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Top 20 Most Read Articles
February 2009
The 20 articles with the most full-text downloads during the month, in descending order.
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Effects of room acoustics on the intelligibility of speech in classrooms for young children J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 922-933 (2009); (12 pages)
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This paper reports new measurements of the intelligibility of speech in conditions representative of elementary school classrooms. The speech test material was binaurally recorded in simulated classroom conditions and played back to subjects over headphones. Subjects included grade 1, 3, and 6 students (6, 8, and 11 year olds) as well as adults. Recognizing that reverberation time is not a complete descriptor of room acoustics conditions, simulated conditions included realistic early-to-late arriving sound ratios as well as varied reverberation time. For conditions of constant signal-to-noise ratio, intelligibility scores increased with decreasing reverberation time. However, for conditions including realistic increases in speech level with varied reverberation time for constant noise level, intelligibility scores were near maximum for a range of reverberation times. Young children’s intelligibility scores benefited from added early reflections of speech sounds similar to adult listeners. The effect of varied reverberation time on the intelligibility of speech for young children was much less than the effect of varied signal-to-noise ratio. The results can be used to help to determine ideal conditions for speech communication in classrooms for younger listeners.
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Speaking up: Killer whales (Orcinus orca) increase their call amplitude in response to vessel noise J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 1, pp. EL27-EL32 (2008); (6 pages) Online Publication Date: 22 Dec 2008
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This study investigated the effects of anthropogenic sound exposure on the vocal behavior of free-ranging killer whales. Endangered Southern Resident killer whales inhabit areas including the urban coastal waters of Puget Sound near Seattle, WA, where anthropogenic sounds are ubiquitous, particularly those from motorized vessels. A calibrated recording system was used to measure killer whale call source levels and background noise levels (1–40 kHz). Results show that whales increased their call amplitude by 1 dB for every 1 dB increase in background noise levels. Furthermore, nearby vessel counts were positively correlated with these observed background noise levels.
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 839-849 (2009); (11 pages)
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Acoustic metafluids are defined as the class of fluids that allow one domain of fluid to acoustically mimic another, as exemplified by acoustic cloaks. It is shown that the most general class of acoustic metafluids are materials with anisotropic inertia and the elastic properties of what are known as pentamode materials. The derivation uses the notion of finite deformation to define the transformation of one region to another. The main result is found by considering energy density in the original and transformed regions. Properties of acoustic metafluids are discussed, and general conditions are found which ensure that the mapped fluid has isotropic inertia, which potentially opens up the possibility of achieving broadband cloaking.
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Adaptive near-field beamforming techniques for sound source imaging J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 944-957 (2009); (14 pages)
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Phased array signal processing techniques such as beamforming have a long history in applications such as sonar for detection and localization of far-field sound sources. Two sometimes competing challenges arise in any type of spatial processing; these are to minimize contributions from directions other than the look direction and minimize the width of the main lobe. To tackle this problem a large body of work has been devoted to the development of adaptive procedures that attempt to minimize side lobe contributions to the spatial processor output. In this paper, two adaptive beamforming procedures—minimum variance distorsionless response and weight optimization to minimize maximum side lobes—are modified for use in source visualization applications to estimate beamforming pressure and intensity using near-field pressure measurements. These adaptive techniques are compared to a fixed near-field focusing technique (both techniques use near-field beamforming weightings focusing at source locations estimated based on spherical wave array manifold vectors with spatial windows). Sound source resolution accuracies of near-field imaging procedures with different weighting strategies are compared using numerical simulations both in anechoic and reverberant environments with random measurement noise. Also, experimental results are given for near-field sound pressure measurements of an enclosed loudspeaker.
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An acoustic survey of beaked whales at Cross Seamount near Hawaii J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 624-627 (2009); (4 pages)
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An acoustic record from Cross Seamount, southwest of Hawaii, revealed sounds characteristic of beaked whale echolocation at the same relative abundance year-around (270 of 356 days), occurring almost entirely at night. The most common sound had a linear frequency upsweep from 35 to 100 kHz (the bandwidth of recording), an interpulse interval of 0.11 s, and duration of at least 932 μs. A less common upsweep sound with shorter interpulse interval and slower sweep rate was also present. Sounds matching Cuvier’s beaked whale were not detected, and Blainville’s beaked whale sounds were detected on only one occasion.
