Sound Recording

Automatic detection of a falling person in video is an important problem with applications in security and safety areas including supportive home environments and CCTV surveillance systems. Human motion in video is modeled using Hidden Markov Models (HMM) in this paper. In addition, the audio track of the video is also used to distinguish a person simply sitting on a floor from a person stumbling and falling. Most video recording systems have the capability of recording audio as well and the impact sound of a falling person is also available as an additional clue. Audio channel data based decision is also reached using HMMs and fused with results of HMMs modeling the video data to reach a final decision.

Military lands are a valuable resource in recovery of threatened, endangered, and at-risk species worldwide and have the highest density of threatened and endangered species of all major land management agencies in the United States. Many red-cockaded woodpeckers (Picoides borealis) that reside on federal lands occur on 15 military installations in the southeastern United States. This close association has increased concern over potential conflicts between conservation requirements of endangered species and the military's mission of combat readiness. Our objectives were to 1) determine if military training operations affect behavior, reproductive success, and productivity of red-cockaded woodpeckers; 2) develop a frequency-weighting function to assess woodpecker hearing sensitivity; 3) identify factors that affect woodpecker responses to military training operations; 4) develop distance and dose-response thresholds for quantifying woodpecker responses to noise levels and stimulus distances; 5) characterize military training operations through quantification of sound levels, source identification, distance from active woodpecker nests, frequency spectra, duration, and frequency of occurrence; and 6) document baseline woodpecker nesting behavior. We conducted our study on the Fort Stewart Military Installation located in southeast Georgia, USA. Downy woodpeckers, as surrogates for red-cockaded woodpeckers, had their best hearing sensitivity within the peak range of the power spectrum of both downy and red-cockaded woodpecker vocalizations, which is at a higher frequency than that of a typical passerine. Overall, woodpeckers had a reduced auditory sensitivity relative to human hearing sensitivity and other species of small birds, especially in the frequency range >4 kHz. Woodpeckers were most sensitive in the 1.5-to 4.0-kHz range. Sensitivity appeared to drop off quickly at frequencies <1.0 kHz and >4.0 kHz. Overall, we did not find that the woodpecker-frequency-weighting function we developed provided a better predictor of woodpecker flush response compared with A-weighting. More research is needed to better understand the relationship between frequency-weighting functions and woodpecker response behavior. Potential breeding groups of woodpeckers across the population increased from 158 in 1997 to 181 in 2000, wheras nesting groups increased from 141 in 1998 to 170 in 2000, for overall increases of 14.6% and 20.6%, respectively, over the 3 years of this project. Fledging success rates for individual nests within the overall population remained consistent from 1998 to 2000, averaging 84.4%. Mean clutch sizes for woodpecker groups for 1998 to 2000 ranged from 2.75 to 3.01 eggs/nest, brood size ranged from 2.01 to 2.22 nestlings/nest, whereas the average number of young fledged ranged from 1.57 to 1.76 young/ occupied nest. We observed no difference in reproductive success or productivity between experimental and control-tested red-cockaded woodpecker groups. Overall, experimental test groups produced an average of 2.98 eggs/nest, 1.89 nestlings/nest, and 1.54 young/occupied nest from 1999 to 2000, compared with 2.73 eggs/nest, 1.91 nestlings/nest, and 1.57 young/occupied nest at control groups. We measured behavioral responses (nest attendance and arrivals and departures from the nest) of red-cockaded woodpeckers to military training events through direct and indirect (i.e., video surveillance) observation of 464.5 hours of woodpecker nesting behavior before and after controlled experimental events while recording and characterizing military-generated sound events using sound-recording equipment. We presented woodpeckers with actual 0.50caliber blank machine gun fire and artillery simulators from controlled distances to develop distance and sound thresholds. We used video surveillance to document potential behavioral responses of woodpeckers primarily during nonexperimental military training operations in areas that could not be safely monitored and to determine baseline woodpecker nesting behaviors. We recorded 2,846 nonexperimental military noise events in 157 data sessions at 50 red-cockaded woodpecker groups from 1998 to 2000. We also recorded 206 experimental tests at 58 woodpecker groups during 1999 and 2000. Life-table analyses of flush response time showed that at short ranges (15-30 m) the flush response was stronger for artillery simulator blasts than for blank fire in both the incubation and the nestling phases. In contrast, at medium distances (45-60 m) blank fire tended to produce more flush responses than artillery fire in both incubation and nestling phases. At longer distances (>60 m), blank fire and artillery produced similar flush responses in the incubation phase, whereas flush response was stronger for blank fire than for artillery in the nestling phase. In general, most animals that responded to military activity flushed within 5 seconds of the stimulus event. Woodpeckers returned to nests within an average of 4.4 minutes after being flushed by artillery simulators and 6.3 minutes after 0.50-caliber blank-fire tests. Woodpecker flush response rates increased as stimulus distance decreased and sound levels increased, regardless of stimulus type or year. Woodpeckers did not flush from nests when 0.50-caliber blank machine gun fire and artillery simulators were >152 m away and sound-exposure levels (decibels [dB]) were <68 dBW (woodpecker-based frequency-weighting curve) and <65 dBW, respectively. We found that blast treatments reduced arrival rates of adults at the nest, with the amount of reduction dependent on the type of blast stimulus and number of helpers at the nest. On the other hand, blast treatments had no detectable effects on nest attendance. The effect of blank fire on incubationphase arrivals over a 30-minute interval (about 40% reduction) was nearly twice that of artillery simulator fire (about a 20% reduction). There was no evidence supporting any effect of stimulus type on arrivals during the nestling phase. Blast stimuli during incubation reduced arrivals by 40% when no helpers were present, but the strength of this effect decreased to 28% when one helper was present, and was only 6% for nests with !2 helpers. Distance of the blast from the nest did not affect the response of arrival rates to blast treatments. Infrequent, short-duration military training exercises, as measured, did not appear to substantially impact red-cockaded woodpecker reproductive success and productivity on the Fort Stewart Military Installation. Our results may be applicable to other military installations where similar training activities and intensity levels occur. Additional research is needed to address possible habituation or sensitization of red-cockaded woodpeckers to human activities in proximity to active nest sites. Although we attempted to monitor woodpecker response to a number of military training activities, other types of military training operations or human-based activities with louder noise, longer duration, increased human presence, and greater frequency of occurrence could more negatively influence woodpecker nesting behavior and need to be investigated. Our results do not support the hypothesis that military

