Wall Design Centers Experience of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Individuals #ASA190

Textured walls improve speech clarity, making an easier listening experience for all.

PHILADELPHIA, May 14, 2026 — According to many deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, clarity — not volume — is one of the most challenging parts of understanding speech in enclosed spaces. In many types of rooms, sound reflecting off multiple walls muddies conversation, making it harder to understand.

“For most people, this might just feel like background noise,” said researcher Po-Chun Chou, a researcher from the University of Michigan. “But for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, it can significantly affect their ability to follow conversations — especially when it comes to distinguishing important speech details like consonants.”

But making spaces quieter isn’t a perfect solution — what matters is controlling how sound travels in a room. To do so, Chou developed a patterns wall to improve the listening experience of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.

Chou will present these designs Thursday, May 14, at 3:40 p.m. ET as part of the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 11-15.

Left side shows a close-up of a 3D printer creating a black object on a yellow surface. Right side shows a person with a blue hair tie touching a textured black wall with vertical and horizontal printing lines.

The modular wall is put together using building blocks fabricated by 3D printing. Credit: Po-Chun Chou

The researchers began by conducting acoustic simulations to study how different surface textures influenced speech clarity to determine the patterns for their wall. Then, they conducted experiments to validate their findings and observe how the designs affect sound behavior in real life.

Instead of building an entire wall, they designed “tiles” that could fit together like a puzzle, linking them together to fit different room shapes and sizes. These pieces were fabricated using a 3D printer.

“One key finding is that the acoustic performance of a wall can be precisely controlled through geometry and fabrication parameters — not just traditional materials.” Chou said.

Surprisingly, they found that different patterns and 3D printing settings impact different frequency ranges, meaning that the wall designs can be personalized to different user experiences.

Since this research was inspired by personal experiences, Chou hopes others will understand that challenges for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals can be amplified by their environments.

“Architectural acoustics should not be seen only as a matter of comfort — it can also be a matter of accessibility,” Chou said. “By integrating design, digital fabrication, and acoustic performance, we can create spaces that support clearer communication. This benefits not only deaf and hard-of-hearing users, but everyone who uses the space.”

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For more information:
AIP Media
1 301.209.3090
media@aip.org

Main Meeting Website: https://acousticalsociety.org/philadelphia/
Technical Program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING2026

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to the in-person conference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

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Tired? We Can Hear It in Your Voice #ASA190

Physical exertion affects the pitch, intensity, and temporal characteristics of speech, making speech recognition difficult for systems used by emergency response personnel and wearable devices.

PHILADELPHIA, May 14, 2026 — The “talk test” is often used as a low-tech way to measure exercise intensity: If you can easily talk or even sing, your workout is fairly light, but if conversation is difficult, you are exercising vigorously.

Physical task stress affects the coordination between breathing and speaking. Zahra Omidi from the University of Texas at Dallas studies this relationship and will present her work Thursday, May 14, at 11:15 a.m. ET as part of the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 11-15.

Group of runners participating in an outdoor race on a cloudy day, with two women in the foreground wearing athletic gear with an inset audio waveform and spectrogram showing sound intensity with a highlighted segment in red.

Vocal pitch, intensity, and pause structure are the vocal characteristics most impacted by changes in breathing and exercise. Credit: Zahra Omidi and Presidio of Monterey (CC0)

“Physical exertion directly alters respiration and phonation, and because speech shares the same respiratory system, these changes propagate into pitch, timing, and voice quality,” Omidi said.

Vocal pitch, intensity, and pause structure are the vocal characteristics most sensitive to changes in breathing and effort. Pitch and intensity both increase, while intensity also becomes less stable. Because speakers need to allocate more time to breathing, their speech rate slows down and becomes more segmented with longer and more frequent pauses.

Some of these changes might not be so noticeable to a listener, but the measurements clearly indicate a physiological difference.
“Features like pitch, intensity, and timing show clear and consistent changes, even when those differences are not immediately obvious by listening,” Omidi said. “This suggests that physical stress may operate below the threshold of perceptual salience in some cases but still induces measurable changes in the production mechanism.”