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 761-771 (2009); (11 pages)
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A novel blind inversion method using Lamb wave S0 and A0 mode velocities is proposed for the complete determination of elastic moduli, material symmetries, as well as principal plane orientations of anisotropic plates. The approach takes advantage of genetic algorithm, introduces the notion of “statistically significant” elastic moduli, and utilizes their sensitivities to velocity data to reconstruct the elastic moduli. The unknown material symmetry and the principal planes are then evaluated using the method proposed by
Cowin and Mehrabadi [Q. J. Mech. Appl. Math. 40, 451–476 (1987)]
. The blind inversion procedure was verified using simulated ultrasonic velocity data sets on materials with transversely isotropic, orthotropic, and monoclinic symmetries. A modified double ring configuration of the single transmitter and multiple receiver compact array was developed to experimentally validate the blind inversion approach on a quasi-isotropic graphite-epoxy composite plate. This technique finds application in the area of material characterization and structural health monitoring of anisotropic platelike structures.
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Perceptual recalibration of speech sounds following speech motor learning J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 1103-1113 (2009); (11 pages)
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The functional sensorimotor nature of speech production has been demonstrated in studies examining speech adaptation to auditory and/or somatosensory feedback manipulations. These studies have focused primarily on flexible motor processes to explain their findings, without considering modifications to sensory representations resulting from the adaptation process. The present study explores whether the perceptual representation of the /s-ʃ/ contrast may be adjusted following the alteration of auditory feedback during the production of /s/-initial words. Consistent with prior studies of speech adaptation, talkers exposed to the feedback manipulation were found to adapt their motor plans for /s/-production in order to compensate for the effects of the sensory perturbation. In addition, a shift in the /s-ʃ/ category boundary was observed that reduced the functional impact of the auditory feedback manipulation by increasing the perceptual “distance” between the category boundary and subjects’ altered /s/-stimuli—a pattern of perceptual adaptation that was not observed in two separate control groups. These results suggest that speech adaptation to altered auditory feedback is not limited to the motor domain, but rather involves changes in both motor output and auditory representations of speech sounds that together act to reduce the impact of the perturbation.
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J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 1153-1163 (2009); (11 pages)
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Although listeners can partially understand sentences interrupted by silence or noise, and their performance depends on the characteristics of the glimpses, few studies have examined effects of the types of segmental and subsegmental information on sentence intelligibility. Given the finding of twice better intelligibility from vowel-only glimpses than from consonants [
Kewley-Port et al. (2007). “Contribution of consonant versus vowel information to sentence intelligibility for young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired listeners,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 122, 2365–2375
], this study examined young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired (EHI) listeners’ intelligibility of interrupted sentences that preserved four different types of subsegmental cues (steady-states at centers or transitions at margins; vowel onset or offset transitions). Forty-two interrupted sentences from TIMIT were presented twice at 95 dB SPL, first with 50% and second with 70% of sentence duration. Compared to high sentence intelligibility for uninterrupted sentences, interrupted sentences had significant decreases in performance for all listeners, with a larger decrease for EHI listeners. Scores for both groups were significantly better for 70% duration than for 50% but were not significantly different for the type of subsegmental information. Performance by EHI listeners was associated with their high-frequency hearing thresholds rather than with age. Together with previous results using segmental interruption, preservation of vowels in interrupted sentences provides greater benefit to sentence intelligibility compared to consonants or subsegmental cues.
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A generalized Cramér-Rao lower bound for moving arrays J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. EL51-EL57 (2009); (7 pages) Online Publication Date: 21 Jan 2009
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By properly including the forward motion of the array in the signal model, improved bearing estimation performance for a towed line array can be obtained. The improvement is a consequence of utilizing the bearing information contained in the Doppler. In this paper, it is shown by use of the Cramér-Rao lower bound that, as the array moves forward, the variance on the bearing estimate for an array of pressure sensors decreases, and that if an array of pressure-vector sensors is used, a significant improvement over that obtained for the array using pressure sensors only is obtained.
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Melody recognition by two-month-old infants J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. EL58-EL62 (2009); (5 pages) Online Publication Date: 21 Jan 2009
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Music is part of an infant’s world even before birth, and caregivers around the world sing to infants. Yet, there has been little research into the musical abilities or preferences of infants younger than 5 months. In this study, the head turn preference procedure used with older infants was adapted into an eye-movement preference procedure so that the ability of 2-month-old infants to remember a short melody could be tested. The results show that with minimal familiarization, 2-month-old infants remember a short melody and can discriminate it from a similar melody.