Fundamental frequency (F₀) peak delay (henceforth peak delay) refers to the phenomenon that an F₀ peak sometimes occurs after the syllable it is associated with either lexically or prosodically. Although peak delay has been reported for various languages, the mechanism of its occurrence has so far remained unclear. In Mandarin, peak delay has been found to occur regularly in the rising (R) tone but not in the high (H) tone. The present study investigates the underlying mechanisms of peak delay by examining its relationship with tone, tonal context, and speech rate. An experiment was conducted to test the possibility that peak delay may occur also in the H tone in Mandarin if the H-carrying syllable is sufficiently shortened. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese recorded three types of sentences each containing a H, a R, or a weakened H tone. The sentences were produced at three speech rates: normal, fast and slow. Analysis of F₀ contours and peak alignment revealed that at normal spe...

En este artículo se profundiza en la historia temprana de la reproducción sonora en la ciudad de São Paulo (Brasil). Por medio del estudio de los periódicos de la ciudad, se presentan datos inéditos sobre la llegada, recepción y apropiación del fonógrafo, entre 1878 y la aparición de los  primeros discos nacionales en la capital del estado. Se ilustra cómo la pequeña ciudad se insertó en los circuitos fonográficos internacionales y se presentan algunas pistas sobre un incipiente mercado de cilindros nacionales.

Lo-fi music is commonly associated with a recording aesthetic marked by an avoidance of state-of-the-art technologies and an inclusion of technical flaws, such as tape hiss and static. However, I argue that lo-fi music is not defined merely by the presence of such imperfections, but by a discourse which deliberately draws attention to them. Album liner notes play an important role in this discourse, as they can function as curatorial practices, through which lo-fi artists give an appropriate frame of reference to their recordings. By highlighting the ‘honest’ character of the recordings, the intimate recording spaces, the materiality of the equipment and its ambiguous character as machine/instrument/performer, they invite listeners to adopt a genre-adequate mode of listening. Rather than listening past hiss and other recording artefacts as undesirable qualities, listeners are asked to listen for these qualities as an essential element of not just the recordings, but the music itself.

The aim of this study was to investigate how information about the affective state is expressed in vocalizations. Alarm calls can serve as model systems with which to study this general question. Therefore, we examined the information content of terrestrial predator alarm calls of redfronted lemurs (Eulemur fulvus rufus), group-living Malagasy primates. Redfronted lemurs give specific alarm calls only towards raptors, whereas calls given in response to terrestrial predators (woofs) are also used in other situations characterized by high arousal. Woofs may therefore have the potential to express the perceived risk of a given threat. In order to examine whether different levels of arousal are expressed in call structure, we analysed woofs given during inter-group encounters or in response to playbacks of a barking dog, assuming that animals engaged in inter-group encounters experience higher arousal than during the playbacks of dog barks. A multivariate acoustic analysis revealed that calls given during group encounters were characterized by higher frequencies than calls given in response to playbacks of dog barks. In order to examine whether this change in call structure is salient to conspecifics, we conducted playback experiments with woofs, modified in either amplitude or frequencies. Playbacks of calls with increased frequency or amplitude elicited a longer orienting response, suggesting that different levels of arousal are expressed in call structure and provide meaningful information for listeners. In conclusion, the results of our study indicate that the information about the sender's affective state is expressed in the structure of vocalizations.

