bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Every advantage has its disadvantage: Pitch perception of tone language speakers is better at low frequencies but poorer at high frequencies
Authors: Zhang Yu-Xuan , Gao Xiang , Tang Dinglan , Huang Ting , Liu Chang
Published: November 2016

Tone language experience has been associated with more accurate and stronger phase locking of neural responses in the brainstem to auditory stimuli. However, whether this neurophysiological advantage translates to better pitch perception remains under debate. Previous studies have yielded controversial results, possibly due to variations in methods and large individual variability. Here we examined tone frequency discrimination (FD) over the frequency range of 250 Hz to 8 kHz in Chinese and English speakers using relatively large sample sizes (N>50). For both brief (7.5-ms) and steady (100-ms) tones, FD threshold showed an interaction between group and frequency: Chinese speakers outperformed English speakers up to 4 kHz, and the advantage was reversed at higher frequencies. The only exception was the 7.5-ms 250-Hz condition, where the stimuli were too short (< 2 cycles) for pitch extraction by phase locking and performance was worse in Chinese than English speakers. Overall, the pattern of FD differences between Chinese and English speakers indicates that tone language experience enhances temporal coding of pitch at the cost of place coding.
The perceptual effects of tonewood choice for the back/side plates of the steel-string acoustic guitar
Authors: Carcagno Samuele , Bucknall Roger , Woodhouse Jim , Plack Christopher J.
Published: November 2016

The sound qualities of different tonewoods used for the back/side plates of acoustic guitars are the subject of intense debate among guitarists. However, comparisons between different guitars are rarely performed under blinded conditions. We asked a sample of professional, semi-professional, and amateur guitarists (n = 52) to rate the sound quality of six steel-string acoustic guitars, built to be as similar as possible except for the woods used for the back/side plates, which were: Brazilian rosewood, Indian rosewood, mahogany, maple, sapele, and walnut. The guitarists played the guitars in a dimly lit room while wearing welder’s goggles to prevent visual identification. The sound quality ratings did not differ significantly between guitars. Test-retest correlations, measured for a subset of guitarists (n = 34), were low, suggesting that the lack of significant rating differences was not due to averaging out contrasting individual preferences. The results of a blinded ABX discrimination test, performed by a subset of guitarists (n = 31), indicate that guitarists could not easily distinguish the guitars by their sound or feel. Overall, the results suggest that the species of wood used for the back/side plates of a steel-string acoustic guitar may play a lesser role in perceived sound quality than is commonly believed.
Can a pitch be “sharp,” “bright,” “large,” “narrow,” and “high?” Questioning the automaticity of audiovisual correspondences
Authors: Getz Laura , Kubovy Michael
Published: November 2016

Previous research has found that there is an inherent association between auditory and visual dimensions such as the height a pitch and the size of an object. From this, researchers have assumed that such audiovisual correspondences must result solely from bottom-up processing. In a series of studies, we sought to separate bottom-up and top-down effects in the correspondence between pitch and visual size, elevation, spatial frequency, brightness, and sharpness. Using a modified speeded classification task, we asked participants to pair audiovisual dimensions in “compatible” (e.g., high pitch/small circle) and “incompatible” (e.g., high pitch/large circle) conditions. We compared their reaction times across conditions and found that in most cases participants can pair the dimensions in either direction with similar speed and accuracy. We conclude that top-down effects such as task instructions and language knowledge do influence the strength of audiovisual associations. We thus strongly question the assumption of automaticity prevalent in the cross-modal correspondence literature.
A measurement study on voice instabilities during the register transition
Authors: Uezu Yasufumi , Kaburagi Tokihiko
Published: November 2016

When one of the dominant harmonics, the fundamental frequency and its harmonic components, is close to the first formant frequency, the effect of the source-filter interaction can induce voice register transition, in which the vocal-fold vibration becomes unstable and the pitch jumps drastically. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the dominant harmonics and the first formant frequency in the modal-falsetto transition to clarify the effect of source-filter interaction. While five subjects performed rising glissandi with /a/ and /i/ vowels, we simultaneously measured their vocal-fold vibration by using electroglottography and the acoustic response from the vocal tract by using the external acoustic excitation method. We analysed temporal patterns of the fundamental and the first formant frequencies in the transition section. We found that the fundamental frequency was regularly in the vicinity of the first formant frequency for the /i/ vowel. Additionally, for the /a/ vowel, it was occasionally observed that the second or third harmonic component was close to the first formant frequency in the transition. Our results indicate that the source-filter interaction is a common factor of the modal-falsetto transition for the participants.
Distribution of accentual phrase medial tones in Seoul Korean
Authors: Yoo Hyun Ji , Jun Sun-Ah
Published: November 2016

