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May 2012

Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL355-4232

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Biomechanical modeling of English /r/ variants

Ian Stavness, Bryan Gick, Donald Derrick, and Sidney Fels

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL355-EL360 (2012); (6 pages)

Online Publication Date: 09 Apr 2012

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This study reports an investigation of the well-known context-dependent variation in English /r/ using a biomechanical tongue-jaw-hyoid model. The simulation results show that preferred /r/ variants require less volume displacement, relative strain, and relative muscle stress than variants that are not preferred. This study also uncovers a previously unknown mechanism in tongue biomechanics for /r/ production: Torque in the sagittal plane about the mental spine. This torque enables raising of the tongue anterior for retroflexed [ɻ] by activation of hyoglossus and relaxation of anterior genioglossus. The results provide a deeper understanding of the articulatory factors that govern contextual phonetic variation.
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43.70.Aj Anatomy and physiology of the vocal tract, speech aerodynamics, auditory kinetics
43.70.Bk Models and theories of speech production
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A frequency bin-wise nonlinear masking algorithm in convolutive mixtures for speech segregation

Tai-Shih Chi, Ching-Wen Huang, and Wen-Sheng Chou

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL361-EL367 (2012); (7 pages)

Online Publication Date: 09 Apr 2012

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A frequency bin-wise nonlinear masking algorithm is proposed in the spectrogram domain for speech segregation in convolutive mixtures. The contributive weight from each speech source to a time-frequency unit of the mixture spectrogram is estimated by a nonlinear function based on location cues. For each sound source, a non-binary mask is formed from the estimated weights and is multiplied to the mixture spectrogram to extract the sound. Head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) are used to simulate convolutive sound mixtures perceived by listeners. Simulation results show our proposed method outperforms convolutive independent component analysis and degenerate unmixing and estimation technique methods in almost all test conditions.
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43.60.Gk Space-time signal processing, other than matched field processing
43.60.Hj Time-frequency signal processing, wavelets
43.60.Dh Signal processing for communications: telephony and telemetry, sound pickup and reproduction, multimedia
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Spectro-temporal modulation energy based mask for robust speaker identification

Tai-Shih Chi, Ting-Han Lin, and Chung-Chien Hsu

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL368-EL374 (2012); (7 pages)

Online Publication Date: 09 Apr 2012

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Spectro-temporal modulations of speech encode speech structures and speaker characteristics. An algorithm which distinguishes speech from non-speech based on spectro-temporal modulation energies is proposed and evaluated in robust text-independent closed-set speaker identification simulations using the TIMIT and GRID corpora. Simulation results show the proposed method produces much higher speaker identification rates in all signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions than the baseline system using mel-frequency cepstral coefficients. In addition, the proposed method also outperforms the system, which uses auditory-based nonnegative tensor cepstral coefficients [Q. Wu and L. Zhang, “Auditory sparse representation for robust speaker recognition based on tensor structure,” EURASIP J. Audio, Speech, Music Process. 2008, 578612 (2008)], in low SNR (≤ 10 dB) conditions.
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43.60.Hj Time-frequency signal processing, wavelets
43.72.Ar Speech analysis and analysis techniques; parametric representation of speech
43.72.Fx Talker identification and adaptation algorithms
43.60.Bf Acoustic signal detection and classification, applications to control systems
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Correlations between ultrasonic guided wave velocities and bone properties in bovine tibia in vitro

Kang Il Lee and Suk Wang Yoon

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL375-EL381 (2012); (7 pages)

Online Publication Date: 09 Apr 2012

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Correlations between ultrasonic guided wave velocities and bone properties were investigated in bovine tibia in vitro. The velocities of the first arriving signal and the slow guided wave, termed VFAS and VSGW, along the long axis of the tibia were measured at 200 kHz in 20 bovine tibiae using the axial transmission technique. VFAS yielded significant negative correlation coefficients of −0.54 to −0.66 with the bone properties. In contrast, VSGW yielded strong positive correlation coefficients of 0.68–0.84. The best univariate predictor of VFAS and VSGW was the cortical thickness yielding adjusted squared correlation coefficients of 0.41 and 0.69, respectively.
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43.80.Cs Acoustical characteristics of biological media: molecular species, cellular level tissues
43.80.Qf Medical diagnosis with acoustics
43.80.Vj Acoustical medical instrumentation and measurement techniques
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Cochlear implant patients’ localization using interaural level differences exceeds that of untrained normal hearing listeners

Justin M. Aronoff, Daniel J. Freed, Laurel M. Fisher, Ivan Pal, and Sigfrid D. Soli

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL382-EL387 (2012); (6 pages)