Understanding exactly how physical stress causes changes to vocal patterns can help train speech recognition systems, which often struggle with speech that differs from the average.

“Examples include emergency response, military operations, aviation under workload, and wearable voice interfaces, where people are speaking while physically active,” Omidi said. “In all these cases, speech deviates from neutral conditions due to respiratory and vocal effort constraints, leading to reduced intelligibility and system performance.”

In order to better represent real-world speech behavior, Omidi hopes researchers will adapt a more holistic view of speech variation as a reflection of a speaker’s characteristics rather than focusing solely on linguistics. Task stress is just one of the many physiological variables that can affect these variations.

“Human speech is inherently shaped by the body, and physical task stress provides a clear example of how physiological factors influence speech production,” Omidi said.

###

For more information:
AIP Media
1 301.209.3090
media@aip.org

Main Meeting Website: https://acousticalsociety.org/philadelphia/
Technical Program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING2026

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to the in-person conference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

More Press Releases

Creating an Affordable and Sustainable Marimba #ASA190

Honduran rosewood, which makes up the bars of most marimbas, is rare and expensive.

PHILADELPHIA, May 14, 2026 — The pleasant, earthy sound of a marimba is a key component in the modern orchestra, but their high prices, ranging from $1,000 to over $25,000, sometimes make them cost-prohibitive for schools and students.

“To me, the marimba’s beauty lies in its place as the most expressive of all the mallet instruments,” said Amartya Bhattacharya, a student at Northeastern University. “Its high ranges have the articulation and pointed sound of the xylophone, while the low ends of the instruments reach beautiful, deep bass tones unrivaled by any other mallet percussion instruments.”

Bhattacharya grew up surrounded by music, and because he loves the marimba, he was motivated to find ways to make the instrument more accessible to all so more could have the same opportunity. The keys of marimbas are primarily made from Honduran rosewood — a rare and expensive type of wood — and Bhattacharya wondered if there was a cost-effective substitute that could do the trick.

Bhattacharya will present his analysis of alternative marimba materials Thursday, May 14, at 10:40 a.m. ET as part of the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 11-15.

Person touching a wooden marimba with metal resonator tubes visible beneath the bars.

The bars of the marimba are traditionally made from Honduran rosewood, a rare and expensive resource. Credit: Amartya Bhattacharya

He began by identifying materials, both wooden and polymer-based, that could serve as replacements for the marimba bars. Then, for each material Bhattacharya analyzed the density, which corresponds to durability; the loss factor, which determines resonance; and Young’s modulus, which impacts the pitch and feel of the bars — all of which come together to determine the sound of the material.

After testing these parameters, he found that hickory wood was the best alternative from an acoustical standpoint. It also has the added bonus of being significantly less expensive than rosewood.

“The Young’s modulus value of hickory means it will respond similarly to rosewood when struck,” Bhattacharya said. “The Young’s modulus-to-density ratio also means that a hickory and rosewood bar of the same pitch will be close in size, which is important to ensure that practice done on non-rosewood marimbas will transfer to the real thing for big performances.”

There were some materials that met parts of the criteria to be used in the marimba but failed in other parts. For example, spruce wood had a similar Young’s modulus-to-density ratio when compared to rosewood, but its higher damping values meant that the musical technique of rolling — when the marimba bar is repeatedly struck to create a continuous sound — wouldn’t sound very good.

“I wanted my initial analysis of the materials to be quantitative and of their physical properties, but I hope to one day make full-sized marimba bars from the most promising materials,” Bhattacharya said.

He also plans to test more types of wood, like bamboo, and modify the hickory bars using heat and pressure to increase their density.

“The marimba is the pinnacle of pitched percussion, which is why I chose to study it,” Bhattacharya said. “Overall, I hope to find affordable options for marimba bars with enough durability to not need frequent replacement.”