According to the model of Korean (Seoul) intonation (Jun 1993, 2007), the underlying tonal pattern of an Accentual Phrase (AP) is either HHLH (if the AP-initial segment is aspirated or tense) or LHLH (elsewhere). The second tone, H (= + H in K-ToBI; Jun 2000), or the third tone, L (= L + in K-ToBI), or both are known to be often undershot when the AP is shorter than 4 syllables, but so far factors determining the distribution of these medial tones have not been investigated. This study aims to find predictors of AP-medial tone realization based on K-ToBI labeled speech of various speech styles. Preliminary results show that in general L + is more frequently undershot than + H regardless of the AP size. This pattern was clearer in L-initial APs than H-initial APs. Furthermore, the type of the AP-medial tone (when IP-final) showed an interaction with the type of immediately following Intonational Phrase boundary tones: L + was more often undershot than + H before L%, but the opposite was true before H(L)%. The results suggest that the tonal context adjacent to the AP-medial tone plays an important role in the distribution of AP-medial tones. More predictors will be discussed at the meeting.
On the necessity of using 3D imaging of vocal fold vibration
Authors: Berry David
Published: November 2016

Physical mechanisms of regular and irregular vocal fold vibration were first studied using a computational model of vocal fold vibration. Later physical mechanisms of vocal fold vibration were studied in laboratory hemilarynx studies, where the medial surface of the vocal folds were imaged. While the method was also extended to clinical studies of vocal vibration, the method exhibited significantly less interpretive power in the clinical applications in which the superior surface of the vocal folds was imaged in 2D. Our hypothesis is that the interpretive power of the method of empirical eigenfunctions in studying the superior surface dynamics of the vocal folds will be significantly increased if one performs 3D imaging of the dynamics versus the standard 2D imaging. To test this hypothesis, the method of empirical eigenfunctions was employed on the same finite element model used in previous computational experiments. Our results confirm the hypothesis that the interpretive power of the method of empirical eigenfunctions was significantly increased in studying the superior surface dynamics of the vocal folds when 3D imaging was employed.
The nature of tone sandhi in Sixian Hakka
Authors: Zhang Jie , Yan Hanbo , Lai Yuwen , Lyu Shao-ren
Published: November 2016

Sixian Hakka is a Hakka dialect spoken in Taiwan. The language has four contrastive tones on non-checked syllables: 24, 11, 31, and 55. But before 24 or 55, a tone sandhi pattern changes 24 to 11, neutralizing the tonal contrast to three. We report two experiments that tap into the nature of this tone sandhi pattern in this paper. The first is a nonce-probe test, in which participants produced novel words that met the sandhi environment (/24-24/, /24-55/), and the f0 of the first syllable was compared to the f0 produced in real words to test the productivity of the sandhi. The second is an auditory lexical decision experiment with auditory priming, which tested whether disyllabic tone sandhi words were primed by monosyllables that shared the base tone or sandhi tone of the first syllable. Both experiments were conduced in Miaoli, Taiwan. We will report data from 15 participants for the first experiment and 32 for the second experiments. Together with experimental studies on various types of tone sandhi patterns elsewhere (e.g., Mandarin, Taiwanese), the results here will shed further light on how speakers internalize complex tonal alternation. The study also provides experimental data on an understudied and disenfranchised language.
An empirical model linking intrinsic laryngeal muscle activation to vocal fold geometry and stiffness
Authors: Zhang Zhaoyan , Chhetri Dinesh K. , Vahabzadeh-Hagh Andrew M.
Published: November 2016

Although vocal fold vibration and the resulting voice production depend on the geometry and mechanical properties of the vocal folds, control of voice is achieved through laryngeal muscle activation, which postures the vocal folds into desired geometry and mechanical properties. Such posturing process is known to cause simultaneous changes in vocal fold position, geometry, stiffness, and tension, which has been hypothesized to be a possible origin of vocal registers. Understanding such co-variations in vocal fold geometry and mechanical properties is thus critical to our understanding of human voice production and control, and the development of muscularly controlled, computationally efficient models of phonation. In this study, an empirical model is developed to link the glottal gap, vocal fold length, vocal fold vertical thickness, and the mechanical properties of the vocal fold to the activation levels of the cricothyroid, thyroarytenoid, lateral cricoarytenoid, interarytenoid, and posterior cricoarytenoid muscles, based on data from in vivo larynx experiments. Combined with a continuum model of phonation, this model is used to investigate muscular control of pitch and vocal registers and the preliminary results are discussed.
Tone-intonation interaction in context in Thai
Authors: Camp Amber B.
Published: November 2016

The acoustic realization of lexical tone is influenced by sentence-level intonation. For example, F0 measurements show that a phonologically falling tone in Thai is warped when overlaid with a falling intonational contour, causing F0 to fall further and to begin its decline at an earlier timepoint than when influenced by other contours. This categorical perception study, which includes both identification and discrimination tasks, uses a nine-step continuum of target words created with naturally produced lexical tone endpoints, presented within two different naturally produced sentence frames. Specifically, these tasks investigate the perception of high and falling tones in sentence-medial and sentence-final positions in Thai. This test of stimulus continua within natural sentence contexts reveals the listeners’ context-mediated perception of deviation from a canonical lexical tone, shedding light on the interaction and relative weights of both tone and intonation perception in natural speech, and also offering insight into the mechanism with which language users process suprasegmental information.
An intonational investigation of five sentence types in Kannada
Authors: Helgeson Kirsten
Published: November 2016