Online Publication Date: 09 Apr 2012

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Bilateral cochlear implant patients are unable to localize as well as normal hearing listeners. Although poor sensitivity to interaural time differences clearly contributes to this deficit, it is unclear whether deficits in terms of interaural level differences are also a contributing factor. In this study, localization was tested while manipulating interaural time and level cues using head-related transfer functions. The results indicate that bilateral cochlear implant users’ ability to localize based on interaural level differences is actually greater than that of untrained normal hearing listeners.
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43.66.Pn Binaural hearing
43.66.Qp Localization of sound sources
43.66.Ts Auditory prostheses, hearing aids
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A model for the spatial coherence of arbitrarily directive noise in the depth-stratified ocean

Shane C. Walker

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL388-EL394 (2012); (7 pages) | Cited 2 times

Online Publication Date: 13 Apr 2012

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Though referred to as noise, the ambient ocean soundscape carries valuable information about the physical ocean environment. To study this information, Kuperman and Ingenito introduced a model for spatial coherence in a depth stratified ocean arising from the vertically directive diffuse acoustic noise produced by bubbles distributed throughout the surface. Here the model is adapted to incorporate horizontal directivity as well, making it possible to include additional noise contributions from directive features such as storms, biologics, shipping, and wave breaking. As an analytic approach, the model can serve as a computationally light complement to existing methods.
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43.30.Re Signal coherence or fluctuation due to sound propagation/scattering in the ocean
43.60.Cg Statistical properties of signals and noise
43.20.Bi Mathematical theory of wave propagation
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Acoustic imaging device with one transducer

Nicolas Etaix, Mathias Fink, and Ros K. Ing

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL395-EL399 (2012); (5 pages)

Online Publication Date: 13 Apr 2012

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This paper presents a low profile imaging device using only one piezoelectric transducer and a microphone. The transducer is glued to an aluminum plate of non-regular geometry that acts as an acoustic cavity. Beam steering is achieved, and the acoustic waves should be focused anywhere in front of the plate. Finally, using a single microphone receiver working in echographic mode, our imaging device is able to locate any object placed in front of it.
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43.20.Tb Interaction of vibrating structures with surrounding medium
43.20.Ye Measurement methods and instrumentation
43.40.Dx Vibrations of membranes and plates
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Using feature vectors to detect frog calls in wireless sensor networks

Benjamin Croker and Navinda Kottege

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL400-EL405 (2012); (6 pages)

Online Publication Date: 13 Apr 2012

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A method for detecting vocalization of giant barred frogs (Mixophyes iteratus) in noisy audio is proposed. Audio recordings from remote wireless sensor nodes were segmented into individual sounds and from each sound a small set of features was extracted. Feature vectors were compared to those of example calls using a Euclidean distance formula as a detection system. The system achieved a sensitivity of 0.85 with specificity of 0.92 when distinguishing M. iteratus calls from other species’ calls and sensitivity of 0.88 with specificity 0.82 against background noise.
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43.80.Jz Use of acoustic energy (with or without other forms) in studies of structure and function of biological systems
43.28.Hr Outdoor sound sources
43.60.Bf Acoustic signal detection and classification, applications to control systems
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Native dialect influences second-language vowel perception: Peruvian versus Iberian Spanish learners of Dutch

Paola Escudero and Daniel Williams

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL406-EL412 (2012); (7 pages)

Online Publication Date: 18 Apr 2012

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Peruvian Spanish (PS) and Iberian Spanish (IS) learners were tested on their ability to categorically discriminate and identify Dutch vowels. It was predicted that the acoustic differences between the vowel productions of the two dialects, which compare differently to Dutch vowels, would manifest in differential L2 perception for listeners of these two dialects. The results show that although PS learners had higher general L2 proficiency, IS learners were more accurate at discriminating all five contrasts and at identifying six of the L2 Dutch vowels. These findings confirm that acoustic differences in native vowel production lead to differential L2 vowel perception.
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43.71.Ft Development of speech perception
43.71.Es Vowel and consonant perception; perception of words, sentences, and fluent speech
43.71.An Models and theories of speech perception
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Multibubble sonoluminescence pulses from Na atoms in viscous liquid

Pak-Kon Choi, Yosuke Sawada, and Yuuta Takeuchi

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 131, Issue 5, pp. EL413-EL419 (2012); (7 pages)

Online Publication Date: 18 Apr 2012

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Multibubble sonoluminescence pulses of Na and continuum emissions were measured from NaCl-ethylene glycol solution saturated with Xe at 28 kHz. The Na emission consisted of multiple-peak pulses and single pulses. The intrinsic pulse width estimated from single pulses was 0.37 ns, which differs from 10–165 ns obtained by previous work. High-speed shadowgraphs of bubble dynamics and high-speed movies (32000 fps) of sonoluminescence were observed. The observations suggest that the multiple-peak pulse is due to the superposition of single peaks resulting from bubbles fragmented from a characteristic bubble which repeats the fragmentation and coalescence. This phenomenon may be specific to viscous liquids.
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43.35.Ei Acoustic cavitation in liquids
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