###

For more information:
AIP Media
1 301.209.3090
media@aip.org

Main Meeting Website: https://acousticalsociety.org/philadelphia/
Technical Program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING2026

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to the in-person conference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

More Press Releases

Challenging Biases About Vocal Fry #ASA190

Holistic studies that challenge social biases suggest that young women are not the group most likely to speak with vocal fry, also called creaky voice.

PHILADELPHIA, May 14, 2026 — Valleyspeak, uptalk, vocal fry: These are all examples of speech patterns generally assigned to young women and often stereotyped to imply a lack of confidence or intelligence. At least one of these assumed patterns, however, is false.

Jeanne Brown, a researcher at McGill University, will present her work on rethinking vocal fry Thursday, May 14, at 10:40 a.m. ET as part of the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 11-15.

Waveform and spectrogram display of an audio signal showing amplitude fluctuations and frequency intensity over time.

Brown played voice recordings for listeners and asked them to rate the perceived “creakiness” of the sound. Credit: Jeanne Brown

Using a combination of acoustic analyses and listener studies, Brown challenges the assumption that vocal fry is a hallmark of young women’s speech.

“The narrative took hold in the early 2010s, when a wave of mainstream media articles framed creaky voice — aka vocal fry — as a rising ‘affectation’ of young women,” she said.

By asking listeners to rate voices’ creakiness, Brown found that the primary marker for whether a voice sounded creaky was low pitch, not gender. In fact, both the listeners’ judgments and the acoustic analyses revealed that men and older speakers exhibit more creak than young women, a massive disconnect between evidence and popular belief.

“The conflict between that finding and everyday perception, where women are routinely flagged as creakier, suggests the bias is real but socially constructed, rather than grounded in how women actually sound,” Brown said.

Despite the evidence, it is unclear how these biases continue to spread, and it is hard to capture the full spectrum of listeners’ experiences when interpreting voices.

“Listeners may be responding to acoustic features like low pitch that covary with creak, to social expectations about who ‘should’ sound creaky, or some interaction between the two, and it’s not yet fully clear how each contributes,” Brown said.

Brown plans to continue studying social biases in vocal perceptions. She argues for a more nuanced, holistic approach to understanding speech patterns, combining studies of vocal production, acoustic mechanism, perception, and social parameters to help challenge the popular narrative and gender stereotypes about vocal creak.

“I hope it shifts the central question from ‘Why do young women creak so much?’ to ‘Why do we perceive and judge creak the way we do?’ I believe that’s where the real puzzle lies,” Brown said. “Advice telling women to avoid vocal fry to protect their careers [and] social perception puts the burden on speakers rather than challenging listeners’ biases, and that framing does real harm.”

###

For more information:
AIP Media
1 301.209.3090
media@aip.org

Main Meeting Website: https://acousticalsociety.org/philadelphia/
Technical Program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING2026

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to the in-person conference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

More Press Releases

How Effective Are Torpedo Bats, Exactly? #ASA190

Acoustic analysis can reveal the benefits of baseball’s newest invention.

PHILADELPHIA, May 13, 2026 — In the spring of 2025, baseball fans were treated to a surprise when the New York Yankees began the season with a unique style of bat. Termed “torpedo bats,” these new designs tapered slightly toward the end, so the widest points of the bats were closer to the “sweet spot” — the optimal place to hit to send the ball flying. In theory, this shape was more ergonomic, giving the Yankees an advantage at the plate.

But for all its fanfare, one question remains: Is the torpedo bat actually better?

Dan Russell from Pennsylvania State University will present his acoustic analysis of torpedo bats Wednesday, May 13, at 11:35 a.m. ET as part of the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 11-15.

Man in a plaid shirt working on an experiment setup with a baseball bat in a cluttered lab.

The setup used to conduct a modal analysis on the specialized torpedo bats. Credit: Dan Russell

Russell has spent decades using acoustic techniques to evaluate sporting equipment. He has studied golf clubs, tennis rackets, hockey sticks, table tennis paddles, and, of course, baseball bats. Over the course of his career, he has studied nearly every bat shape imaginable, including the unusual bottle bat, a 1920s era bat with a large barrel and thin handle that resembled a milk bottle.