The author of the article wishes to compare Hungarian textual and musical folkloristics at the turn of the 20 th century with regard to changes in fieldwork methodologies. Hungarian folklore studies in the 19 th century preferred text-oriented recording of performances, while by the first half of the 20 th century the need for a performance-centered study of folklore with the help of audio recording emerged. Owing to a fundamental change in the method of folklorecollection, Hungarian folklorists studying folk music and folk dance by the middle of the 20 th century applied the method of participant observation. In the meantime extensive collection gave way to intensive collection focusing on the repertoire of a given local community or of an outstanding performer. In this process Béla Vikár had a distinguished role as he was the first one to use phonograph in collecting folk poetry and folk music in Hungary, besides which, with the help of stenography, he has a remarkable manuscript legacy of folktales and folk customs as well. The approach and objectives of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály differed from those of Vikár's, since for them quantitative considerations were still important, while Vikár's approach borrowed elements from social sciences as well. The breakthrough in this respect was marked with the oeuvre of László Lajtha, a disciple of Bartók, who dealt with vocal and instrumental folk music alike. During five decades Lajtha as a collector shifted paradigms a number of times and on the peak of his folklorist oeuvre he published monographs on the vocal and instrumental musical repertoire of bands and villages. His studies inspired György Martin, dance folklorist as well as the revival folk dance movement in the 1970s. The performer-centred study of narration that Gyula Ortutay elaborated on at the beginning of the 1940s proved to be successful primarily in the study of prose epic genres and it unreflexively followed the method of folk musicologists.

This article addresses the uses that record companies have made of two rhetorical tropes. The first is that only one in 10 artists succeed. The second is that they are investing in new music. These two notions have been combined to give the impression that record companies are taking risks both economically and aesthetically. They have been employed to justify the companies’ ownership of sound recording copyright and their system of exclusive, long-term recording contracts. More recently, the rhetoric has been employed to combat piracy, extend the term of sound recording copyright and account for the continuing usefulness of record companies. It is the argument of this article that investment in new music is not necessarily risk-taking; rather, it is the policies derived from risk-tak- ing that provide the financial security of record companies.

This study investigates the nonlexical item nu, borrowed into Hebrew from European languages, particularly Yiddish and Russian. The corpus examined consists of audio-recordings of thirty casual conversations between friends and family members. Nu was found to be the second-most prevalent interpersonal discourse marker in this database. The tokens of nu in the corpus function (i) to hasten a nonverbal action, (ii) to urge further development within a topic, (iii) to grant permission to perform an action, or (iv) as a keying discourse marker providing a joking/ provoking tone. The relationships among these functions are explored by reference to three continua constraining the use of nu: (1) 'sequentiality', (2) 'key', and (3) 'metalanguage'. Finally, nu is discussed in relation to the often positive perception of impatience in Israeli culture.

Automatic detection of predefined events in speech and audio signals is a challenging and promising subject in signal processing. One important application of such detection is removal or suppression of unwanted sounds in audio recordings, for instance in the professional music industry, where the demand for quality is very high. Breath sounds, which are present in most song recordings and often degrade the aesthetic quality of the voice, are an example of such unwanted sounds. Another example is bad pronunciation of certain phonemes. In this paper, we present an automatic algorithm for accurate detection of breaths in speech or song signals. The algorithm is based on a template matching approach, and consists of three phases. In the first phase, a template is constructed from mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) matrices of several breath examples and their singular value decompositions, to capture the characteristics of a typical breath event. Next, in the initial processing phase, each short-time frame is compared to the breath template, and marked as breathy or nonbreathy according to predefined thresholds. Finally, an edge detection algorithm, based on various time-domain and frequency-domain parameters, is applied to demarcate the exact boundaries of each breath event and to eliminate possible false detections. Evaluation of the algorithm on a database of speech and songs containing several hundred breath sounds yielded a correct identification rate of 98% with a specificity of 96%.

Critical evaluations of audio mash-ups and remixes tend to congregate around two poles. On the one hand, these often clever recombinations of recorded music are celebrated as innovative and creative interventions in the material of bland commodity culture. On the other hand, they are often reviled as derivative, inauthentic, and illegal because they do nothing more than appropriate and reconfigure the intellectual property of others. This essay does not side with either position but identifies and critiques the common understanding and fundamental assumptions that make these two, opposed positions possible in the first place. The investigation of this matter is divided into two main parts. The first considers the traditional understanding of technologically enabled reproduction and the often unquestioned value it invests in the concept of originality. It does so by beginning with a somewhat unlikely source, Plato's Phaedrus—a dialogue that, it is argued, originally articulates the original concept of originality that both determines and is reproduced in the theories and practices of sound recording. The second part of the essay demonstrates how the audio mash-up deliberately intervenes in this tradition, advancing a fundamental challenge to the original understanding and privilege of originality. In making this argument, however, the essay does not endeavor to position the mash-up as anything unique or innovative. Instead, it demonstrates how mash-ups, true to their thoroughly derivative nature, plunder, reuse, and remix anomalies that are already available in and constitutive of
recorded music.