Kannada (ISO 639-3 kan) is a Dravidian language spoken by almost 40 million people, primarily in Karnataka state in southern India. It is the official language of Karnataka and one of the scheduled languages of India. Despite its prominence, there is little published in English on the language’s intonation systems. This project furthers knowledge of Kannada intonation that is available to speakers of English, with implications for pedagogy and cross-cultural communication. Two female and two male native speakers were recorded in dyads, participating in a scripted conversation containing five types of sentences. F0 contours were examined to determine intonational tunes for different sentence types.
Cue weighting in the tonal register contrast of Jiashan Wu
Authors: Jiang Bing'er , Clayards Meghan
Published: November 2016

Chinese Wu dialects are known to have two tonal registers, where the lower register is realized with lower pitch and breathy phonation and the upper register is realized with higher pitch and modal phonation. In Jiashan Wu, the falling tone is realized differently in the two registers: the pitch contour of the upper register is slightly steeper than the lower register. This study investigates how speakers of Jiashan Wu weight the three cues (i.e., breathiness, pitch height, pitch contour) in the register contrast. We recorded two words /ka/ from the upper and lower register and created stimuli varying in both dimensions (5 steps pitch height x 5 step breathiness = 25 stimuli) and imposed the two contours on all stimuli. 28 native listeners performed a forced-choice categorization task on 5 repetitions of each stimuli in random order. A mixed effect logistic model shows that all three factors affect categorization, and that pitch contour is the most important cue and breathiness the least. Moreover, the effect of breathiness was smaller with higher pitches and a steep contour, and the effect of pitch height is smaller with a steep contour. Data are being collected comparing Jiashan and Shanghai dialects.
Modeling the cross-linguistic variations of tonal systems
Authors: Kuang Jianjing
Published: November 2016

This study aims to simulate the cross-linguistic variations of tonal systems with low dimensional models. Individual syllables of Mandarin, Yoruba, southern Yi, and Hmong were retrieved from existing speech corpora. Voice quality measures as well as f0 were extracted for all data. For each language, Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA) is used to parameterize the f0 contours of individual syllables. It is found that three FPCs are sufficient to account for more than 90% of the variance for pitch contours for all languages. Moreover, the same FPCs are shared among tonal languages and appear to be phonologically meaningful: FPC1 is related to the pitch range; FPC2 is related to the direction of the contour (e.g. rising or falling); FPC3 is related to more complex contours such as dipping and convex. Tone classification models were built for each language, and both voice quality measures and f0 PCs were fitted into the models. Voice quality cues significantly improve the accuracy of the predictions, but different languages vary in the relative importance of voice quality cues. This study provides a new effective way to computationally model the cross-linguistic variation of tonal systems, and has practical implications for speech synthesis.
Distinguishing ambiguity: Cantonese speakers using prosody to disambiguate surface identity in syntax
Authors: Lau Elaine
Published: November 2016

This paper explores how prosodic and syntactic structures correspond in Cantonese. We consider how native speakers disambiguate object relative clauses (ORC, 1a) and main clauses (MC, 1b), which have a surface identity due to the homonymy between the relative clause marker (go2+CL) and the demonstrative go2+CL ‘that’. (1) a. [RC naam4zai2 sek3gan2 _] go2 go3 neoi5zai2 boy kiss-PROG that CL girl “the girl that the boy is kissing” b. naam4zai2 sek3gan2 go2 go3 neoi5zai2 boy kiss-PROG that CL girl “The boy is kissing that girl.” Given fundamental frequency (F0) is used to mark lexical contrasts in the language, it is interesting what other prosodic cues may be used for different parses of the identical string of constituents. Six speakers are recruited for an elicited production study. Pictures designed to elicit ORC vs. MC were presented in random order. Results of acoustic analyses revealed that Cantonese speakers mainly use duration, rather than F0, to disambiguate the two constructions, reminiscent of focus prosody where F0 is found to play a limited role. The theoretical implications of these results in relation to the interplay between syntax and prosody are discussed.
Production of neutral tones in three Mandarin dialects
Authors: Li Yang , Thompson Arthur L.
Published: November 2016

