulation experiment. In this paper, the subjective location perception of sound source in actual WFS system is studied. The subjective experiments use three types of virtual sound sources with different distances and angles. It is found that distance has little effect on location perception overall. Subjective location perception is most accurate when the virtual sound source is 0 degrees. Perception of virtual sound source directions at 15 degrees, 30 degrees, and 45 degrees are all around 30 degrees, and the standard deviation of perception of virtual sound sources location at 45 degrees is largest. In terms of sound source type, there is not much difference between pure tone and narrow band noise.

William A. Yost and the Psychoacoustics of Human Sound Source Perception

William A. Yost and the Psychoacoustics of Human Sound Source Perception

Neurons in primary auditory cortex represent sound source location in a cue-invariant manner

Auditory cortex is required for sound localisation, but how neural firing in auditory cortex underlies our perception of sound sources in space remains unclear. Specifically, whether neurons in auditory cortex represent spatial cues or an integrated representation of auditory space across cues is not known. Here, we measured the spatial receptive fields of neurons in primary auditory cortex (A1) while ferrets performed a relative localisation task. Manipulating the availability of binaural and spectral localisation cues had little impact on ferrets’ performance, or on neural spatial tuning. A subpopulation of neurons encoded spatial position consistently across localisation cue type. Furthermore, neural firing pattern decoders outperformed two-channel model decoders using population activity. Together, these observations suggest that A1 encodes the location of sound sources, as opposed to spatial cue values.

Sound Spectrum Influences Auditory Distance Perception of Sound Sources Located in a Room Environment.

Previous studies on the effect of spectral content on auditory distance perception (ADP) focused on the physically measurable cues occurring either in the near field (low-pass filtering due to head diffraction) or when the sound travels distances >15 m (high-frequency energy losses due to air absorption). Here, we study how the spectrum of a sound arriving from a source located in a reverberant room at intermediate distances (1–6 m) influences the perception of the distance to the source. First, we conducted an ADP experiment using pure tones (the simplest possible spectrum) of frequencies 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz. Then, we performed a second ADP experiment with stimuli consisting of continuous broadband and bandpass-filtered (with center frequencies of 0.5, 1.5, and 4 kHz and bandwidths of 1/12, 1/3, and 1.5 octave) pink-noise clips. Our results showed an effect of the stimulus frequency on the perceived distance both for pure tones and filtered noise bands: ADP was less accurate for stimuli containing energy only in the low-frequency range. Analysis of the frequency response of the room showed that the low accuracy observed for low-frequency stimuli can be explained by the presence of sparse modal resonances in the low-frequency region of the spectrum, which induced a non-monotonic relationship between binaural intensity and source distance. The results obtained in the second experiment suggest that ADP can also be affected by stimulus bandwidth but in a less straightforward way (i.e., depending on the center frequency, increasing stimulus bandwidth could have different effects). Finally, the analysis of the acoustical cues suggests that listeners judged source distance using mainly changes in the overall intensity of the auditory stimulus with distance rather than the direct-to-reverberant energy ratio, even for low-frequency noise bands (which typically induce high amount of reverberation). The results obtained in this study show that, depending on the spectrum of the auditory stimulus, reverberation can degrade ADP rather than improve it.

Perceiving changes of sound-source size within musical tone pairs.