Recent findings have challenged the notion that song development in many oscines ends in crystallized, stereotyped motor programmes. Evidence here indicates that delayed auditory feedback can result in immediate changes in song syllable syntax and phonology. Zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, when exposed to their own song that was delayed 50-250 ms, promptly produced anomalies such as stutters, omissions and novel sounds. As soon as the auditory feedback stopped, the birds returned to normal, stereotyped song. The effects are compared to those obtained from human speakers subjected to delayed auditory feedback.

In some social mammals, loud calling not only serves to advertise ownership of a territory and attract mates but also plays a vital role in allowing social companions to maintain contact when they are separated by long distances. Under these circumstances, individuals that are not territory owners but that call in the context of social cohesion or mate attraction could risk inviting escalated contests from territorial competitors. Here we present observations and playback experiments demonstrating that nomadic male lions (Panthera leo) do not roar despite the likely importance of roaring in maintaining social ties with other males in their coalition, on which their subsequent reproductive success depends. Instead, roaring is confined to males that are resident in prides and prepared to escalate in contest situations. Roaring is a flexible behaviour that is sensitive to temporal changes in status; resident males remain silent outside of their territories even when presented with playbacks of unfamiliar males roaring, and nomadic males start roaring only when they are taking over a pride. Our study suggests that individuals of social species may avoid givingimportant long-distance signals in circumstances where it would pay them to conceal their presence from eavesdroppers.

Chick-a-dee calls in many chickadee (Poecile) species are common vocal signals used in a diversity of social contacts. The calls consist of four notes, A, B, C, and D, which follow simple rules of syntax (note ordering and composition) to generate many unique call types. We used field playbacks with Carolina chickadees, P. carolinensis, to ask whether violations of a syntactical rule affected their vocal responses. We show that chickadee responses to typical calls (e.g. AAAACCCC and CCC-CDDDD) differ from responses to atypical calls (e.g. CACACACA and DCDCDCDC) depending on playback note composition, season, and social context (presence of heterospecifics). In the fall/winter, playbacks of typical calls with A and C notes elicited the greatest number of A and B notes in chick-a-dee call responses and typical calls with D notes elicited the greatest number of C notes, when in the presence of heterospecifics. In contrast, the corresponding atypical calls did not elicit similar responses. This suggests communicative significance is lost in calls that violate a rule of syntax in the fall/winter. In the spring, neither chickadee feebeefeebay song rate nor chick-a-dee calls responses differed by playback type. We suggest that call syntax is less salient for mated pairs in the spring than it is for fall/winter flocks that rely more on conspecific communication for foraging success and flock cohesion. This study represents the first experimental evidence that chickadees attend to both note composition and ordering in chick-a-dee calls.

This paper addresses the problem of parameterization for speech/music discrimination. The current successful parameterization based on cepstral coefficients uses the Fourier transformation (FT), which is well adapted for stationary signals. In order to take into account the non stationarity of music/speech signals, this work proposes to study wavelet-based signal decomposition instead of FT. Three wavelet families and several numbers of vanishing moments have been evaluated. Different types of energy, calculated for each frequency band obtained from wavelet decomposition, are studied. Static, dynamic and long-term parameters were evaluated. The proposed parameterization are integrated into two class/non-class classifiers: one for speech/non-speech, one for music/non-music. Different experiments on realistic corpora, including different styles of speech and music (Broadcast News, Entertainment, Scheirer), illustrate the performance of the proposed parameterization, especially for music/non-music discrimination. Our parameterization yielded a significant reduction of the error rate. More than 30% relative improvement was obtained for the envisaged tasks compared to MFCC parameterization.

This article investigates how the standardisation of the 45 RPM single and 33 RPM album in 1951 forced the recording industry to rethink their marketing strategies. The industry’s focus on weak unit strategies and capitalisation on the emergent artistic aesthetic are evaluated. To establish correlations between strategies and the popularity of singles and albums between 1955 and 1979, OLS models were generated using large datasets on chart performance of albums and singles. This study concludes that the industry tended toward sub-optimal, risk-averse strategies, and that the LP likely succeeded despite record companies’ efforts to control their products and messaging.