Neutral tone (NT) in Mandarin refers to syllables with shorter duration and whose pitch realisations depend on preceding syllables (Chao 1968; Lee and Zee 2008). There are few acoustic studies on NT in Mandarin dialects outside the standard, and on how NT interacts with sentence modality and prosodic position. We report results from a reading task with 3 speakers each from Chongqing, Kunming, and Nanjing (N = 9). A set of 8 syllables with potential NT and control lexical tones are placed in phrase-medial and final positions and in statements and echo questions. Pitch contours of entire utterances are analysed to determine the variation in pitch height, slope and tonal coarticulatory influence on target syllables. We find NT-like behaviour in Chongqing and Kunming, despite the longstanding claim of their absence (Luo and Wang 1981; Zhai 1996): e.g., in Chongqing, NT syllables are high-falling medially, but undergo more pitch reduction than control and exhibit obligatory tonal spreading from preceding tone regardless of speech rate. Nanjing NT interacts strongly with modality: statement-final NT is almost invariably realised as strong creak if preceding tone is mid-falling. We also report hitherto unreported variation and hypothesise on the impact of standard Mandarin on NT in these dialects.
A longitudinal study of within-individual variation in human voice pitch
Authors: Pisanski Katarzyna , Fouquet Meddy , Mathevon Nicolas , Reby David
Published: November 2016

Individual differences in human voice pitch (fundamental frequency, F0) have evolutionary relevance. Fundamental frequency indicates the sex, age, and even dominance of the speaker, and influences a host of social assessments including mate preferences. Yet, due to the almost exclusive utilization of cross-sectional designs in previous work, it remains unknown whether individual differences in F0 emerge before or after sexual maturation, and whether F0 remains stable throughout a person’s lifetime. In our study, we tracked within-individual variation in the F0s of male and female speakers whose voices were recorded from childhood into adulthood. Voice recordings were extracted from digital archives. Our results corroborate those of earlier cross-sectional studies indicating a sharp decrease in male F0 at puberty resulting in the emergence of sexual dimorphism in adult F0. Critically, our results further revealed that men’s pre-pubertal F0 strongly predicted their F0 at every subsequent adult age, and that F0 remained remarkably stable within-individuals throughout their adulthood. These findings suggest that adult men’s voice pitch may be linked to pre-natal/pre-pubertal androgen exposure and may function as a reliable and stable signal of mate quality, with implications for our understanding of the developmental mechanisms, adaptive functions, and social perception of human voice pitch.
The duration effect in categorical perception of pitch directions and its interactions with vowel quality and language experience
Authors: Chen Si , Zhu Yiqing , Wayland Ratree , Kaan Edith
Published: November 2016

It is rarely studied how duration affects categorical perception of pitch directions, and whether this effect interacts with vowel quality or groups of listeners. We created a continuum of fundamental frequency on different vowels and duration values for identification and discrimination tasks. Fifteen native Mandarin speakers and fifteen native English speakers were recruited from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Florida. The main effects of vowel quality, groups, pitch directions and duration as well as their interactions significantly contributed to identification rate. The sharpness of the categorical boundary differs significantly when a duration difference reaches 40ms, and it increases first and then decreases as the duration becomes shorter. Tonal listeners exhibit significantly sharper categorical boundary than non-tonal listeners, when a stimuli exceeds 60ms. Moreover, the sensitivity of between- and within-category discrimination differs by groups and duration, whereas vowel quality reaches marginal significance. Duration also affects the peakedness of discrimination significantly. These findings may help explain the observed differences in perceiving segments like vowels and consonants with different length, and shed light on the interaction between the perception of tones and vowel quality due to compensation mechanism in perceiving the intrinsic F0 effect.
Focus perception in Japanese: Effects of focus location and accent condition
Authors: Lee Albert , Chiu Faith , Xu Yi
Published: November 2016

This study explores the contexts in which native Japanese listeners have difficulty identifying prosodic focus. Theories of intonational phonology, syntax, and phonetics make different predictions as to which focus location would be the most challenging to the native listener. Lexical pitch accent further complicates this picture. In a sentence with mixed pitch accent conditions (e.g., U-A-U), the lexical accent would naturally stand out as more prominent than the unaccented words (U) in terms of modifications to the F0 contour, thus potentially resembling focus. A focus identification task was conducted with 16 native listeners from the Greater Tokyo area. Natural and synthetic stimuli were played to the listeners who then chose which word of the sentence was under focus. Neutral focus (or no focus) was also an option. Stimuli contrasted in accent condition and focus location. Results showed a highly complex interplay between these two factors. For example, accented narrow foci were always more correctly identified (51%) than unaccented ones (28%), whereas the identification rate for final focus was the lowest (31%) among all focus locations. These results are discussed with reference to the research literature on focus production and formal representation of intonation.
Measurement of vocal breathiness perception with a matching task for sustained phonation and running speech
Authors: Shrivastav Rahul , Skowronski Mark D. , Anand Supraja , Eddins David A.
Published: November 2016

