Size, shape, and material properties of sound models

Journal of Hearing Science, 2013

Humans are able to get an impression of the size of an object by hearing it resonate. While this ability is well described for periodic speech sounds we investigate here the ability to discriminate the size of non-periodic transient impact sounds. Three experiments were performed on normal listeners (n=19) to investigate the importance of the spectral cue in different frequency regions. Recordings from pulse resonance sounds made by a metal ball hitting polystyrene spheres of 5 different sizes were used in the experiments. Recordings were manipulated in order to show that the same cues used in speaker size discrimination are used for transient signals. Results show that the most prominent resonances are the most important cue, but frequencies above 8 kHz also contribute. The results are explained by physiologically inspired model of size discrimination that is based on the Auditory Image Model, and its key part is the Mellin transform. The model can predict which of two objects is bigger. We conclude that similar cues that are used for speaker size discrimination are important for transient sounds.

Springer Series on Touch and Haptic Systems, 2014

The paper presents a theoretical and experimental study regarding the way in which a sound is perceived and space localization of a sound source. In the first part of the paper we refer to the anatomical and physiological structure of the hearing system. The paper continues with the presentation of a theoretical model of the way in which the relative position of the two ears given the sound source establish the alter of phase and amplitude difference. Theoretical considerations are tested on a phantom made of a model which has incorporated two microphones in the pavilion of the ear.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2010

Sounds convey information about the materials composing an object. Stimuli were synthesized using a computer model of impacted plates that varied their material properties: viscoelastic and thermoelastic damping and wave velocity ͑related to elasticity and mass density͒. The range of damping properties represented a continuum between materials with predominant viscoelastic and thermoelastic damping ͑glass and aluminum, respectively͒. The perceptual structure of the sounds was inferred from multidimensional scaling of dissimilarity judgments and from their categorization as glass or aluminum. Dissimilarity ratings revealed dimensions that were closely related to mechanical properties: a wave-velocity-related dimension associated with pitch and a damping-related dimension associated with timbre and duration. When asked to categorize sounds, however, listeners ignored the cues related to wave velocity and focused on cues related to damping. In both dissimilarity-rating and identification experiments, the results were independent of the material of the mallet striking the plate ͑rubber or wood͒. Listeners thus appear to select acoustical information that is reliable for a given perceptual task. Because the frequency changes responsible for detecting changes in wave velocity can also be due to changes in geometry, they are not as reliable for material identification as are damping cues.

While it usually seems to be self-evident that perception of sound is a simple process, carried out within one sensory space, the existence of color hearing points at the fact that hearing includes visual aspects. In fact, not only during individual synesthetic processes, but even under common perceptual conditions sound refers to multi- sensory attributes. Thus, a multi-sensory design must be based on qualitative references between the senses. As an integral part, knowledge of the visual aspects of auditory perception is essential for creation of sounds which fit into a cross-modal environment. Various mechanisms of processing of stimuli ensure coupling of auditory qualia to multi-sensory perceptual objects. In the reality of daily life, even simple events which are heard include several references to those objects. Speech usually contains semantic and associative attributes as well as various analogies, like cross-sensory features (e.g. brightness, sharpness, volume), spatial dist...

IEEE Multimedia, 2003

Interactive systems, virtual environments, and information display applications need dynamic sound models rather than faithful audio reproductions. This implies three levels of research: auditory perception, physicsbased sound modeling, and expressive parametric control. Parallel progress along these three lines lead to effective auditory displays that can complement or substitute visual displays.

ACM Transactions on Applied Perception, 2005

This special issue of ACM Transactions on Applied Perception is intended to commemorate the tenth International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) and to serve as an introduction and overview of the field of auditory displays. This paper discusses the goals of the issue and describes the paper selection process. The selected papers are also introduced, with their connections to each other, their place in ICAD, and their relevance to other fields briefly highlighted.