A number of nonhuman primates produce vocalizations with time-varying harmonic structure. Relatively little is known about whether such spectral information plays a role in call type classification. We address this problem by utilizing acoustic analyses and playback experiments on cottontop tamarins' combi nation long call, a species-typical vocalization with a characteristic harmonic structure. Specifically, we used habituation-discrimination experiments to test whether particular frequency components, as well as the relationship between components, have an effect on the perception and classification of long calls. In Condition 1, we show that tamarins classify natural and synthetic exemplars of the long call as perceptually similar, thereby allowing us to use synthetics to manipulate components of this signal precisely. In subsequent conditions, we tested the perceptual salience and discriminability of long calls in which we deleted (1) the second harmonic, (2) the fundamental frequency, or (3) all frequencies above the fundamental; we also examined the effects of frequency mistuning by shifting the second harmonic by 1000 Hz. Following habituation to unmanipulated long calls, tamarins did not respond (transferred habituation) to long calls with either a missing fundamental frequency or the second harmonic, but responded (discriminated) to long calls with the upper harmonics eliminated or with the second harmonic mistuned. These studies reveal the importance of harmonic structure in tamarin perception, and highlight the advantages of using synthetic signals for understanding how particular acoustic features drive perceptual classification in nonhuman primates.

In film and media production, ambient sound is a standard term that denotes the site-specific background sound component providing locational atmospheres and spatial information of public places. In this article, the specific role of ambient sound to create the context for the spatial experience in film and media production has been thoroughly examined in the light of Sound Studies. The article investigates the capacity of ambient sounds to sculpt the presence of a site by producing an embodied experience of the site. The article brings in a much-needed focus on the complex relationship between sound and site by examining the spatial environments recorded, mediated, and reconstructed by sound practice. Guided by the production studies of sound, the article draws on the theories of diegesis, mimesis, and presence to reformulate the notion of the soundscape while keeping a conceptual base in phenomenology of sound in analyzing the spatial and atmospheric listening experience. The article cites examples from representative Indian films and few of my own sound artworks as case studies to make critical listening and analysis of the processes through which ambient sound practice enhances the spatial and atmospheric sensations. The article draws insights from prominent sound practitioners in the form of long interviews conducted by me over several years and self-reflective insights on my own work. The practice-led inputs make the empirical basis of the article shedding light on the production processes providing links between certain techniques available to specific phases of sound production and aesthetic principles shaped by the respective phases of practice with ambient sounds. The article locates a distinct shift occurring through these trajectories of sound practice and relates this shift to the recent “spatial turn” in Sound Studies, making valuable contributions to the field interested to inquire about the emerging spatiality and public-ness in sound artworks.

Practices of collecting are constrained by media circumstances. To show how changing media circumstances can occasion changes in collecting practices, this article explores one case study, an iOS app developed by a Phish fan to allow streaming audio of fan-made recordings of Phish concert performances. Such practices are part of a history of unofficial music collecting that parallels the history of recorded sound. This case study shows how one collecting community's practices evolved in the context of changing media conditions: from cassette tape to CD-R to MP3 to streams (and a parallel motion from print to online message boards to app). This progression illustrates the ways that different ways of listening to and accessing recorded music afford different possibilities of collecting music, different links between listener and music, and different relationships among listeners. More precisely, Phish concert recordings, which lent themselves to collection when circulated on cassette, are no longer available to collect when they circulate as streaming media, because streaming is characterized by a relationship of access rather than possession. Among devoted fans, streaming recordings provoke a cultural emphasis on knowledge about music, rather than accumulation of recordings. My argument is rooted in prevailing theories of collecting, which situate collecting as a component of consumer culture emerging from the capitalist expansion stimulated by 19th-century mass production. Ultimately, I argue that when an object of collecting is displaced by changing media conditions, new collecting practices emerge to fill the void. In 2013, a 19-year-old software developer released a free iOS app that upended the practices and meanings of collecting recorded music. Alec Gorge's PhishOD obviated the collecting of fan-made live recordings of one American rock band and exposed the possibility that collecting practices are

The formants of the conversational vowels of five male and five female Singapore English (SgE) speakers are measured and compared with comparable measurements of British English (BrE) in order to gain a comprehensive view of the vowel space of Singaporean speakers and to determine which of the vowel distinctions of BrE are not maintained in SgE. It is found that the distinctions between /i˜/ and /I/ and also /e/ and /ae/ are not maintained in SgE, and any distinction between /f˜/ and /#/ is small. It is also found that SgE /u˜/ is more back than BrE /u˜/. It is further suggested that the fewer number of vowel contrasts in SgE does not contribute to much loss of intelligibility. * This work was partly supported by a grant from NIE Research Project RP 11/99 LEL: "An acoustic analysis of Singapore English with special reference to its pedagogical applications."

The study of the recorded artefact from a musicological perspective continues to unfold through contemporary research. Whilst an understanding of the scientific elements of recorded sound is well documented, the exploration of the production and the artistic nature of this endeavour is still developing. This article explores phenomenological aspects of producing heavy metal music from the perspective of seven renowned producers working within the genre. Through a series of interviews and subsequent in-depth analysis, particular sonic qualities are identified as key within the production of this work: impact; energy; precision; and extremity. A conceptual framework is then put forward for understanding the production methodology of recorded heavy metal music, and how developing technology has influenced the production of the genre.