Laboratory measurements of the perception of vocal breathiness typically employ recordings of sustained vowel phonations. Sustained vowels are thought to provide a good representation of the underlying vocal disorder and are relatively easy to produce, analyze, and synthesize. Clinical assessments of voice quality are sometimes based on the production of speech utterances that are more ecologically valid than sustained vowel phonation and that capture the dynamics of laryngeal function, breath support, and a variety of complex cognitive and neuromuscular challenges typically involved in natural speech. As a result, voice quality associated with running speech may correspond more closely with perceived handicap and may represent more relevant treatment targets than sustained vowels. In a listening experiment with naive listeners, breathy voice quality was evaluated for exemplars of sustained /a/ production as well as read speech from a selection of talkers that vary widely in terms of their vocal breathiness. A single-variable matching task was used to index perceived breathiness for both stimulus types. Listener reliability was high, and matching thresholds for the sustained phonation and speech stimuli were highly correlated, demonstrating the efficacy of the matching task for measuring vocal breathiness from speech utterances.
Revisiting English word stress and rhythm in the post-nuclear domain
Authors: Howell Jonathan
Published: November 2016

In English, grammatical category and word stress are often highly correlated: disyllabic nouns and verbs frequently occur with trochaic and iambic stress, respectively. Kelly and colleagues (1988,1992) suggest that this relationship was shaped by rhythm but may also be subverted by rhythm. We revisit a 1978 production study by Huss, who argued that the usual stress correlation is neutralized in postnuclear position and that acoustic differences are subject to effects of sentence rhythm. Twelve pairs of homophones were embedded in full sentences preceded by a possessive or plural noun with ultimate or penultimate stress: e.g. farms produce, farm’s produce, farmers produce, farmer’s produce. A postnuclear environment was elicited by prepending a contrastive sentence (e.g., Some say that only supermarket produce may vary in quality but also a farmer’s produce may vary in quality.) Results suggest, contra Huss, that prosodic differences between nouns and verbs persist in the postnuclear environment, despite effects of rhythm. In a mixed-effects logistic regression (N = 18), acoustic cues of syllable duration and maximum intensity were significant predictors of part of speech in nuclear and postnuclear position. We also discuss results of a perception experiment in progress using the production stimuli.
Cross-cultural differences in the development of emotion perception from face and voice between Japanese and Dutch speakers
Authors: Tanaka Akihiro , Sauter Disa , Kawahara Misako
Published: November 2016

Recent studies have demonstrated cultural differences in multisensory emotion perception from faces and voices. Tanaka et al. (2010, Psychol. Sci.) showed that Japanese people are more tuned than Dutch people to vocal processing in adults. The current study investigated how such a cultural difference develops in children and adults. In the experiment, Japanese and Dutch participants observed affective expressions of both Japanese and Dutch actors. A face and a voice, expressing either congruent or incongruent emotions, were presented simultaneously on each trial. Participants judged whether the person is happy or angry. Results in incongruent trials showed that the rate of vocal responses was higher in Japanese than Dutch participants in adults, especially when in-group speakers expressed a happy face with an angry voice. The rate of vocal responses was very low and not significantly different between Japanese and Dutch 5-6-year-olds. However, it increased over age in Japanese participants, while it remained the same in Dutch participants. These results reveal the developmental onset of cultural differences in multisensory emotion perception.
The relationship between perception of cuteness and duration of voices
Authors: Ohno Ryohei , Morise Masanori , Kitahara Tetsuro
Published: November 2016

The “cuteness” is one of the most important features in female voices. In fact, voice actresses who are known as cute voice holders are very popular in Japan, particularly for Japanese anime freaks. We have therefore been investigating the relationship between the perception of the cuteness of voices and their acoustic features. Here, we focus on the duration of voices. We hypothesized that it is difficult to perceive cuteness when the voice is short, and we conducted a listening test using voice stimuli with various durations. Given voices (around 1 sec) saying “oniichan” (older brother) by 12 actresses, we extracted 75-ms, 150-ms, 300-ms, and 600-ms parts from them. Participants listened to each stimulus three times and rated their cuteness on a scale of 1 to 5. Experimental results show the following two findings: 1) The stability of ratings for the same voice (i.e., the difference between the highest and lowest ratings for the same voice within each participant) tends to become lower as the voice is shorter. 2) Regarding actresses whose full-version voices are rated 4 or higher by each participant, the participant also rated more than half of the shortened voices (even 75-ms ones) 4 or higher.
Perceptual impressions and acoustical characteristics of simulated “feminine” voices
Authors: Waragai Maki , Shirose Ayako
Published: November 2016

This study aims to clarify characteristics of voice quality that give an impression of femininity. With regard to female voices and gender variation of voices, previous research has studied their acoustical features. Klatt & Klatt (1990) examined male and female voices acoustically and showed that female voices were more breathy than male voices. In order to reveal typical characteristics of female voices, this study investigated perceptual impressions and acoustic features of simulated female voices. Analyzes data were utterances produced by twelve speakers (6 females and 6males, aged 20-22). The speakers were asked to simulate a female “feminine” voice. Firstly, we carried out an impression rating experiment on the obtained data. Twenty-two participants were asked to evaluate the utterances according to various rating scales. The scales included “clear,” “thin,” “feminine” and so on (Kido and Kasuya, 1999; 2001). Analysis showed that a significant correlation with “feminine” was found in “high,” “clear,” “thin.” Second, /a/ vowels extracted from the utterances were analyzed acoustically. Acoustic parameters were F0, the amplitude gap between H1-H2, and CPP. The relation between these acoustic parameters and the impression ratings of voice quality will be discussed.
Some new observations on the underwater sound field from impact pile driving
Authors: Dahl Peter H. , Dall'Osto David R.
Published: November 2016