Listeners were asked to categorise the recordings of a ball dropped on a plate according to its size in a 4AFC task. One control condition and four experimental conditions were investigated. In the control condition subjects were categorising the size of the ball by listening to the original recording. In the experimental conditions listeners were performing the same task either with sounds without the bounces, with sounds equated for RMS power, with sound low-pass filtered, or with sounds high-pass filtered. Each manipulation impaired subjects' performance compared to the control condition: without bounces and low-pass filtered sounds lowered by a constant proportion the performance; high pass filtered sounds and sounds equated for RMS power, instead, were affecting the subjective size of the balls.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Listeners identified one of six permutations of three frequencies, presented as brief three-note melodies. Identification performance remained high in spite of transposition of the original three frequencies throughout a two-octave range, so long as the musical intervals or frequency ratios between the adjacent pairs of frequencies remained constant. Even when those intervals were compressed or expanded, while remaining about equal to each other, identification was quite good for the range between the lowest and highest frequency of no more than approximately 1/3 octave. Performance decreased sharply when the span was much wider. Unequal intervals, where the low and middle frequencies were closer together or farther apart than the middle and high frequencies, did not retain good identification performance. When the three-tone patterns were embedded in longer sequences of seven or eight tones, the identification performance was best when the pattern occurred at the beginning or the end of the sequence, and when the range of frequencies from which the irrelevant background tones were chosen lay outside the range of pattern frequencies. Under conditions where the background frequencies were fixed and the pattern frequencies were moved, thus combining the manipulation of embedding with that of transposition of the pattern, overlap of pattern and background frequencies was still the principal cause of deterioration in performance. The findings are related to some analogies to the perceptual rules of Gestalt theory, as well as to certain aspects of musical practice. PACS numbers: 43.66.Mk, 43.66. Lj, 43.75.Bc, 43.66.Hg 1976) or four (Nickerson and Freeman, 1974) tones that are always easiest to identify are those in which the frequencies are arranged in either a strictly ascending or a strictly descending order. The perceptual sallerice of tonal patterns having a unidirectional frequency change is reminiscent of that of visual patterns obeying the Gestalt "law of good continuation" (Koffka, 1935). It seems that auditory, like visual, patterns may be organized as Gestalten which possess certain characteristic properties. Since there is very liitle theoretical work on auditory patterns or figures, we believe that some guiding principles may be adduced from similar work already available in the field of vision. If we can adopt a scheme for translating from visual to auditory patterns, then we might plan experiments to test the validity of visually derived principles as they might apply to hearing. According to one view (Hirsht; Julesz and Hirsh, 1972; Leipp, 1976) one may regard the auditory system as ma analogue of an optical scanning device, the input to which consists of a two-dimensional representation of the sound, as in a spectrogram. Such an analogy has perreitted translation of an auditory pattern into a visual figure (through the spectrograph), and of a visual figure into a sound pattern (through an optical scanning device, like tile Haskins Laboratories' classic "pattern playback" apparatus). While such a visual representation can only hint at the complexity of auditory perceptual processes, it suggests (via visual analogies) questions related to figural aspects of auditory patterns, 1369 J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 64(5), Nov. 1978 0001-4966/78/6405-1369500.80 ¸ 1978 Acoustical Society of America 1369 1370 P.L. Divenyi and I. J. Hirsh: Figural properties of auditory patterns 1370

Organised Sound, 1998

In multimedia art and communication, sound models are Schafer (1977), who also introduced a catalogue of needed which are versatile, responsive to users' sounds organised according to referential attributes. expectations, and have high audio quality. Moreover, model Nowadays, a common terminology is available for flexibility for human-machine interaction is a major issue. describing sound objects both from a phenomeno-Models based on the physics of actual or virtual objects can logical or a referential viewpoint, and for describing meet all of these requirements, thus allowing the user to collections of such objects (i.e. soundscapes) (Risset rely on high-level descriptions of the sounding entities. As 1969, Truax 1978, McAdams 1987). long as the sound description is based on the physics of For effective generation and manipulation of the sounding objects and not only on the characteristics of sound objects it is necessary to define models for human hearing, an integration with physics-based graphic sound synthesis, processing and composition. Identimodels becomes possible.