We describe an evolutionary approach to one of the most challenging problems in computer music: modeling how skilled musicians manipulate sound properties such as timing and amplitude in order to express their view of the emotional content of musical pieces. Starting with a collection of audio recordings of real performances, we apply a sequential-covering genetic algorithm in order to obtain computational models for different aspects of expressive performance. We use these models to automatically synthesize performances with the timing and energy expressiveness that characterizes the music generated by a professional musician. The reported results indicate that evolutionary computation is an appropriate technique for solving the problem considered. Specifically, our evolutionary algorithm provides a number of potential advantages over other supervised learning algorithms, such as a method for non-deterministically obtaining models capturing different possible interpretations of a musical piece.

Music is often described in terms of the structure of repeated phrases. For example, many songs have the form AABA, where each letter represents an instance of a phrase. This research aims to construct descriptions or explanations of music in this form, using only audio recordings as input. A system of programs is described that transcribes the melody of a recording, identifies similar segments, clusters these segments to form patterns, and then constructs an explanation of the music in terms of these patterns. Additional work using spectral information rather than melodic transcription is also described. Examples of successful machine "listening" and music analysis are presented.

In 1984, L.A. punk band Black Flag released My War. Coming three years after Damaged – a canonized classic of the hardcore genre – and following a period of legal dispute and touring hiatus, My War was diverse and polarizing; side two of the album featured three
slow, long riff-heavy songs that run counter to the predominantly lean and fast signature sound of the band’s previous work and that of many contemporaries. With the benefit of hindsight, these tracks signalled punk’s reinvestment in heavy metal, precipitating new
hybrid forms such as sludge metal, drone metal, and stoner metal. In this paper, we exhume a subset of this aesthetic lineage and discuss how it has informed a subsequent recording: Lysol by the Melvins. Through analysis of recorded works, we demonstrate how the sounds of side two of My War have been propagated and refined, highlighting the links between these idiosyncratic sounds and the pragmatic realities of low-budget studio production.

Female choice in various species of acoustic insects and anurans entails a psychoacoustic preference for male calls that lead their neighbors by a brief time interval. This discrimination, which can be termed a precedence effect, may select for various mechanisms with which males adjust call rhythm and thus reduce their incidence of ineffective following calls. At a collective level, alternating and synchronous choruses may emerge from these call timing mechanisms. Using playback experiments, we characterized the precedence effect in females of the katydid Ephippiger ephippiger, an alternating choruser in which males use a rhythm adjustment mechanism that prevents calling during brief intervals following their neighborsÕ calls. E. ephippiger females oriented toward leading male calls in >75% of trials when relatively young (<40 d old) and when playbacks were timed so that following calls began within 100-250 ms of the leading ones. However, this preference declined to below 60% as females aged and the interval separating leading and following call onsets increased. The strength of this precedence effect varied greatly between females, but within broad age classes the effect in a given female was statistically repeatable. Such repeatability indicates the possibility that additive genetic variance could be a significant component of variation in the precedence effect. We discuss the implications of our findings and inference on genetic variance for evolution of the precedence effect and for chorusing.

How much do the majority of people value music, and can or should that level of value be reflected in music's economic value? The dramatic decline in the economic value of recorded popular music in the twenty-first century has prompted much debate about music being 'devalued' and the perceived 'value gap' between music's socio-cultural and economic values. Using the economic decline of recorded music as a springboard, this paper takes a different approach, however. It offers a theoretical analysis of popular music consumption practices organised thematically in terms of 'music as object' (focusing on the social values generated and perceived by recorded music artefacts) and 'music as sound' (focusing on the way that most contemporary musical experiences are characterised by music being background sound or accompaniment). Overall, the argument is that 'music' may not be as culturally valued by people as is commonly assumed. The way that music operates as a low-value entity to many people is perhaps reflected in the cultural and economic contours of the digital music industry, though they are not caused by digitisation per se.

When nonhuman animals vocalize, signal receivers are provided with a range of potential acoustic information concerning the signaler's body size, sex, individual identity, kinship and group membership. Here we explore whether cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) extract such information from their species-typical combination long call using a modi cation of the phonotaxis assay originally designed for studies of anurans and insects. In each trial, we sequentially played long calls produced by two different individuals and then provided test subjects the choice to approach either speaker location. We quanti ed selective phonotaxis using two different aspects of subjects' behavioural response: the rst approach following stimulus presentation and the total number of times subjects approached toward each speaker location. Results from subjects' rst approach indicated that tamarins perceived acoustic differences between long calls produced by cagemates, non-cagemate colony members and foreign tamarins. Speci cally, males showed a preference to approach foreign females over familiar ones, while females approached cagemate and homeroom males over foreign males. When the total number of approaches made towards each stimulus was analyzed, results revealed that subjects did not selectively approach cagemates over colony members or colony