The underwater sound field from impact pile driving has been studied in recent years, motivated largely by the high levels and impulsive character of the sound and potential impacts on marine life. Here we report on new observations made on a vertical line array (VLA) and neutrally buoyant geophone (vector sensor) both positioned 120 m from the pile, to inform future modeling and mitigation efforts. These observations include: (1) a ground-wave precursor of amplitude 200 Pa, or 10% of peak pressure (2) delayed arrival structure in the impulsive time series due to injection of airborne sound from the hammering process, and (3) properties of the Scholte wave as a function of receiver depth. The study originates from Puget Sound, WA, and involves a 30-cm diameter steel pile installed with impact hammer energy ~200 kJ. Water depth at pile was 9 m, gradually increasing to 17 m at the VLA range. Pile depth was recorded over the sequence of 300 pile strikes, and this knowledge is essential to interpret these observations as the pile was driven 12 m into the sediment. [Research supported by Washington State Dept. of Transportation with partial support from ONR.]
Dwarf sperm whale (Kogia sima) echolocation clicks from Guam (Western North Pacific Ocean)
Authors: Merkens Karlina , Barkley Yvonne , Hill Marie , Oleson Erin
Published: November 2016

The cryptic species of the genus Kogia, including the dwarf sperm whale (Kogia sima) and the pygmy sperm whale (Kogia breviceps), are very difficult to observe in any but the most calm sea conditions. However, recordings of signals from wild and captive animals reveal that they echolocate at high frequencies (peak frequencies > 100 kHz) which makes passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) a possibility. We present details from a recent encounter with K. sima in the wild near the island of Guam (Western North Pacific Ocean). Three individuals were observed during a small-boat, visual survey in May 2016, and recordings were collected using a Compact Acoustic Recording Buoy (CARB). These clicks, with mean peak frequency of 126 kHz ( + /- 4.3 kHz), mean click duration of 72 us ( + /- 21 us), and -3 dB bandwidth 5.5 kHz ( + /- 1.6 kHz), had similar properties to recordings of wild K. sima from the Bahamas (Atlantic Ocean), and also appear similar to published recordings from K. breviceps (Madsen et al. 2005). Available data and analyses to date do not allow for absolute determination between the two Kogia species at this time, but recordings such as these bring us closer to definitive species classification.
Sound source positioning using microphone array installed on a flying drone
Authors: Oh Seongho , Go Yeong-Ju , Lee Jaehyung , Choi Jong-Soo
Published: November 2016

This study presents an application of acoustic source localization using microphone array installed on a drone. Although recent technology of drone enables to record audio and video, there are still acoustic problems such as engine noise, propeller-induced flow noise, microphone directivity, etc. Such unwanted noise shows strong tonal characteristics with broad band noise contents. To acquire usable acoustic signal from array measurements while a drone is flying, we implemented acoustic signal conditioning and array processing. The approach to the problem is to adapt beamforming and TDOA techniques that provide localization capability of multiple sources and the position or direction of arrival of source, respectively. The array configuration and angle resolution are adjusted depending on the application requirements. We limit our attention to stable hovering condition to rule out position and heading error occurred by the drone motion. The experimental results of position estimation under a various noise conditions are discussed in the study.
Comparison between multilevel and traditional logistic regression analysis of laboratory indoor annoyance caused by shaped sonic booms
Authors: Rathsam Jonathan , Silbert Noah H. , Ballard Kathryn , Lee Jasme
Published: November 2016

In the 1970s commercial supersonic flight was forbidden over communities because conventional N-wave sonic booms caused excessive annoyance. Through recent advances in aircraft design techniques, conventional sonic booms are being modified into quieter, shaped sonic booms. As noise regulators consider allowing shaped booms over communities, NASA is providing data and expertise. Recently, a laboratory study quantified the additional annoyance caused by directly felt structural vibrations (J. Rathsam and J. Klos, “Vibration penalty estimates for indoor annoyance caused by sonic boom,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 139 (4), 2007 (2016)). To confirm experimental results and complement the traditional logistic regression analysis, a multilevel logistic regression model was fit to individual-level data. The multilevel analysis allows us to simultaneously model individual- and group-level factors. As a result, it is straightforward to test for relationships between annoyance and individual-level factors such as noise sensitivity.
Noise injection for acoustics fault sample expansion
Authors: zhang linke , Wei NA
Published: November 2016