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The direct simulation of acoustics on Earth, Mars, and Titan J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 640-650 (2009); (11 pages)
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With the recent success of the Huygens lander on Titan, a moon of Saturn, there has been renewed interest in further exploring the acoustic environments of the other planets in the solar system. The direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is used here for modeling sound propagation in the atmospheres of Earth, Mars, and Titan at a variety of altitudes above the surface. DSMC is a particle method that describes gas dynamics through direct physical modeling of particle motions and collisions. The validity of DSMC for the entire range of Knudsen numbers (Kn), where Kn is defined as the mean free path divided by the wavelength, allows for the exploration of sound propagation in planetary environments for all values of Kn. DSMC results at a variety of altitudes on Earth, Mars, and Titan including the details of nonlinearity, absorption, dispersion, and molecular relaxation in gas mixtures are given for a wide range of Kn showing agreement with various continuum theories at low Kn and deviation from continuum theory at high Kn. Despite large computation time and memory requirements, DSMC is the method best suited to study high altitude effects or where continuum theory is not valid.
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Characteristics of phonation onset in a two-layer vocal fold model J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 1091-1102 (2009); (12 pages)
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Characteristics of phonation onset were investigated in a two-layer body-cover continuum model of the vocal folds as a function of the biomechanical and geometric properties of the vocal folds. The analysis showed that an increase in either the body or cover stiffness generally increased the phonation threshold pressure and phonation onset frequency, although the effectiveness of varying body or cover stiffness as a pitch control mechanism varied depending on the body-cover stiffness ratio. Increasing body-cover stiffness ratio reduced the vibration amplitude of the body layer, and the vocal fold motion was gradually restricted to the medial surface, resulting in more effective flow modulation and higher sound production efficiency. The fluid-structure interaction induced synchronization of more than one group of eigenmodes so that two or more eigenmodes may be simultaneously destabilized toward phonation onset. At certain conditions, a slight change in vocal fold stiffness or geometry may cause phonation onset to occur as eigenmode synchronization due to a different pair of eigenmodes, leading to sudden changes in phonation onset frequency, vocal fold vibration pattern, and sound production efficiency. Although observed in a linear stability analysis, a similar mechanism may also play a role in register changes at finite-amplitude oscillations.
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Density imaging using inverse scattering J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 793-802 (2009); (10 pages)
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Inverse scattering is considered one of the most robust and accurate ultrasonic tomography methods. Most inverse scattering formulations neglect density changes in order to reconstruct sound speed and acoustic attenuation. Some studies available in literature suggest that density distributions can also be recovered using inverse scattering formulations. Two classes of algorithms have been identified. (1) The separation of sound speed and density contributions from reconstructions using constant density inverse scattering algorithms at multiple frequencies. (2) The inversion of the full wave equation including density changes. In this work, the performance of a representative algorithm for each class has been studied for the reconstruction of circular cylinders: the dual frequency distorted Born iterative method (DF-DBIM) and the T-matrix formulation. Root mean square error values lower than 30% were obtained with both algorithms when reconstructing cylinders up to eight wavelengths in diameter with moderate density changes. However, in order to provide accurate reconstructions the DF-DBIM and T-matrix method required very high signal-to-noise ratios and significantly large bandwidths, respectively. These limitations are discussed in the context of practical experimental implementations.
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Children’s annoyance reactions to aircraft and road traffic noise J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 895-904 (2009); (10 pages)
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Since annoyance reactions of children to environmental noise have rarely been investigated, no source specific exposure-response relations are available. The aim of this paper is to investigate children’s reactions to aircraft and road traffic noise and to derive exposure-response relations. To this end, children’s annoyance reactions to aircraft and road traffic noise in both the home and the school setting were investigated using the data gathered in a cross-sectional multicenter study, carried out among 2844 children (age 9–11 years) attending 89 primary schools around three European airports. An exposure-response relation was demonstrated between exposure to aircraft noise at school (LAeq,7–23 h) and severe annoyance in children: after adjustment for confounders, the percentage severely annoyed children was predicted to increase from about 5.1% at 50 dB to about 12.1% at 60 dB. The findings were consistent across the three samples. Aircraft noise at home (LAeq,7–23 h) demonstrated a similar relation with severe annoyance. Children attending schools with higher road traffic noise (LAeq,7–23 h) were more annoyed. Although children were less annoyed at levels above 55 dB, the shapes of the exposure-response relations found among children were comparable to those found in their parents.
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Estimation of the center frequency of the highest modulation filter J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 1075-1081 (2009); (7 pages)
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For high-frequency sinusoidal carriers, the threshold for detecting sinusoidal amplitude modulation increases when the signal modulation frequency increases above about 120 Hz. Using the concept of a modulation filter bank, this effect might be explained by (1) a decreasing sensitivity or greater internal noise for modulation filters with center frequencies above 120 Hz; and (2) a limited span of center frequencies of the modulation filters, the top filter being tuned to about 120 Hz. The second possibility was tested by measuring modulation masking in forward masking using an 8 kHz sinusoidal carrier. The signal modulation frequency was 80, 120, or 180 Hz and the masker modulation frequencies covered a range above and below each signal frequency. Four highly trained listeners were tested. For the 80-Hz signal, the signal threshold was usually maximal when the masker frequency equaled the signal frequency. For the 180-Hz signal, the signal threshold was maximal when the masker frequency was below the signal frequency. For the 120-Hz signal, two listeners showed the former pattern, and two showed the latter pattern. The results support the idea that the highest modulation filter has a center frequency in the range 100–120 Hz.