Among the sources of information used in legal identi®cation, ®ngerprints and genetic data seem to provide a high degree of reliability. It is possible to evaluate the probability of confusing two individuals who might possess the same ®ngerprint characteristics or the same genetic markers, and to quantify the risk of a false alarm. By their very nature, these data do not vary signi®cantly over the course of time, and they cannot be modi®ed by a suspect. The erroneous metaphoric term``voiceprint'' leads many people (not only the general public) to believe that the voice is as reliable as the papillary ridges of the ®ngertips. This is not the case. According to present evidence, certain magistrates in France attach far too much importance to analyses of the voice which, along with other indices, should not be used except to help in directing an investigation. In this communication, the author will detail the conditions under which, in France, voice analyses are carried out in the course of an investigation undertaken by the law, and will attempt to de®ne the limits of this protocol, and the diculty (and impossibility) of producing a reliable statistical test. A historical review will then be presented of the discussions initiated by and position statements adopted by the French speech community since 1900. Finally some ideas and proposals will be put forward in conclusion, which might be discussed by specialists in speech in collaboration with the police, the gendarmerie, and the magistrature, on a national, European, and international level, to advance the search for legal proof of identi®cation within a scienti®c framework, and to end up with well-de®ned protocols.

Summary This paper is the second of at wo-part study of the quality of car horn sounds. It aims to provide insights into the design of newsounds. It is based on the assumption that hearing acar horn sound warns road users because theyr ecognize the sound of ac ar horn, i.e. theyk noww hat this sound means, and what theyh avet od oa sa consequence. The three experiments reported in this paper are grounded in apsychoacoustical framework. They seek to provide car horn builders with recommendations allowing them to create newsounds. In the first part [1], we studied the perception of the timbre of existing car horn sounds. We found that, from their perception of the sounds, listeners were able to makeinferences concerning the different mechanisms causing the sound, and that the perceiveddifferences between the sounds were based on the integration of three elementary sensations, correlated with three acoustical descriptors. In this second part, we focus on the agreement among listeners in categorizing sounds as being members of the car horn category.Membership agreement is operationally defined as the result of atwo-alternative forced-choice task. We first study recordings of existing sounds. The results allowustodefine relationships that predict membership agreement from aset of acoustical descriptors. To extend these results, we create anew set of sounds in asecond step, which we submit to atimbre study similar to the one reported in [1]. We finally study membership agreement for these synthesized sounds. The results allow us to define amethodology to create newcar horn sounds.

In whitethroats (Sylvia communis) unmated and recently mated males often emit a specific call, the woid-call, after a sequence of courtship diving songs when the female is still present. In the experiments we tested the deterring function of the woid-calls. A simple playback experiment showed that unmated males react to woid-calls played at their territory border by initially increasing their distance to the speaker in an escape-like manner before they approached in the same way as to territorial song. In another experiment we simulated a courtship event at a neighbour by playing back sequences of courtship songs from the territory border until the territory owner started to approach the speaker. We then either continued with one sequence of courtship song or switched to woid-calls. The results showed that the woid-calls delayed approaches from the territory owner. Together, the two experiments suggest a deterring effect of woid-calls. The implications of this for their use in courtship contexts where courting males often suffer intrusions from neighbouring males are discussed. We believe that woid-calls are used both preventively and defensively to avoid intrusions when other males have obtained information about female presence and courtship.

Acousmatic sound – a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it – creates situations where visual contributions to auditory experience are diminished. The author theorizes that acousmatic separation unsettles the relationship of the source, cause and effect of sound. To draw out the consequences of this theory, Les Paul and Mary Ford’s multi-tracked recordings and live performances are examined, and three central claims are posited. First, Paul’s turn to multi-tracked recording was motivated by mimetic rivalry when his ‘sound’ was imitated on the radio. Second, Paul misdirected listeners of his radio program by creating scenarios that depended on false attributions of source and cause. Third, the problems that faced Paul in live performance of his multi-tracked hits resulted in Paul’s creation of the ‘Les Paulverizer’. This device afforded the maintenance of acousmatic spacing during live performance but also forced him into the unusual position of ventriloquizing his own voice.

In Chasing Sound Susan Schmidt Horning traces the cultural and technological evolution of recording studios in the United States from the first practical devices to the modern multi-track studios of the analog era. Charting the technical development of studio equipment, the professionalization of recording engineers, and the growing collaboration between artists and technicians she shows how the earliest efforts to capture the sound of live performances eventually resulted in a trend toward studio creations that extended beyond live shows, ultimately reversing the historic relationship between live and recorded sound. . . . See link below to publisher's catalog page.