Sample expansion is an effective approach to resolve the incomplete samples problem in acoustics fault source identification. Noise injection is applied to acoustics fault sample expansion by mixing noise signals with different signal-to-noise ratio in real samples to obtain expansion samples, which enhances training data. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this proposed approach.
Real-time gaze-tracking performance under synchronous and asynchronous auditory feedback conditions
Authors: Lucila Andrew , Roque Franklin , Morgan Michael , Gordon Michael S.
Published: November 2016

Visual attention and manual coordination were tested in pianists and other instrumentalists tasked with reading baroque music. Musicians were assessed in their ability to perform a single melodic line relative to a two-clef, three voice score with bimanual coordination (an extension from past research). In this study, musicians were asked to read and perform music under three auditory feedback conditions: synchronous, delayed (one-beat behind), and prelayed (one-beat ahead). Real-time gaze-tracking analysis was conducted, in addition to measures of performance, under each auditory condition. Results from these analyses indicated several trends. Gaze-tracking measures were taken from visual fixations and regressions during performance. These measures indicated that musicians had more difficulty in the asynchronous auditory feedback conditions relative to the synchronous condition. Particularly the prelay auditory feedback condition tended to cause an increase in the number of visual fixations per measure and required more effortful gaze. This effect was found to be consistent across different instrumental performances. In addition, indications of cognitive effort increased in the bimanual conditions. These results indicate the challenge musicians face when reading music in conditions of higher cognitive and manual load.
Acoustic analysis on vocal voice of Lee Nan-Young, a legendary singer of Korea
Authors: Kim Myungsook , Bae Myung-Jin
Published: November 2016

Lee Nan-Young, a legendary female popular singer of Korea, made her debut in 1934 and enjoyed a tremendous popularity among Korean people in the 1930-40s. She was a special comfort to Korean people who were suffering from colonial exploitations by the Japanese government during that time. To celebrate her 100th birthday, we analyzed her vocal recordings in order to find its unique characteristics that set her apart. Findings can be summarized as follows: first, her voice has harmonics found around 4500 Hz and even higher, which is three times higher than average; second, she changes tones from 250 Hz to 1500 Hz (2.5 octaves), producing an attractive plaintive voice; third, she gives many short cut-offs in low tones but produces rich resonant voice in high tones, practicing a variety of singing methods; fourth, she has a command of producing all-frequency-ranged voice including low, middle, and high frequency and makes rich vibrations resulting in deep and touching voice; last, her voice naturally and smoothly links with a variety of musical instruments accompanying her songs. Based on these findings, we conclude that she deserves to be recognized as one of the best popular singers who have ever performed.
Study on specific musical instrument sound extraction by clustering of nonnegative matrix factorization bases with linear predictive coding mel-cepstrum
Authors: Umeda Saki , Banno Hideki , Asahi Kensaku
Published: November 2016

Nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) is one of a technique for audio source separation. It separates input audio signal into a set of basis spectra and a set of intensity trajectories of the basis spectra. We utilize this technique to extract particular musical instrument sound from musical audio signal. However, the resultant separation by NMF is known to be unrelated to instrumentation of the audio signal. Therefore, clustering technique by using a spectral distance measure is applied to the basis spectra so that the clustered signal corresponds to the audio signal of particular musical instrument. In this study, we investigate the optimal number of bases and the optimal distance measure for clustering. Experiments using audio signals that include two musical instrument sounds and employing mel-cepstrum, linear predictive coding (LPC) cepstrum and LPC mel-cepstrum as a distance measure, showed that LPC mel-cepstrum tends to classify more properly than the others do. This tendency is caused by the fact that the resultant spectrum obtained by LPC mel-cepstrum keeps some important peaks to classify musical instrument sounds properly. Future work includes integrating LPC mel-cepstrum into a distance measure used in NMF algorithm inside to fit with extraction of particular musical instrument sound.
A simple model of cross-fingering explaining both pitch flattening and sharpening
Authors: Adachi Seiji
Published: November 2016

Cross-fingering is a technique of playing woodwind instruments in which one or more tone holes are closed below the first open hole. It usually yields a pitch lower than that played with normal fingering. There is, however, an exception resulting in pitch sharpening. This paper proposes understanding these pitch bending phenomena in a unified manner with a model of two coupled mechanical oscillators, each of which represents a bore above or below the open hole. This coupled system has two resonance frequencies ω±, which are respectively higher and lower than those of the upper and lower bores ωU and ωL. The ω± differ even if ωU = ωL. The normal effect of cross-fingering, i.e., pitch flattening, corresponds to excitation of the ω−-mode, which occurs when ωL ≥ ωU and the admittance peak of the ω−-mode is higher than or as high as that of the ω+-mode. Excitation of the ω+-mode yields pitch sharpening. This occurs when ωL ≤ ωU and the peak of the ω+-mode becomes sufficiently high. With an extended model having three degrees of freedom, pitch bending of the recorder played with cross-fingering in the second register can also be successfully explained.
Effect of hardening piano hammer felt on piano sound
Authors: Takaku Shingo , Tatekura Yosuke
Published: November 2016