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Model selection and Bayesian inference for high-resolution seabed reflection inversion J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 706-716 (2009); (11 pages)
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This paper applies Bayesian inference, including model selection and posterior parameter inference, to inversion of seabed reflection data to resolve sediment structure at a spatial scale below the pulse length of the acoustic source. A practical approach to model selection is used, employing the Bayesian information criterion to decide on the number of sediment layers needed to sufficiently fit the data while satisfying parsimony to avoid overparametrization. Posterior parameter inference is carried out using an efficient Metropolis–Hastings algorithm for high-dimensional models, and results are presented as marginal-probability depth distributions for sound velocity, density, and attenuation. The approach is applied to plane-wave reflection-coefficient inversion of single-bounce data collected on the Malta Plateau, Mediterranean Sea, which indicate complex fine structure close to the water-sediment interface. This fine structure is resolved in the geoacoustic inversion results in terms of four layers within the upper meter of sediments. The inversion results are in good agreement with parameter estimates from a gravity core taken at the experiment site.
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Broadband impedance boundary conditions for the simulation of sound propagation in the time domain J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 664-675 (2009); (12 pages)
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An accurate and practical surface impedance boundary condition in the time domain has been developed for application to broadband-frequency simulation in aeroacoustic problems. To show the capability of this method, two kinds of numerical simulations are performed and compared with the analytical/experimental results: one is acoustic wave reflection by a monopole source over an impedance surface and the other is acoustic wave propagation in a duct with a finite impedance wall. Both single-frequency and broadband-frequency simulations are performed within the framework of linearized Euler equations. A high-order dispersion-relation-preserving finite-difference method and a low-dissipation, low-dispersion Runge–Kutta method are used for spatial discretization and time integration, respectively. The results show excellent agreement with the analytical/experimental results at various frequencies. The method accurately predicts both the amplitude and the phase of acoustic pressure and ensures the well-posedness of the broadband time-domain impedance boundary condition.
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Extensional edge modes in elastic plates and shells J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 621-623 (2009); (3 pages)
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The recently discovered undamped localized mode at the end of an elastic strip is demonstrated to be particularly relevant in the plane stress setting, where it exists for the Poisson ratio 0.29. This paper also emphasizes the difference between low-frequency edge modes, typically characterized by low variation across the plate (or shell) thickness, and high-frequency edge modes, whose natural frequencies are of the order of thickness resonance frequencies.
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Effect of bandwidth extension to telephone speech recognition in cochlear implant users J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. EL77-EL83 (2009); (7 pages) Online Publication Date: 21 Jan 2009
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The present study investigated a bandwidth extension method to enhance telephone speech understanding for cochlear implant (CI) users. The acoustic information above telephone speech transmission range (i.e., 3400 Hz) was estimated based on trained models describing the relation between narrow-band and wide-band speech. The effect of the bandwidth extension method was evaluated with IEEE sentence recognition tests in seven CI users. Results showed a relatively modest but significant improvement in the speech recognition with the proposed method. The effect of bandwidth extension method was also observed to be highly dependent on individual CI users.
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The interaction of vocal characteristics and audibility in the recognition of concurrent syllables J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 125, Issue 2, pp. 1114-1124 (2009); (11 pages)
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In concurrent-speech recognition, performance is enhanced when either the glottal pulse rate (GPR) or the vocal tract length (VTL) of the target speaker differs from that of the distracter, but relatively little is known about the trading relationship between the two variables, or how they interact with other cues such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This paper presents a study in which listeners were asked to identify a target syllable in the presence of a distracter syllable, with carefully matched temporal envelopes. The syllables varied in GPR and VTL over a large range, and they were presented at different SNRs. The results showed that performance is particularly sensitive to the combination of GPR and VTL when the SNR is 0 dB. Equal-performance contours showed that when there are no other cues, a two-semitone difference in GPR produced the same advantage in performance as a 20% difference in VTL. This corresponds to a trading relationship between GPR and VTL of 1.6. The results illustrate that the auditory system can use any combination of differences in GPR, VTL, and SNR to segregate competing speech signals.
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