This paper examines the formulation of embodied conduct in a designedly uni-modal environment: audio-recordings of British police interrogations of suspects. These recordings are made by the police as part of the legal process, and for nonpresent 'distal' recipients (e.g., juries, judges). The paper focuses on the design, placement and action orientation of the phrase, ''for the benefit of the tape'' and its truncated variant ''for the tape''. The first environment for FBT/FT phrases was the opening sequence of interviews, as accounts for eliciting 'already-known' information about the identity of the suspect. Subsequent FBT/FT phrases occurred in verbal formulations of embodied conduct and in questions about such conduct, to make it 'visible' for distal recipients. FBT/FT phrases were therefore 'recipient designed' in two ways: for co-present participants, to account for the formulation of 'already known' information, and for distal participants, to disambiguate otherwise unrecoverable spatial and embodied aspects of the interaction. The paper examines how the combination, or collision, of different interactional and recording modalities, with different categories of recipient, provides speakers with a complex set of contingencies to manage. #

The ATR MRI database of Japanese vowel production was used to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of the vocal tract for the five Japanese vowels through the measurements of frequency responses from solid vocal-tract models formed by a stereolithographic technique. The database includes speech sounds as well as volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, but the speech sounds were recorded separately from the acquisition MRI data; therefore, their speech spectra are not appropriate for use as the reference for the transfer functions of the vocal tract. A time-stretched pulse signal generated from a horn driver unit was introduced into the physical model at the lips, and the response signals of the models were recorded at the model's glottis. In the measurements, the glottis of the models was sealed with a plastic plate, and the response signals were measured from a small hole in the plate using a probe microphone. This method permits accurate measurement of the transfer functions of the vocal tract under a closed-glottis condition. The resulting transfer functions of the five Japanese vowels provide a benchmark for testing numerical analysis methods that have been used to study vocal-tract acoustics, although the solid wall decreases the frequencies of lower resonances.

From the initial release of the CD in 1982, artists have tampered with the system to test it, compose with it and sample from it. The author examines the use of the cracked and manipulated CD in the work of Yasunao Tone, Nicolas Collins and Oval in relation to their differing approaches and the role of the CD in sound expansion. Tone and Collins are interested in indeterminacy and the benevolent catastrophe in composition, while Oval’s process has more in common with pop production and studio practices.

The connection between mechanical voice reproduction and artificial femininity, popularized most recently by Apple’s debut of Siri for the iPhone in 2011, dates nearly to the very moment of the introduction of the phonograph in 1877. This connection was reinforced in the literature of the period, where it served to preserve or question traditional Victorian gender roles amid social and economic changes that were already upending them. In this essay, I build upon arguments in my book Victorian Soundscapes to sketch a trajectory of imaginative representation of the “female talking machine” across what historian of technology Vaclav Smil has identified as “the Age of Synergy” – that is, from Edison’s 1880s talking doll to E. E. Kellett’s turn of the century short story “The Lady Automaton” and on through George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. After mapping out the figure of the female voice engine along this arc, from speaking automaton to autonomous vocalist, I conclude by suggesting how the demands of post-war capitalist mass entertainment sought to undermine if not reverse it.

The focus of this paper is to hide information in sinusoidal audio representations. Watermarks are embedded by introducing quantization index modulation (QIM) in frequencies of sinusoids. The frequency shifts due to QIM are controlled to be less than onethirtieth Bark, which requires high accuracy in frequency estimation for watermark decoding. Therefore, this paper presents a hybrid multiple frequency estimator which consists of spectral interpolation followed by iterative square error minimization. The frequency estimator is tested in watermarking both computer generated sounds and actual recordings. The watermarks are intended to survive MP3 compression. Selected experiments are documented and discussed.

A widespread view among philosophers and scientists is that recorded sounds and assisted hearing differ fundamentally from natural sounds and direct hearing. It is commonly claimed, for example, that the sounds we hear over the phone are not sounds emitted by the voice of our interlocutor, but the sounds reproduced by the phone’s loudspeaker. According to this view, hearing distant sounds through communication and audio equipment is at best indirect and at worst illusory. In what follows, I shall reject these claims and argue in favor of a transparent view of auditory media, including radio, telephone, phonograph, etc. According to this approach, the great gift of Scott de Martinville and Edison is not to have invented devices able to reproduce vanished sounds but rather to have created technological instruments literally able to store and transmit them to future and distant listeners.

Taking into account directivity of real sound sources makes it possible to try solving an interesting and biologically relevant problem: estimating the orientation in three-dimensional space of a directional sound source. The source, of known directivity, produces a broadband signal (in the ultrasonic range, in this application) that is recorded by microphones whose position with respect to source is known. An analytical method to process the recorded signals and estimate source orientation is developed in this paper. Experiments testing method performance in estimating source orientation were performed both in a laboratory environment with a Polaroid transducer as source and in a flight room with a Myotis daubentonii bat. In the first case, results showed the estimation method to be accurate and pointed out its limitations. The latter case is significant as an example biological application of the method for extracting behavioral features from bats; results are compared with alternative calculations based on microphone root-mean-square (rms)-pressure values.