To clarify the effect of hardening the hammer felt of a piano on its sound, experiments evaluating the sound quality of the piano were performed using a new piano hammer. The adjustment of a piano hammer is necessary to obtain the desired tone. The elasticity and hardness of the hammer are also recognized as indicators of the condition of the instrument. To maintain the condition of piano hammers, piano craftsmen make adjustments using various tools and chemicals while listening to the resulting change in the sound after each alteration. Hammer adjustment is often performed based on intuition and experience. In this study, the quantity of the hardening agent was gradually increased, and a sound quality experiment was performed using a new Renner hammer. A low frequency of 58.27 Hz (A#1) was selected as the piano note investigated in this study because it is more affected than other frequencies by the hardening of the hammer. The results of this study indicate that the optimal amount of hardening agent needed to achieve a desired tone and desired tone should be determined before the agent is applied to the hammer felt.
Warbling in steadily bowed viol strings
Authors: Campbell D. Murray , Campbell Patsy , Woodhouse Jim
Published: November 2016

The timbre of a note played on a bowed string instrument depends on a number of performance parameters, including bow pressure, bow speed, and distance of the bowing point from the bridge. When these parameters are held constant during the bowing of a note played without vibrato the radiated sound usually has a stable timbre, with a frequency spectrum which is unchanging apart from small random fluctuations. For certain combinations of instrument and bow this timbral stability is disrupted, leading to a periodic modulation of the timbre which can be described as a “warble.” The warbling effect was first noticed on a large bass viol, but it can also be found on other bowed string instruments including the cello. Unlike the well known “wolf” phenomenon, the warbling effect is not associated with a particular played pitch on the instrument, but occurs over a wide range of pitches. Experimental studies on bass viols have shown that the warble is a modulation of upper harmonics of the played note, with a modulation frequency of a few hertz. Possible mechanisms which could explain the generation of this modulation are discussed.
The effect of attack time and release time of the sound source on the sense of listener envelopment
Authors: Kamekawa Toru , Marui Atsushi
Published: November 2016

The effect of attack time and release time of the sound source on the sense of Listener Envelopment (LEV) was investigated. From the results of a previous experiment, it was found that there were at least two kinds of sense in LEV, namely, spatial continuity between front and back, and expanse of lateral direction. In this experiment, authors conducted pairwise comparison tests for each sense using simple sine wave stimuli changing four kind of attack time and three kind of release time. Furthermore these short sine waves were convolved with four channel room impulse responses and played back form five channel loud speakers. The result of pairwise comparison showed that the sense of spatial continuity between front and back was related to first attack time and another sense of expanse of lateral direction was related to slower attack time.
Tempo estimation for acoustic signal of tempo variation music
Authors: Okada Sota , Miura Masanobu
Published: November 2016

This study proposes a tempo estimation method for acoustic signal of tempo variation music. Previous studies observe the power spectrum of envelope curve for its acoustic signal, where its length must be sixty seconds or longer for the purpose of keeping the tempo resolution as 1 bpm. The method then picked the highest power up as estimated tempo. The music with tempo variation that is occurred within the sixty seconds (for example ten seconds) were, however, hard to estimate. In order to estimate tempo for each time of such tempo variation music, the conventional zero-padding method is carried out when performing FFT. Tempo value is therefore estimated under high accuracy yet the estimation errors have not discussed so far. Accordingly, the optimum ratio of zero-padding was investigated. As a result, the optimized ratio of acoustic signal and 0 in the zero-padding is.125—.875 %. Furthermore, tempo value on each one second is estimated for tempo variation music that has orchestral rubato expression. The estimated accuracy of presented method was evaluated by comparing estimated with hand-labeled tempo.
An acoustic and perceptual evaluation of four historic recordings of Chinese narrative singing
Authors: Nissen Shawn L. , Lawson Francesca R.
Published: November 2016

This study is an acoustic and perceptual musicological evaluation of four recordings of vocal renditions from two schools of Chinese narrative singing that were differentiated by gender during the first half of the twentieth century. The analyses were based on four renditions of “At Break of Day” by Liu Baoquan (1869-1942) and Xiao Lanyun (1923-1992) of the “male school”, as well as Luo Yusheng (1914-2002) and Lu Yiqin (1933-) of the “female school.” The musicological analysis was based on transcriptions of the recordings, comparing melody, rhythm, ornamentation, and tonality. The acoustic analyses involved measures of central tendency and variability for duration and fundamental frequency (F0) using Praat acoustic analysis software. All four vocalists exhibited a similar mean F0, however differences in relative duration, F0 range, F0 variation, and F0 slope were found across singers at both the phrase and syllable level. Differences within schools of singing (male and female) and between instructor and student (i.e., Liu Baoquan and Xiao Lanyun) were also noted. These acoustic differences provide additional insights for ethnomusicologists that may be unattainable through traditional methods of perceptual analysis.