Although the perception of sound-source is among the many facets of pitch and timbre, the role of hearing cues within the context of music perception is relatively unknown. Size information, primarily encoded within fundamental frequency and resonance patterns, is salient in many types of sounds, including animal communication (Fitch, 1994; Morton, 1977), speech (Smith, Patterson, Turner, Kawahara, & Irino, 2005), and musical instrument sounds (Chiasson, Traube, Lagarrigue, & McAdams, 2017). Chiasson et al., for example, found that sound extensity ratings by listeners using both ordinal and ratio scales could be related to the notion of (which may be roughly translated as from the French term) as predicted by the French composer and orchestration treatise writer Charles Koechlin (1954). Similarly to Koechlin, but in the sphere of psychoacoustics, S. S. Stevens and colleagues have also proposed that be defined as apparent largeness and extensiveness. Stevens and Davis (1938) and Terrace and Stevens (1962) conducted studies on the perception of volume for pure tones and observed that volume increased when loudness increased and pitch decreased. Within speech, sound-source (source size hereafter) is useful for both comprehending what a given message means and determining who is speaking (Patterson, Gaudrain, & Walters, 2010). However, within music perception, the implications of perceiving the of a given sound source, and especially the ability to perceive changes in source size, have received little attention.The literature on auditory reports numerous examples of our capacity to hear size. Lakatos, McAdams, and Causse (1997) found evidence that listeners can decode spatial dimensions of metal and wooden bars from sound cues alone. Kunkler-Peck and Turvey (2000) reported that listeners successfully infer size, shape, and material information from the sounds of plates being struck by a pendular hammer. Other research reports the capacity to infer the of animals (Vestergaard et al., 2009), humans (Ives, Smith, & Patterson, 2005; Smith, Patterson, Turner, Kawahara, & Irino, 2005), and musical instruments (Chiasson et al., 2017; van Dinther & Patterson, 2006). Further, neurological evidence suggests that both adults and newborn infants can hear changes of musical instrument size, suggesting that this ability could possibly be innate (Vestergaard et al., 2009).The psychophysical basis of auditory perception involves two key acoustic features: fundamental frequency and acoustic scale/resonance (Cohen, 1993; Fitch, 1994; Smith et al., 2005). Relatively lower frequencies originate from larger, or more massive, sound sources, and therefore, fundamental frequency is often considered to be an important cue for perceiving affective information (Huron, 2012). There are, however, a few exceptional cases in which sound sources can produce sounds that are much lower in frequency than would be expected from their size, as is the case with the low-pitched mating call of male koalas (Charlton et al., 2013). Resonance information, the reinforcement of certain frequencies above a fundamental frequency, also plays an important role in determining the of many types of sounds. Within speech, vowels have distinctive resonance patterns (i.e., formant placements). For a given vowel, ratios between formants remain relatively constant from speaker to speaker, but the absolute placement of these formants differ depending on the given sound source. The absolute placement of formants is therefore thought to be useful for differentiating among multiple sound sources (Fitch, 1997; Patterson et al., 2010). Similar factors are at play when discriminating different musical instruments within a given instrument family. For example, one of the primary differences between a violin and a viola sounding the same fundamental frequency is the absolute placement of the resonances; the larger-sized viola typically exhibits resonant peaks at lower frequencies (van Dinther & Patterson, 2006). …

Neural Substrates of the Auditory Motion Aftereffect: A Functional MRI Study

The aim of this study was to identify cortical areas, which are responsible to perception of sound source approaching or withdrawing. Models of moving sound sources were presented to 7 healthy subjects while activity of their brain was traced by fMRI. It was found that during long-term 45 s sound stimulation additional areas of activation to that in control stimulation with pink noise were involved. There were frontal and parietal areas which perform the function of analysis of spatial information and also the region of the angular gyrus. Furthermore BOLD-signal in the areas remained to be enhanced after the end of adaptation to motion and decayed gradually within 30 s. Pilot experiments with use of sound recordings of human steps as auditory stimuli had shown the same areas of activation but with much stronger activation.

Perceptual effects of update-delay in room auralization

A real-time auralization system, permitting sources and receivers to move about a simulated acoustic space, offers the opportunity to study auditory perception in realistic listening scenarios. However, such a system requires substantial computing resources to achieve the low latency needed for the simulation to adjust to new conditions without introducing artifacts. To use computing resources most efficiently from a perceptual standpoint, the perceptual effects of the simulation update delays must be understood. Simulated early reflections are typically determined via the image source method. When the source or receiver moves, the positions of the image sources relative to the receiver must be updated, with higher orders requiring longer calculation times. The aim of this study is to examine the perception of sound sources in simulated reverberant rooms when a source moves to a new position with only a partial update of image source locations. The parameters tested are perceived localization and apparent source width, as a function of the highest order of image sources updated and the distance traveled by the moving source. The results are meant to aid designers of real-time auralization systems by providing a perceptual basis for the necessary update rates for image source locations. They also aim to provide insight into the perception of auditory images that are incongruous with a real room, where there is a dissociation between source and reflection positions. [Funded by BMBF 01 GQ 1004B.]

The Role of Sound Source Perception in Gestural Sound Description

We investigated gesture description of sound stimuli performed during a listening task. Our hypothesis is that the strategies in gestural responses depend on the level of identification of the sound source and specifically on the identification of the action causing the sound. To validate our hypothesis, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, we built two corpora of sounds. The first corpus contains sounds with identifiable causal actions. The second contains sounds for which no causal actions could be identified. These corpora properties were validated through a listening test. In the second experiment, participants performed arm and hand gestures synchronously while listening to sounds taken from these corpora. Afterward, we conducted interviews asking participants to verbalize their experience while watching their own video recordings. They were questioned on their perception of the listened sounds and on their gestural strategies. We showed that for the sounds where causal action can be identified, participants mainly mimic the action that has produced the sound. In the other case, when no action can be associated with the sound, participants trace contours related to sound acoustic features. We also found that the interparticipants’ gesture variability is higher for causal sounds compared to noncausal sounds. Variability demonstrates that, in the first case, participants have several ways of producing the same action, whereas in the second case, the sound features tend to make the gesture responses consistent.