To study the torpedo bats, Russell used a technique called modal analysis, which involves striking the bat with a special hammer and measuring both the impact force and the resulting vibrations. By striking and measuring at various points along the length of the bat, he can see how movement in each part of the bat affects every other part.

“The result is a collection of vibrational mode shapes, each with their own natural frequency — and those vibrational shapes allow us to define or locate the ‘sweet spot’ in the barrel, which affects the batted ball speed, and in the handle, which affects the sensation of ‘feel,’” said Russell.

This information is crucial, especially to amateur baseball players, who evaluate the performance of their bats primarily based on these vibrational modes.

“It turns out that the two most important things a player cares about are the way the bat sounds when it hits the ball and what it feels like during the impact,” said Russell. “Sound and feel are more important to the perception of quality than where the ball actually goes or how fast the ball is hit.”

Russell’s analysis shows that the torpedo bat shape does affect the location of the sweet spot, which likely impacts how the bat feels. However, whether that change translates into an actual advantage on the field is still an open question. Preliminary research Russell has conducted with colleagues from the University of Illinois and Washington State University suggests that a torpedo bat might add a few extra miles per hour to a hit ball, but this has yet to be confirmed.

“We hope to match our computer model and lab tests to available MLB field data from 2024 and 2025 for the players whose bats we have been testing to see if our testing and modeling can correlate to actual batted-ball speeds before and after they switched from standard to torpedo bats,” said Russell.

###

For more information:
AIP Media
1 301.209.3090
media@aip.org

Main Meeting Website: https://acousticalsociety.org/philadelphia/
Technical Program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING2026

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to the in-person conference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

More Press Releases

Whip It Good: How Olympic Weightlifting Relies on a Barbell’s ‘Whip’ #ASA190

Elite lifters use barbell vibrations to their advantage, which vary from bar to bar.

PHILADELPHIA, May 13, 2026 — In Olympic weightlifting, a single kilogram plate can be the difference between gold and silver. As much as possible, elite athletes must use everything they can to their advantage.

One of these variables is known as the barbell’s “whip,” the bouncy bendiness of a bar under dynamic movements. Joshua Langlois, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, will present his work studying these Olympic barbell vibrations Wednesday, May 13, at 11:20 a.m. ET as part of the 190th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, running May 11-15.

Barbell with red Rogue weight plates set up on a squat rack inside a gym with a laptop and workout gear on a wooden box beneath it.

The experimental setup used to determine the vibrations of barbells used in Olympic weightlifting. Credit: Joshua Langlois

“Weightlifters use the bar’s whip to assist in the upward acceleration by timing the oscillation of the bar so that they drive upwards into the bar when the vibration in the bar is already moving the weight upwards,” Langlois said.

Though Olympic barbells are constrained to a specific weight, diameter, and length, the rest of their properties vary by brand. This means the steel alloy the barbell is made of, its coating, and how it connects to its sleeve — the area that holds the weights — can be inconsistent from barbell to barbell, and all these properties affect the bar’s whip.

Langlois’ work compares both the vibrations of different barbells and the vibrations of one barbell with different amounts of weight. One major variation he uncovered so far is due to the bars’ sleeves: Vibrational modes primarily rely on geometry, so the difference in sleeves between bars has a larger effect than their different materials.

The studies are still exploratory, and more work remains to be done to understand how these changes affect a lifter’s performance.

“Performing modal analysis on one barbell under several different loads and across several barbells under the same load has given us the initial data needed to begin answering the questions of ‘How much does the barbell matter?’ and ‘What makes a good barbell?’” Langlois said.

###

For more information:
AIP Media
1 301.209.3090
media@aip.org

Main Meeting Website: https://acousticalsociety.org/philadelphia/
Technical Program: https://eppro01.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASASPRING2026

ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.

LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.

PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to the in-person conference at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown for credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.

ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.

More Press Releases