Treefrogs as animal models for research on auditory scene analysis and the cocktail party problem

The perceptual analysis of acoustic scenes involves binding together sounds from the same source and separating them from other sounds in the environment. In large social groups, listeners experience increased difficulty performing these tasks due to high noise levels and interference from the concurrent signals of multiple individuals. While a substantial body of literature on these issues pertains to human hearing and speech communication, few studies have investigated how nonhuman animals may be evolutionarily adapted to solve biologically analogous communication problems. Here, I review recent and ongoing work aimed at testing hypotheses about perceptual mechanisms that enable treefrogs in the genus Hyla to communicate vocally in noisy, multi-source social environments. After briefly introducing the genus and the methods used to study hearing in frogs, I outline several functional constraints on communication posed by the acoustic environment of breeding “choruses”. Then, I review studies of sound source perception aimed at uncovering how treefrog listeners may be adapted to cope with these constraints. Specifically, this review covers research on the acoustic cues used in sequential and simultaneous auditory grouping, spatial release from masking, and dip listening. Throughout the paper, I attempt to illustrate how broad-scale, comparative studies of carefully considered animal models may ultimately reveal an evolutionary diversity of underlying mechanisms for solving cocktail-party-like problems in communication.

Neuronal interaural level difference response shifts are level-dependent in the rat auditory cortex

How does the brain accomplish sound localization with invariance to total sound level? Sensitivity to interaural level differences (ILDs) is first computed at the lateral superior olive (LSO) and is observed at multiple levels of the auditory pathway, including the central nucleus of inferior colliculus (ICC) and auditory cortex. In LSO, this ILD sensitivity is level-dependent, such that ILD response functions shift toward the ipsilateral (excitatory) ear with increasing sound level. Thus early in the processing pathway changes in firing rate could indicate changes in sound location, sound level, or both. In ICC, while ILD responses can shift toward either ear in individual neurons, there is no net ILD response shift at the population level. In behavioral studies of human sound localization acuity, ILD sensitivity is invariant to increasing sound levels. Level-invariant sound localization would suggest transformation in level sensitivity between LSO and perception of sound sources. Whether this transformation is completed at the level of the ICC or continued at higher levels remains unclear. It also remains unknown whether perceptual sound localization is level-invariant in rats, as it is in humans. We asked whether ILD sensitivity is level-invariant in rat auditory cortex. We performed single-unit and whole cell recordings in rat auditory cortex under ketamine anesthesia and measured responses to white noise bursts presented through sealed earphones at a range of ILDs. Surprisingly, we found that with increasing sound levels ILD responses shifted toward the ipsilateral ear (which is typically inhibitory), regardless of whether cells preferred ipsilateral, contralateral, or binaural stimuli. Voltage-clamp recordings suggest that synaptic inhibition does not contribute substantially to this transformation in level sensitivity. We conclude that the level invariance of ILD sensitivity seen in behavioral studies is not present in rat auditory cortex.

Interaction between resonant scaling and fundamental frequency on codings in auditory system

It has been modeled that the auditory system encodes acoustic signals into two independent informations. One is tonotopic information reflecting the frequency response characteristics of the basilar membrane, and another is periodicity information reflecting the temporal patterns of phase-locked auditory nerve firing. Based on the previous study about size perception of sound source, a hypothesis can be proposed that the tonotopic and periodicity information are combined into an internal representational The current study tested that this hypothesis by conducting an experiment to recognize the transition of vowel-like sounds on the plane. Listeners were able to recognize the transition patterns on the axes of tonotopic and periodicity information exclusively. However, they were unable to follow the trajectories of sounds in the two-dimensional representational plane. The vowel-like sounds were simulated by a computational model of auditory system, AIM. While the excitation pattern displayed transition patterns corresponding to the manipulation of resonant scaling (RS) only, summary SAI displayed both of patterns of fundamental frequency (F0) and RS. It suggests the need to confirm whether RS represented in periodicity information is used for size perception.

Modeling manner of contact in the synthesis of impact sounds for perceptual research

Impact sounds synthesized according to a physical model have increasingly become the stimulus of choice in studies of sound source perception. Few studies, however, have incorporated manner of contact in their models because of the complexity of the mechanics involved. Here a simplified model of contact is described suitable for application to perceptual research. The results of the simplified model are shown to be in good agreement with those of more comprehensive numerical methods receiving prior acoustic validation [Chaigne and Lambourg, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 1422-1432 (2001)]. The advantages of the model for applications to perceptual research are discussed.